Mz* Baltazar’s Lab would like to welcome you to the artist talk and finissage of Mariel Rodríguez’s “Flowers of Evil” show in Artistic Bokeh (MQ) Friday September 30th at 18:00.
The installation composed of ready-mades, constructed materials, and videos is part of the artist’s ongoing project focusing on the language f colonialism, the aesthetics of the museum, and the aftermath of cultural appropriation.
It traces the encounter of a millenary sacred plant with occidental science and its outcome as a sort of a botanical Frankenstein, so desired and praised as feared and persecuted. The installation proposes to rethink the history of cocaine, as an illegal recreational drug and a western construct, to shed light on the effects of imperialism on our relationship to nature.
During the finissage Mariel will present a new video, and artist, audience, and curators will join in the conversation of language, otherness, and creativity as a response to oppressive politics. Join us for drinks, nibbles, and a chat, and share the experience with us.
About the Exhibition Series
Mz* Baltazar’s Lab is proud to present this new curatorial project, a series of exhibitions in collaboration with Artistic Bokeh in MuseumsQuartier. For this exhibition series Patricia J. Reis and Anna T. have invited artists focusing on language in a multitude of ways. Being based in a place that has been so divided in the context of immense sociopolitical changes, while becoming more multi-cultural, the curators wanted to look into language as a technology of communicating, connecting, and coming together. The exhibition series examines the visual language of colonialism (and who or what becomes illegal), the human and machine language and its threshold of function and dysfunction, and the embodied language of a queer migrant body that opens up and connects with other bodies and spirits alike. Our curatorial viewpoint brings together artists from different media and backgrounds that speak to the diversity of the creative hub that is Vienna. We further aim at highlighting the lengthy process of artistic practice as research in the framework of social and political themes, such as migration, Eurocentrism, cyborgs, queerness, and the overarching theme of language. We are happy to present Mariel Rodríguez, Isabella Kohlhuber, and Pêdra Costa in a series of exhibitions running from August to December 2016 at the space of Artistic Bokeh who offered us this opportunity to collaborate and showcase Mz* Baltazar’s work in the MQ’s Electric Avenue.
This work is funded and supported by kültüř gemma! 2016, and its presentation made possible by Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory and Artistic Bokeh.
