The Potosí Principle
Short Biographies
Partners & Credits
Biographies of Artists, Curators and Correspondents
Español: Biografías: Curadores, Artistas, Corresponsales...
Sonia Abián (b. 1966 in Posadas, Argentina) lives and works in Barcelona. She began her artistic work as a painter, and later also turned to action art, video, and conceptual art. Dealing with archives and sound research form the starting point of her works.
Anna Artaker (b. 1976 in Vienna, Austria) lives and works as an artist in Vienna. She focuses on creating pictures connected to historiography or the relationship between photography and its subject.
Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela (b. 1676, d. 1736) was a chronicler in the viceroyalty of Peru, the region covered by present-day Bolivia.
Antonio de Ayanz (b. 1559 in Güendulain; d. 1598 in La Paz, Bolivia) was a Jesuit who in 1596 published a critical account of the working conditions of the Indios in the silver mines.
Monika Baer (b. 1964 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) is an artist and lives and works in Berlin.
John Barker (b. 1948 in north London, Great Britain) lives and works as a writer and cultural critic in London. Barker regularly publishes political and culturecritical essays in the London publication Mute Magazine,among others.
Quirin Bäumler (b. 1965 in Weiden, Germany) is an artist living and working in Berlin. He graduated from the Fachschule für Holzbildhauerei in Oberammergau and the Kunstakademie in Munich. Together with other artists he founded the firm Sculpture Berlin in the German capital.
Gaspar Miguel de Berrio (b. 1706 in Potosí, Bolivia, d. 1762) was a painter, representative of the American Baroque, who worked in Potosí. He is catalogued as one of the chief exponents of the Potosí School, after Melchor Pérez de Holguín, whose disciple he had been.
Christian von Borries (b. 1969 in Zurich, Switzerland) is a conductor, composer, and producer. He lives in Berlin and is engaged in the audio branding of classical music. In 2002 he and Martin Hossbach founded the music label Masse und Macht.
Matthijs de Bruijne (b. 1967 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. His multimedia installations are a reflection of research on political realities in Argentina, the Netherlands, China, and elsewhere. De Bruijne's works have been shown in such locations as Europe, Argentina, and Canada, and in the exhibition project Ex Argentina, 2006, at Museum Ludwig, Cologne. He lives in Amsterdam.
To the biography of Chto Delat / What is to be done?
To the biogarphy of Alice Creischer
Culture and Arts Museum of Migrant Workers (Beijing, China) is part of the Migrant Workers Home that was founded in a former factory in Picun Village in 2002. The Migrant Workers Home is an NGO based in Beijing, dedicated, among other things, to equipping schools and offering legal advice to migrant workers.
The Culture and Arts Museum of Migrant Workers was set up in 2008. Sun Heng, a former migrant worker, is the founder and director of the Culture and Arts Museum of Migrant Workers. Lin Zhibin is research coordinator of the Culture and Arts Museum of Migrant Workers.
Anthony Davies (b. 1966 in the United Kingdom) is a writer, cultural critic, and organizer. He lives and works in London.
Stephan Dillemuth (b. 1954 in Bündigen, Germany) is an artist and teaches at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. Dillemuth works across genres with installations, videos, performances, painting, documentations, and publications.
Ines Doujak (b. 1959 in Klagenfurt, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. In her photographs, installations, and performances, she examines norms and stereotypes particularly with regard to gender roles and racism.
Elvira Espejo (b. 1981 in Qaqachaka, Bolivia) studied painting and textile design at the National Art Academy in La Paz until 2004. Her artistic practice includes paintings, coal drawings, and woven pieces, as well as linguistic creations—poems, stories, and songs. She lives and works in La Paz.
Marcelo Expósito (b. 1966 in Puertollano, Spain) lives and works mainly in Barcelona. His works focus on the interdisciplinary nature of literature, photography, and video. He is a member of the Universidad Nómad (http://www.universidadnomada.net).
To the biography of Harun Farocki
León Ferrari (b. 1920 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a conceptual artist concerned with the overlapping of politics and religion. His works are situated in the area of collage, painting, and sculpture. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Mariano Florentino Olivares (b. in Oruro, Bolivia) worked as a painter in La Paz in the 19th century.
María Galindo / Mujeres Creando. Galindo (b. 1964 in La Paz, Bolivia) is an artist, theorist, and activist, and a founding member of the feminist group Mujeres Creando (founded in 1992 in La Paz, Bolivia). The group opposes homophobia and machismo. She became known especially for her graffiti. Mujeres Creando has published numerous books, including La Virgen de los Deseos (Buenos Aires, 2005), and produced TV series and videos. She lives and works in La Paz.
Isaías Griñolo (b. 1963 in Bonares, Huelva, Spain) is a fine artist and has initiated long-term projects such as Asuntos internos: La Cultura como cortina de humo between 2003 and 2008. He is a member of Plataforma de Reflexión de Políticas Culturales (PRPC).
