Jonathas de Andrade » Next Level

... until 18 May 2022

Karolina Wojtas » Florentine Riem Vis Stipendium

... until 3 April 2022

Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam

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Mon-Wed 10am-6pm; Thu-Fri 10am-9pm; Sat-Sun 10am-6pm

Jogos Dirigidos (Directed Games), 2019. © Jonathas de Andrade

Jonathas de Andrade » Next Level

... until 18 May 2022

De Andrade tells a story that can only be heard if you listen with all your senses.

Foam presents the 6h edition of the series Next Level, this time with artist Jonathas de Andrade (Maceió, Brazil, 1982). Andrade’s work is visually attractive yet highly critical. It creates a space for communities who are less visible in the socio-economic landscape, and less heard in the contemporary social debate. De Andrade is able to playfully draw attention to major themes such as social and economic inequality and unbalanced power relations. Issues that are deeply rooted in his native Brazil, but are also at play in the world at large.

Jogos Dirigidos (Directed Games), 2019. © Jonathas de Andrade

Nordeste
The work of Jonathas de Andrade is firmly rooted in the Nordeste, the north-eastern region of his native country Brazil. The region is fertile and the capital port of Recife has been an important trade hub since colonial times. The Nordeste is also home to many indigenous communities and has a great biodiversity, but the land is often exploited and its bounties are unequally distributed.
De Andrade addresses issues of social, economic and racial inequality that are – and have historically been – at the core of Brazilian politics. Collaborating with communities who populate the region, he amplifies the voice of those less heard. By focusing on local stories of identity and belonging, De Andrade playfully challenges the skewed global power dynamics that affect marginalised communities in Brazil, and the world at large.

Power Dynamics
De Andrade typically stages social experiments on locations where such power dynamics are at play. For the works in this exhibition, he collaborated with labourers from a sugar refinery, as well as a community of deaf-mute people in rural Brazil, and indigenous women from the highly contested Kayapó Menkragnoti territory. For his latest work, which premieres at Foam, he collaborated with the women of Tejucupapo, who continue to re-enact the battle against the Dutch colonizers that took place in their village in 1646.

Jogos Dirigidos (Directed Games), 2019. © Jonathas de Andrade

Visual Storytelling
Photography, film and installation are not solely used to record such events, but function as a method for visual storytelling. De Andrade unearths the histories that inhabit the land through playful and sometimes outright activist performances. The often staged and loosely scripted ‘documents’ hover somewhere in between fact and fiction. They tell us stories that have been told and retold, travelling and evolving with time. Language plays an important role in the oeuvre of De Andrade. He often combines photography and video with text, investigating how we internalize meaning through literacy. Taking his inspiration from vintage encyclopaedias, didactic tools and instruction manuals, he points at how language perpetuates social constructions in society. By recognising, isolating and reconfiguring verbal and visual typologies, De Andrade tells a story that can only be heard if you listen with all your senses.

Jonathas de Andrade
Jonathas de Andrade lives and works in Recife, in the Nordeste-region of Brazil. In 2013 he was selected as Foam Talent. In 2019-2021 his work O Peixe (The Fish) was part of the international travelling Foam exhibition On Earth – Imaging, Technology and the Natural World. De Andrade has had solo exhibitions in many prominent institutions, among them the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2016-17); The Power Plant, Toronto (2017); New Museum, New York (2017); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2019). His work will be presented at the Brazilian pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale.

We can't live – without each other, 2019
© Karolina Wojtas, courtesy of the artist

Karolina Wojtas » Florentine Riem Vis Stipendium

Foam 3h: We can't live - without each other

... until 3 April 2022

Karolina Wojtas’ (Poland, 1996) work is colourful, imaginative, humorous and has a vaguely sinister nature to it. The artist is inspired by family, memories of her youth, unusual moments and candy. We can’t live – without each other gives an insight into the continuous struggle between brother and sister: a love-hate relationship, sometimes taken to extremes. The series is a close collaboration between the two siblings. Together they stage intense moments of violence and Wojtas produces realistically executed phantom wounds. Her work invites the viewer to participate and discover, where the visitor can feel like a child again. Sometimes combined with dark humour, the exhibition of Wojtas creates a (sur)realistic experience.

In We can’t live – without each other Wojtas gives an intimate view of the complex relationship with her younger brother. Until the age of thirteen, the artist was an only child and she wanted it to keep it that way. When her parents announced that she was going to have a baby brother, she was ready to defend her territory. After twelve years, the battle between the artist and her brother is far from over. The visitor to Wojtas’ work is immersed in a child’s world. The artist does not simply hang her images on a wall; she develops installations that fill an entire space. The photographic image takes on a whole new presence as it is one of many elements that is part of the presentation. Wojtas uses different materials and a multitude of bright colours in her exhibition designs. In this way, the space in Foam becomes a playful environment where visitors are invited to actively participate in the world of Karolina Wojtas.

Karolina Wojtas was born in Jaroslaw, Poland. She studied at the Institute of Creative Photography in the Czech Republic and holds a Masters degree from Film School Lodź, Poland. In 2019, when she was only 22, she won the ING Unseen Talent Award. Most recently she had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland. Her photography was part of several group presentation such as Noorderlicht International Photo Festival 2020 and reGeneration4 The Challenges of Photography and its Museum at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. Karolina Wojtas is represented by Vasli Souza in Oslo.

The Florentine Riem Vis Grant
Karolina Wojtas is the fifth recipient of the Florentine Riem Vis Grant. Established in memory of Florentine Riem Vis (1959-2016) the grant is yearly awarded to enable emerging artists to further develop their artistic career. The previous recipients were Gilleam Trapenberg (2020), Solène Gün (2019), Rebecca Sampson (2018) and Stefanie Moshammer (2016/17)

This exhibition is made possible by the Van Bijlevelt Foundation and the Leeuwensteinstichting.

Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the City of Amsterdam.

In 2021 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and Kickstart Cultuurfonds

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© 11 Jan 2022 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
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Editor: Claudia Stein & Michael Steinke
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