Artificial Amsterdam

The Dutch cultural journal Uitkrant chose the exhibition Artificial Amsterdam. The City as a Work of Art, presented in De Appel in 2012, as the Number One art exhibit during the summer in this city.

The show was curated by Gerardo Mosquera in collaboration with Rieke Vos. It explored the subjective perception of Amsterdam as a city filled with contradictions, taking as its starting point the notion of "urban imaginaries" proposed by Colombian semiotician Armando Silva. The idea of Amsterdam as an artificial place (stolen from the sea, highly regulated, controlled, tourist-oriented) was the show's general prompt.

The exhibition took the entire space of the De Appel art center's new building, featuring works by Mounira Al Solh, Lara Almarcegui, Linda Bannink, James Beckett, Egle Budvytyte & Bart Groenendaal, Ed van der Elsken, Carlos Garaicoa, Kendell Geers, Bert Haanstra, Inti Hernández, Roderick Hietbrink, Thomas Hirschhorn, Philipp Kremer, Glenda León, Cristina Lucas, Arnoldus Montanus, Tatzu Nishi, Hans Op de Beeck, Jan Rothuizen, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Kuang-Yu Tsui, Barbara Visser, and Lawrence Weiner.