Luxurious Poverty
Andrea Büttner, in Conversation with Isabella Lenzi
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior registration by filling out the following form until 27 March
Artist Andrea Büttner and Isabella Lenzi, an independent curator and research fellow in the Museo’s Collections Department, engage in conversation about Büttner’s work, which is part of Episode 8. Exodus and Communal Life, the final chapter in the new re-hang of the Collection. This event is organised inside the framework of a series of activations of the Collection throughout the month of March, underscoring feminist artistic practices and the work of women artists.
Büttner explores the connections between art history and social issues, with a strong interest in notions of poverty, value and vulnerability, exploring and challenging the belief systems underpinning them. Her work sits in an intermediate space between ethics and aesthetics, subjectivity and culture, her preferred themes and iconography — for instance religious communities and the humble gestures of the beggar — alluding to social relations on the margins of contemporary life. She also produces woodcuts, textiles and glass paintings, mediums citing an artisan and material quality. As a whole, her work relates to the return to austerity and simplicity opposite consumer society; that “luxurious poverty” called for by anthropologist Emilio Santiago Muíño in the manifesto that lends the conversations its title.
The event is co-organised by the Evens Foundation. This organization celebrates a biennial award in the European sphere that honours artists who engage with contemporary challenges affecting Europe and shape inspiring visions for our common world. Andrea Büttner received the Special Mention of the Evens Arts Prize 2021.
Participants
Andrea Büttner (Stuttgart, 1972) is an artist. She studied Fine Arts at Berlin University of the Arts and Art History and Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin, and earned a PhD from the Royal College of Art, London. She has held solo shows at numerous galleries, including Tate Britain in London (2014), Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2014), the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2015), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2016) and Kunsthalle Vienna (2016), and in 2017 she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Her work is also part of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection.
Isabella Lenzi (São Paulo, 1986) is a curator and art researcher who is a member of the curatorial team of Communicating Vessels. Collection 1881–2021. Since 2016, she has lived between São Paulo and Europe. In Latin America she was assistant curator on the Eleventh Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador (2011–2012), part of the curatorial team of Videobrasil (2013–2015) and director of the cultural space Camões from the Consulate General of Portugal in São Paulo (2013–2019). Moreover, she has collaborated on different exhibitions organised in Whitechapel Gallery (2017), the Nouveau Musée National in Monaco and the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) in Milan (2018). More recently, she has worked as an exhibition coordinator for Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (2020).