Luis Guaraní (b. 1960s in Chuquiago Marka, Bolivia) studied cinema and television in Cuba. He worked as operations and production manager at Bolivian television station Channel 7. In 2010 he was in charge of the television platform for the World Conference on Climate Change in Tiquipaya, Cochabamba. He was the general manager of TV Channel 55 and head of television at the Cochabamba Presidents' Summit. Currently he lives in La Paz, makes documentaries, and is preparing his first feature film.
Sally Gutiérrez is a visual artist and lives in Madrid. After finalizing her MA art studies in Madrid's Complutense University, Gutiérrez moved to Berlin, participating in the art movement in East Berlin. With a Fulbright grant she moved to New York and completed a masters in media studies at the New School University. TAPOLOGO is her latest film.
Dmitry Gutov (b. 1960 in Moscow, Russia) works as an installation and video artist and painter in Moscow.
To the biography of Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz
Herman Hugo (b. 1588 in Brussels, d. 1629 in Rheinberg) was a Belgian Jesuit. In 1627 he published Pia desideria (Antwerp, 1624) which became a popular work of Baroque emblematics.
Zhao Liang (b. 1971 in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China) lives and works as a video artist and photographer in Beijing. He graduated from the Film Academy in Beijing and studied art at the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang.
Rogelio López Cuenca (b. 1959 in Nerja, Spain) is a visual artist and lives and works mainly in Mexico and Barcelona. He has done interventions in urban publicspaces, for TV, on the Web at www.malagana.com, and he has also taken part in the Johannesburg Biennials; Manifesta 1, Rotterdam; São Paulo; Lima; and Istanbul.
Melchor María Mercado was a public servant in Bolivia in the early 19th century.
Eduardo Molinari (b. 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) has been working with the Archivo caminante—a "wandering" and "changing" archive—since 2001. Thematic focuses are on history and identity, utopia and remembrance, as well as on contexts of artistic work. Molinari is a lecturer at the National Art Academy in Buenos Aires.
Francisco Moyen (b. 1720 in Paris, France) was a French merchant, musician, and painter. He first worked as a technical draftsman at various European courts and later invested his inherited fortune in transatlantic trade. Due to his enlightened attitude and tendency toward polemics, he was sentenced by the Inquisition and died as a prisoner on a Spanish galley in 1761.
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (b. 1595 in Madrid, Spain, d. 1658) was a humanist, physicist, biographer and theologian, who belonged to the Company of Jesus.
Luis Niño (b. in Potosí, Bolivia) was a painter, sculptor, and silversmith who worked under the commission of Obispo de Charcas and the parrish San Lorenzo. It is often stressed that Niño was an Indio.
Plataforma de Reflexión sobre Políticas Culturales (PRPC, Seville, Spain) was founded as a discussion platform on cultural politics, questioning the privatization of public funds for cultural production via the BIACS Foundation (International Biennial for Contemporary Art Seville) and private investment lobbies since the beginning of the Seville biennial.
Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala (b. 1556, d. 1644) was an indigenous chronicler during the viceroyalty of Peru.
Melchor Pérez de Holguín (b. 1660 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, d. around 1732 in Potosí, viceroyalty of Peru, now Bolivia) was one of the most significant painters of the Andean Baroque. He lived in Potosí.
Juan Ramos (b. sixteenth century in the viceroyalty of Peru) was a painter who worked in the style of the Leonardo Flores school and in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries completed commissioned works in the Church of Jesús de Machaca, today's Bolivia.
David Riff (b. 1975, London, Great Britain) is an art critic, translator, and writer. He is a member of the group Chto delat. Riff teaches art history at the School of Photography Rodtschenko and multimedia in Moscow. He lives and works in Moscow and Berlin.
Konstanze Schmitt (b. 1974) studied theater and literary studies in Berlin, where she still lives and works. After completing her studies, she was an assistant in the project Ex Argentina in Buenos Aires and Berlin. Since 2004 Konstanze Schmitt has been working as an artist and theatermaker in the independent theater scene and has realized projects, among other places, in Mannheim, Madrid, and Berlin (e.g. exhibition participation in La Normalidad, Buenos Aires 2006, Vom Sinn der Arbeit, Mannheim 2009; performance at the Internationale Schillertage 2009).
Sedoac (Active Domestic Work). Independently organized domestic workers' association, founded in Madrid in 2006.
Andreas Siekmann
Territorio Doméstico is a constructive location in the self-organized feminist center Eskalera Karakola in Madrid. Since 2006, women and collectives of various nationalities and with different experiences, who work as domestic workers or are otherwise connected to domestic and caring professions, have been meeting here once a month. Together and along with other groups, Sedoac and Territorio Doméstico are fighting for the equality of domestic work, against precarization, and for the rights of female workers regardless of their residence status.
Lucas Valdés (b. 1661 in Seville, Spain, d. 1725 in Cadiz, Spain) was a Spanish Baroque painter.