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4/9/2013

43 Salon (inter) Nacional de Artistas

Different locations, Medellin

Artistic Director Mariángela Méndez, curators: Javier Mejía, Óscar Roldán Alzate, Florencia Malbrán and Rodrigo Moura.

In 2013, the National Salon of Artists – the longest-running and possibly the best-known showcase for contemporary art in Colombia – celebrates its 43th edition.

Between September 6th and November 3rd, Medellín will host the 43rd “Salón Nacional de Artistas” (43 SNA), the city which the Wall Street Journal chose as the most innovative in the world in 2013. This was on the initiative of the Colombian Ministry of Culture, which on this occasion works in alliance with the Secretary of Civic Culture of the Mayoralty of Medellín.

The first edition of the Salon was held in 1940, and since then the idea behind the show has gone through several important changes. In its new version, the name carries the prefix (Inter), signaling the Salon’s integration with the international art scene and continuing a development started by its two previous versions. The unchanged name might have manifested a certain resistance to an insistent and clamorous reality where all solidity tends to dissolve; we proposed the change as an acknowledgement of the necessity to look for other readings, and to strengthen the dialogue and connections between local, national and international contexts.

The 43 (Inter) National Salon of Artists will link and interweave two key concepts. In general terms, one aspect of the exhibition is resumed in the verb SABER, which means knowledge or to know, that is, the revision of the canon from the point of view of the traditional bodies of knowledge, as expressed in their narratives of origins and rootedness. Metaphorically speaking, “SABER” highlights the importance of a specific context: the traditions pertaining to a certain territory and the knowledge which has been developed there, in all their contingency. It refers to walking with a firm stride, it is the compass for survival.

But parallel to this knowledge, however, there is DESCONOCER (not to know, to be unaware of, to unlearn), the second conceptual approach of the exhibition. Here we refer to works which acknowledge the suspension of univocal meanings and enable us to open ourselves up to the doubt, ambiguity or uncertainty which afford the promise of the new. It is a mental state which allows for the possibility of escape and navigating towards other futures, new notions of the present and the reinvention of the past. The proliferation of paths, the refusal to get stuck in a specific place and tradition, likewise serve to impel us forward, to accept the expansion that is needed to undertake a directionless journey, so that we may explore the immense ocean, jungle or sidereal space of the unknown.

The concepts of Knowledge and Unawareness are apparently contradictory but they will be joined at the Salon in order to create, as in an oxymoron (a figure of speech which combines contradictory terms), a new meaning. In short, throughout the exhibition, some works will operate within the concept of SABER and others within that of DESCONOCER and there will be a third category which, like a shaman, will reconcile the dichotomy between what we know and what we do not know through vectors, routes, tensors and other metaphors of mediation.

The 43rd (inter) National Salon of Artists will be made up of three collective exhibitions and several projects by individual artists, some of which will be commissioned by the Salon. In this manner, it will bring together both, works that already exist and ones specifically made for it. Approximately 100 Colombian and foreign artists will take part and it will take place in three venues in the city of Medellín simultaneously.

Its academic and pedagogical component will seek to make the works and the artists accessible to the public, include other ways of looking at and experiencing art and enable people of all ages and walks of life, to have a direct experience of all that which we know as contemporary art. To achieve this, the public will have the opportunity to stroll through the exhibition halls in the company of guides or mediators who will help them to connect themselves with the spirit of art.

At the same time, however, in SABER DESCONOCER, we would like the public to understand that it is not necessary to attend thousands of workshops and training schools to come close to art. We want to invite people to have the opportunity to explore the unknown and leave their fears and reserves behind when they go past the doors of the three venues of the exhibition, and dare to explore those spaces which may enrich their vision of the world.

In the venues of the Salon there will be opportunities to cross and be crossed by artworks and ideas; by expressions, traditional and less traditional, which contemplate things that we know, ones we do not know and the mysterious membranes which separate some things from others. The Salon invites us to be emancipated spectators, free to draw our own conclusions, come up with theories or no theories at all, think or not think, give way to emotion or remain distant towards that which surrounds us. That is all the Salon will ask of us: to have a free and open-minded attitude to art, things and their use.

Partner institutions: Centro Colombo Americano, Fundación Arteria, Museo de Antioquia, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, and Museo de la Universidad de Antioquia.

Opening seminar: Saber Desconocer, to live in Oxymoron
7 September 2013, with 5 international guests and 6 Colombian professionals. Panelists include: Florencia Garramuño (Argentina), Nico Israel (USA) and José Roca (Colombia)
Teatro Lido. Carrera 48 No. 54 – 20. Medellín

Press contacts:
Ministerio de Cultura Grupo de Divulgación y Prensa - Alicia Jiménez M. [1] 3424100 ext. 1259 ajimenez@mincultura.gov.co
Natalia Martínez comunicaciones43sna@gmail.com
Mónica Arango monica@contarcomunicaciones.com

Exhibition venues:

Medellín Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Antioquia
Edificio Antioquia (Antigua Naviera Grancolombiana)
Botanical Gardens

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