The exhibition A Series of Gestures consists of three works that relate to ways the body engages with politics.
The 3 channel video work Rond De Jambe from 2015-2016 takes the history of the Stopera building in Amsterdam as a starting point. Built between 1979 and 1986, the building that serves as a home for the National Opera and Ballet as well as the City Hall, was created with strong opposition from the neighbours and left-wing movements in Amsterdam. Rond De Jambe juxtaposes the ‘political body’ and the ‘dancing body’, by using archival images from these protests, and by working together with dancers, it translates the movements into dance.
Several Forms of Friendship is the continuation of a work series where casts are made of different joints on the human body. For Kunsthall Trondheim Several Forms of Friendship takes place as a series of workshops where the public is invited to cast parts of the body, in particular joints, that enable movement, while discussing questions of relationships as a societal structure. The casts will be shown in the exhibition as a continually growing documentation of the workshops.
The third work A Series of Gestures, loans its title to the exhibition. The work consists of a series of prints from the archive of Adresseavisen, the local newspaper. Details of gestures from press images taken in connection with house fires in Trondheim, are cut out, enlarged and hung on the walls of the space where the workshop for Several Forms of Friendship is held.
With these three works the exhibition points toward how the body relates to power structures within a bio-political frame work. As with spoken language, gestures; the language of the body, express power structures, but can also formulate alternatives to these. In these works, the body is recognized as a political tool that is both governed and resists this governance through a series of gestures – either as part of a political movement in demonstrations or as a motor for care and organization beyond representational politics.
Aimée Zito Lema (NL/ARG) was born in 1982. She studied at the University of the Arts, Buenos Aires, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and followed the Master Artistic Research program of the Royal Academy in The Hague. Among her recent exhibitions are: 11th Gwangju Biennale, the Dorothea von Stetten Award exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2016) and L’art de la Revolte – Hors Pistes – Centre Pompidou Paris (2016). Zito Lema recently finished the Artist-in-residency program at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
Aimée Zito Lema: Still from Rond de Jambe (2016).
Aimée Zito Lema, Rond de Jambe (2016). Installation view, video and sound installation. Photo: Kunsthall Trondheim/Amalia Fonfara.
Aimée Zito Lema, A Series of Gestures, installation view from Kunsthall Trondheim, 2017. Photo: Kunsthall Trondheim/Aage A. Mikalsen.
Aimée Zito Lema, Several Forms of Friendship (2017), workshop, installation view. Photo: Kunsthall Trondheim/Aage A. Mikalsen.
Aimée Zito Lema, Several Forms of Friendship (2017), workshop, detail. Photo: Aimée Zito Lema.
Aimée Zito Lema, Several Forms of Friendship (2017), workshop, detail. Photo: Kunsthall Trondheim/Aage A. Mikalsen.
Aimée Zito Lema, Rond de Jambe (2016), installation view, video and sound installation. Photo: Kunsthall Trondheim/Aage A. Mikalsen.
Aimée Zito Lema, Rond de Jambe (2016), installation view, video and sound installation. Photo: Aimée Zito Lema.