Ocula Report ‘An Opera for Animals’ at Rockbund Art Museum 19 Jul 2019 : Penny Liu for Ocula An Opera for Animals was first staged at Para Site in Hong Kong between 23 March and 2 June 2019, with works by over 48 artists and collectives that use opera as a metaphor for modes of contemporary, cross-disciplinary art-making. The exhibition's second iteration takes up a large portion of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai (22 June–25...
Ocula Conversation Mandy El-Sayegh: Productive Ambiguity Moving across installation, painting, drawing, and writing, Malaysia-born and London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh explores the political, social, and economic complexities of humanity, using a mosaic of information—from advertising slogans and pornographic imagery to newspaper articles—that she subjects to processes of layering,...
Ocula Report Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House 5 Jul 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House in London (12 June–15 September 2019) surveys more than half a century of black creativity in Britain and beyond across the fields of art, film, photography, music, design, fashion, and literature.Curated by Zak Ové, works by approximately 100 intergenerational black...
João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva live and work in Lisbon. Working in collaboration since 2001, their research driven practice is a poetic investigation of the metaphysical, encompassing moving image, installation, sculpture, and photography. Creating objects and scenarios that are equally cinematic, comedic, and enigmatic, together their works defy the rational, challenging our understanding of the known world.
Past solo exhibitions of their work include João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva: Peacock, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2017, The Sleeping Eskimo, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland, 2016, The Missing Hippopotamus, Kkv Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, 2015, Papagaio, HangarBicocca, Milan, 2014; travelled to Camden Arts Centre, London, 2015, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2015, One month without filming, REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2015, Since you have eaten the horse, you can travel to Rome by donkey: on dwarf philosophy, Kunsternernes Hus, Oslo, 2012 and Passengers 1.7, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, 2008. In 2009, Gusmão and Paiva represented Portugal at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Additionally, their work was included the The Encyclopedic Palace, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the International Art Exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013, the 8th Gwangju Biennale, 2010, Manifesta 7, 2008, the 6th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, 2007, and the 27th Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2006.
Related Press Mad, magical and mesmerising: Gusmão + Paiva's labyrinth of silent films The Guardian : 4 February 2015 What a peculiar world the Portuguese artists João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva inhabit. Populated by birds, fish and animals, cyclists, smokers and donkey-riders, it is a place of abstractions and illusions, the everyday and the impossible.
