With Dirt and Myth, the daadgalerie presents Patricia Belli’s first solo exhibition in Germany. The artist, who was born in Managua, Nicaragua, lived and worked in Berlin in 2021/2022 as a fellow of the Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program. The exhibition starts on September 12 until November 10, 2024.
Image above: Patricia Belli: Triangulo © unknown
Patricia Belli does not allow herself to be pinned down to one discipline; she works with fibers, everyday objects and handmade materials with which she explores the interweaving between bodies and systems as well as the precarious balance in which they find themselves in the face of structures of violence. Through themes such as gender, sexuality and processes of change, her works reveal a structural language that is determined by a multitude of desires. Starting from the body and lived experiences, Patricia Belli activates physical sensations as an archive of knowledge and a place of articulation. Through sewing and other craft activities, she gives texture to all that is fragile, feminine and otherwise endangered. She gives form to marginalized bodies, between local and global contexts, thus developing a counter-poetics to heteropatriarchal systems.
The daadgalerie is showing around 25 works by the artist from different creative periods, created from the mid-1990s to the present day. On display are sculptural objects, video works and a new version of the installation El Circo from 2001, which represents an important anchor point in Belli’s oeuvre. In the screen print series Tierra Quemada (2024) created for the exhibition and the video work Recuerdos (2022), Belli brings current social crises such as climate change and war to the fore in Dirt and Myth.
Belli completed her studies in the United States during the time of the Contra wars (1981-90) in Nicaragua, which were supported by the US. After earning a BFA in Fine Arts from Loyola University, she returned to Managua in 1987. In 1990, she became part of an artist collective called ArteFacto. The not particularly long-lived but pioneering group pursued an interdisciplinary approach combined with performance as a method and an experimental aesthetic that deliberately challenged the status quo. With the support of a Fullbright Scholarship, Patricia Belli completed her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001. In the same year, she returned to Nicaragua where she founded EspIRA (Space for Artistic Research and Reflection), an experimental pedagogical project that would continuously evolve based on collective dialog and collaborative learning.
Anchored in an ethos of self-exploration, combined with the exploration of specific materials, Belli’s early works investigate female-connoted physicality(ies) on the basis of gender-specific attributions of everyday objects. In works such as Herida or Novia (both 1995), she questions constructions of femininity based on the sensual nature of women’s clothing. The second-hand garments imported from the United States and used by the artist bear affective residues in which the bodies that once wore them and their history live on. In Triángulo (2000), she continues her somatic investigations by turning to domestic objects to create anthropomorphic structures in which the systemic conditions of constraint are revealed. This work was created at the same time as her extensive installation El Circo (The Circus, 2001), which – in the artist’s words – addresses the “risk of the circus spectacle and the melancholy of circus life” that machismo evokes.
In her more recent works, Belli addresses the themes of fragility and violence in sometimes participatory installations or objects. Works such as Pesadilla (2019) show cycles of violence that address the precarious relationship between bodies and objects. When bodies become objects that are mistreated by larger systems of oppression, they lose the ground beneath their feet. In addition to these works, the artist focuses on fabrics, which she uses to examine how structures of violence and automated systems are transferred to the mechanisms of the body and nature in a broader sense. This is also the case in Cielo de Leche (Milk Sky, 2019), where a fine white blanket with udder-like protrusions hangs over the viewer – like the sky of a promise of milk. Positioned just out of reach, the work evokes a delicate yet menacing feeling that illustrates how thin the veil is that separates education and structural violence.
About Patricia Belli
Patricia Belli lives and works in Managua, Nicaragua. Her solo exhibitions include: Ser, sin serlo at Villa Vassillief, France, where she was a Pernod Ricard Fellow (2018); Equilibrio y Colapso at TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica (2016), Fundación Ortiz Gurdián, Nicaragua (2017), ArteCentro Graciela Andrade de Paiz, Guatemala (2017); and Frágiles at TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica (2015). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at ARCO, Madrid (2021), the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2018), the 38th EVA International, Ireland (2018), the 58th Carnegie International, Chicago (2022) and Parallel Oaxaca (2024).
WHEN?
Opening: Wednesday, September 11, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition dates: Thursday, September 12 – Sunday, November 10, 2024
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12 – 7 pm
WHERE?
daadgalerie
Oranienstraße 161
10969 Berlin
COSTS?
Free admission
