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Architects: LA ESCUELA___
- Year: 2024
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Photographs:Josseline Chalbaud
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Lead Architects: Miguel Braceli
Text description provided by the architects. The artistic and pedagogical legacy of Venezuelan-German artist Gego is reactivated in a contemporary light in Collective Reticulárea: Communal Cartographies. This participatory project conceived by artist Miguel Braceli is developed by LA ESCUELA___ together with Fundación Gego and Sala Mendoza, in collaboration with an international network of artists, as well as university professors and students in Venezuela. The resulting enmeshment of this collective learning process is displayed as a spatial experience at Sala Mendoza, in Caracas, from April 11, through June 1, 2024.
Collective Reticulárea is curated by Fundación Gego and Professor Stefanie Reisinger. It is part of a larger “Emeritus: Gego” program developed by LA ESCUELA___, framed in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Gego’s passing. A key figure for twentieth-century geometric abstraction, thanks to her contributions to the study of form in space, in this project, her work is understood through the lens of learning and collaboration. With this, the platform seeks to stimulate new dialogues and narratives about regional bonds, while exploring the potential of collaborative artistic and learning practices, and addressing issues of mobility and diasporas from affective ties woven on art and territory. LA ESCUELA___ is an artistic platform for collective learning and making in public spaces, founded jointly by Miguel Braceli and the international foundation Siemens Stiftung. It is based on Siemens Stiftung’s initiatives within the cultural field in Latin America—in the development of co-creation programs and artistic interventions—and Braceli’s work in the spheres of social practices and public art.
A Learning and Meeting Space - “The visible outcome is never the entire piece, as the process of its genesis is to be considered,” notes Reisinger. The project development began in December 2023, through an open call for artists, educators, and people linked to Gego's work. Thus, Collective Reticulárea is composed of modules-pieces made up of various materials, sent from multiple countries around the world. These fragments were added to the spatial developments built by university students of the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas (led by Professor Diego González); the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida (led by Professor Analy Trejo); and the University of Margarita (led jointly by professors Gustavo Izarra and Amanda Soriano). This addition sought to stimulate collaborative learning and inventiveness, as participants were invited to build their modules-pieces from the possibilities and limitations of their contexts. In this way, the project dialogues with Gogo's most emblematic work, the Reticulárea, not from mimetic intention but "from a symbolic place, as a communal cartography of expansive forms—explains Braceli—approaching the node as a design object, but also as an exchange and meeting space."
From a present point of view, Braceli emphasizes an aspect of the Reticulárea that, “until now, has not been fully unfolded (educational and collaborative aspects)—comments Reisinger—[creating] a social space for communal experience in a practical (working together) and conceptual manner (shared history). The process of creating the connective points of a "communal cartography" required the active participation of a community. A network of Venezuelan artists and curators living abroad, as well as the facilities of the Goethe-Institut Venezuela, allowed collection of the pieces sent in response to the international open call. All these pieces, now displaced, were added to the spatial installation displayed at Sala Mendoza.
