ExhibitionMay 10, 2022
Josefina Mena Pioneer Architect at the Premiere Worldwide Archive
WhiteBox is presenting in its new East Village quarters Matriarchive in Resistance, a transcendent exhibition curated by Yohanna M. Roa as part of its ongoing ‘EXODUS’ series. This project contributes squarely to the ambitious and critical legacy left in New York City by ex-pats and émigré artists and cultural figures who keep expanding its unique multi-cultural stockpile.
This exhibition is the premiere worldwide activation of the Mexican-Lebanese pioneer ecofeminist architect Josefina Mena’s archive reconsidered within the contemporary paradigm of New York’s present-day artistic, cultural, environmental, and socio-political scene. It showcases her participation in various social, artistic, and technological movements between 1967 and 1976 in Europe, Africa, and South America. Her life trajectory, architectural projects, art world links, and political activism are framed in early intersectional, ecofeminist, and decolonial practices.
Mena’s fifty years’ documentary collection includes material from Cecilia Vicuña (poet, artist), Cohen Wessing (War photographer), Gustav Metzger (developer of the Auto-Destructive Art concept), the ‘Radical Technology’ collective in England (alternative technologies), Maurice Wilkins (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1962), Social and Resistance movements such as the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the MIR in Chile (Movement of the Revolutionary Left), among others. The exhibition also presents works by artists who activate the archive: Ivan Navarro and Courtney Smith, Mike Hoolboom, Jorge Lozano, Lilia Ziamou, Sa’dia Rehman, María Evelia Marmolejo, Roland Gebhardt, Fuentes Rojas (Red Fonts) / Tania Andrade Olea y Claudia Baez. To visualize the breadth of themes of the matriarchive, the following writers and curators participate: Semíramis González, Kate Aydin, Blanca de La Torre, Karen Cordero, Simonetta Moro, Lia Gil Antunes, and Iair Rosenkranz.
The exhibition will be open until June 30. For more information, visit: https://whiteboxnyc.org/2022/9b9/matriarchive-curated-by-yohanna-roa/
This exhibition is the premiere worldwide activation of the Mexican-Lebanese pioneer ecofeminist architect Josefina Mena’s archive reconsidered within the contemporary paradigm of New York’s present-day artistic, cultural, environmental, and socio-political scene. It showcases her participation in various social, artistic, and technological movements between 1967 and 1976 in Europe, Africa, and South America. Her life trajectory, architectural projects, art world links, and political activism are framed in early intersectional, ecofeminist, and decolonial practices.
Mena’s fifty years’ documentary collection includes material from Cecilia Vicuña (poet, artist), Cohen Wessing (War photographer), Gustav Metzger (developer of the Auto-Destructive Art concept), the ‘Radical Technology’ collective in England (alternative technologies), Maurice Wilkins (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1962), Social and Resistance movements such as the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, the MIR in Chile (Movement of the Revolutionary Left), among others. The exhibition also presents works by artists who activate the archive: Ivan Navarro and Courtney Smith, Mike Hoolboom, Jorge Lozano, Lilia Ziamou, Sa’dia Rehman, María Evelia Marmolejo, Roland Gebhardt, Fuentes Rojas (Red Fonts) / Tania Andrade Olea y Claudia Baez. To visualize the breadth of themes of the matriarchive, the following writers and curators participate: Semíramis González, Kate Aydin, Blanca de La Torre, Karen Cordero, Simonetta Moro, Lia Gil Antunes, and Iair Rosenkranz.
The exhibition will be open until June 30. For more information, visit: https://whiteboxnyc.org/2022/9b9/matriarchive-curated-by-yohanna-roa/
Gallery
