Open to all students of the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

In this workshop, Mercedes Azpilicueta will work collaboratively with students on embodied and speculative writing, engaging with excerpts from An Art Student in Munich (1853) by proto-feminist British artist Anna Mary Howitt.
Students will participate in speculative writing exercises that reimagine the city—today or in the future—describing it from an embodied perspective, capturing its shifting landscapes, and sensing its layered histories.
These reflections will continue to take shape in the exhibition space, where we will work with modular sculptures—rearranging and responding to them as extensions of our writing. How do words and movement transform space? How do past and present collide in our perceptions?

The workshop takes place in the context of the exhibition An Art Student in Munich by artist Mercedes Azpilicueta, on view until 18 May at Luitpoldblock, Munich.

Mercedes Azpilicueta (La Plata, Argentina, 1981) is a visual and performance artist from Buenos Aires who lives and works in Amsterdam. Her artistic practice brings together various characters from the past and present who approach the vulnerable or collective body from a decolonial feminist perspective. Through fluid and associative connections, she counters rigid historical narratives to dismantle them and create space for affective and dissident voices to emerge. Her work manifests in performative and sculptural installations, inspired by speculative and fictional Latin American literature, neo baroque art history, contemporary popular culture, and new materialism theory. Through collaborative and interdisciplinary practices, she combines “precarious” craft-based techniques—historically associated with obsolete domestic knowledge—with industrialized productions.

She was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2015-16 and received the Pernod Ricard Fellowship in 2017. Her solo exhibitions include Kunstverein Göttingen (2023); Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2022); Gasworks, London (2021); CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge (2021); Museion, Bolzano/Bozen (2020); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2019); CentroCentro, Madrid (2019); and MAMBA, Buenos Aires (2018). Her work has been presented at Villa Vassilieff, Paris; REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles; MACBA, Barcelona (all in 2018); CA2M, Móstoles (2017); Onomatopee, Eindhoven (2016); TENT, Rotterdam (2015); and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2014). Azpilicueta was nominated for the Prix de Rome 2021.

In collaboration with Salta art, Contemporary And (C&), and Instituto Inclusartiz the tutors Will Fredo Furtado and Daniel Brazil will give a workshop open to emerging art critics in the early stages of their career. The workshop will provide a platform to discuss arts reporting, critical writing practice, develop necessary tools for writing reviews, commentary and essays, and to explore the challenges young critical writers face today, among many other topics.

Furthermore, participants will get the opportunity to link to a network of arts journalists contributing to C& with the possibility of publishing on C& online and other outlets.

Furtado is an afro-indigenous non-binary artist and writer exploring power dynamics, and the intersection of pop culture, decolonial thought, blackness, indigeneity, queerness and technology. Will is a deputy editor of Contemporary And América Latina – a dynamic contemporary art platform with a focus on art perspectives emerging from Africa, the African diaspora and the Global South. Teaching at the workshop will be the focus of their 10-day residency in Rio de Janeiro organized by Salta art and Intituto Inclusartiz in collaboration with C&.

For more information about how to apply visit Salta art’s application section or C& website

In this workshop we explored, through dance and movement, the structure of metamorphic animals, hybrid and mythological beings in the body. Our aim was to research the possibilities of bodies in a multi-species perspective and landscape, where the human is just one more form in the larger web of forms of life.

Public:

The workshop was aimed at all those interested in creating forms of themselves in contact with the themes of myth and nature.

Duration: 120′

Interview with Maria Noujaim.