Ad Minoliti: Nave Vermelhe

Kunsthalle Lissabon presents Nave Vermelhe [Red Ship], the first solo show in Portugal by Argentinian artist Ad Minoliti. The exhibition is open to the public from September 16 to November 21, 2020. Due to COVID-19's safety measures, there will not be an opening event.

Ad Minoliti is an artist whose work combines the pictorial language of geometric abstraction with a whimsical interpretation of queer and feminist theory. Engaging in a diversity of formats and media, Minoliti assumes painting not as a mere material practice, but rather as a visual set of ideas to approach normative categories of sexuality and biology. Throughout her work, geometrical forms and surreal landscapes serve to conjure a post-humanist setting (and set of references) in which feminist and gender theories can be applied to an open interpretation of painting, design, and art history. Whether in paintings and installations that tackle queer theory or as cofounder of the feminist art collective PintorAs, Minoliti makes little distinction between life and artistic practice: both serve as vectors for challenging social hierarchies in art and politics.

Nave Vermelhe is an installation that invites visitors of Kunsthalle Lissabon into a queer and alien vehicle of space exploration. Referencing the artist's long interest in pop culture's obsession with sci-fi and how it imagines and depicts the construction of otherness, the ship that has landed in the Lisbon basement presents itself as a place in which binaries tend to be completely irrelevant: human vs animal vs plant vs technology vs male vs female make very little sense for the space visitors. A cute furry being, simultaneously species and gender ambiguous, greets visitors to an empty room where one can find nothing besides a group of abstract painted stools. Whether alien furniture, or a coded language remains uncertain. The command center is visible through a round window and seems busting with activity. Control panels and view screens are being operated by big-eyed, cartoonish or pet-like, spheres and vagina-eye plant hybrids.

Ad Minoliti (Buenos Aires, 1980) lives and works in Buenos Aires. Minoliti makes experimental installations around geometry and abstraction that encompass art history, architecture, queer feminism, childhood, animalism, and speculative fiction. AM looks for a non-binary geometry where gender theories are applied to pictorial language using collage and mixed media. They earned a BFA from the National Academy of Fine Arts Pueyrredón, Argentina. She was an agent at the Artistic Investigation Center of Argentina since 2009, year in which they also founded the group PintorAs, a feminist collective of Argentinian painters. Besides he has won more than seven awards in her country, and he has received grants from the Ministry of Culture of Argentina, the Metropolitan Fund for the Arts of Buenos Aires and Mexico’s FONCA Conaculta, among others. Their work has been exhibited at galleries, institutions, and museums in Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, London, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Mexico, New York, Japan, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Ireland, Bolivia, Chile, Austria, among other countries. She participated in the Bienal del Mercosur in Porto Alegre, the Aichi Triennale, Front Cleveland Triennal and 2019 Venice Biennale.

The Kunsthalle Lissabon is kindly supported by República Portuguesa / DGArtes, Coleção Maria e Armando Cabral. Additional support for Nave Vermelhe is provided by Peres Projects, Berlin and Galerie Crèvecoeur, Paris.

Watch the online conversation with Ad Minoliti here:
https://youtu.be/HOWv5El84gA

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