Online: Reading circle and talk with Julia Mensch (EN)
»Spiritualist Re-reading Session: Galeano, half a century« with the book »Open Veins of Latin America«
When: Wednesday 19.May 2021, 19h – 20:30h
Where: zoom, please register at anmeldung@ngbk.de
The Open Veins of Latin America, published in 1971 by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, is a chronicle of the constant plundering of the natural resources of the Latin American region since the Spanish Conquest by the colonial empires between the 16th and 19th centuries, and the imperialist states, such as the United Kingdom and the United States from the 19th century onwards.
Considered by many intellectuals as the Latin American Bible, this work was targeted by military dictatorships, costing Galeano imprisonment and exile. At the same time, it struck a chord with the critical youth sectors of the time in the context of the civil-military military coups that began in the 1960s and 1970s in almost all Latin American countries.
The Museo de la Democracia invites the Argentinean artist Julia Mensch (Buenos Aires, 1980) to take up the Open Veins that approach in a visionary and almost premonitory way current socio-political issues of the Latin American context, which Mensch investigates from her artistic practice and from her family biography, intertwined with the history of the communist party in Argentina.
The prevailing Neo-Extractivist model (fracking, mega-mining, GM monoculture) writes a new chapter in the colonial history of Latin America, a chapter that Galeano did not manage to write in Las venas abiertas. More than 500 years after the conquest of America, its territories continue to export Nature and the region continues to be a sacrifice zone of supposed capitalist development.
Julia Mensch AR/CH Buenos Aires, 1980
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
She studied at the National Art University in Buenos Aires and at the Hito Steyerl’s class at the UdK, Berlin.
www.julia-mensch.blogspot.com
She develops her practice based on long term research, reading fiction and theory, visiting archives and territories, doing interviews. Her work is an intersection of text, drawing, installation, public events, photography, video and lecture performance – from which she opens collective dialogues about political and social contexts and future scenarios. Her practice deals with the history of Socialism and Communism, and with environmental sociopolitical conflicts in Latin America with focus on the condition of the continent as exporter of Nature since the Spanish Conquest.
Mensch was granted by the Berliner Senat/DE, Amt für Kultur Appenzell Ausserrhoden/CH, Schlesinger Stiftung/CH, Sulzberg Stiftung/CH, DAAD, Robert Bosch Foundation/DE, National Art Found/AR, etc. She took part in several residency programs and international exhibition like Soil is an Inscribed Body, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2019), 21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo (2019), Ohne Titel, Kunstmuseum Appenzell (2019), Museum Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Buenos Aires (2018), Naturaleza Salvaje, Bienal Sur, CNB Contemporánea, Buenos Aires (2017), On off shore, Museum für Fotografie, Berlin (2016). And her solo shows include La vida en rojo, Kunstraum Baden, Switzerland (2019), La vida en rojo, EAC, Montevideo (2018), La vida en rojo, CCR, Buenos Aires (2016), 1973, Galerie im Turm, Berlin (2014), Salashi, Pyecka Galery, Kosice/SK (2013).