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ACT MEETS – TAKE A LOOK INTO THE INTERRELATIONS HAPPENING IN THE ART WORLD

The ACT Programme (Art Career Transformation), founded by Francesca Bellini-Joseph, is an online platform that offers programmes focused on artistic careers. ACT Meets is a series of periodical get-together sessions where the community meets to share ideas, knowledge and questions about the professional aspects of artistic practices. This Thursday, June 17^th, join for a fascinating conversation with Los Angeles-based artist Gala Porras-Kim and London-based curator Sabel Gavaldon about using the art ecosystem’s intricate networks of stakeholders for bringing her projects to life.

Gala collaborates with curators, conservators, pest control, lawyers, logistics operators, and more participants to comment on and analyze the life of art and artefacts. With Sabel’s guidance, the public will learn about Gala’s current research around the British Museum’s collection and how seemingly peripheral activities like pest control can influence how we perceive objects on display. She will also revisit her experience curating the second iteration of MOCA’s Open House exhibition series last year, which not many people got to see due to the pandemic’s restrictions. For this part-exhibition, part-artwork, she included works from Dan Flavin, Felix Gonzalez Torres, and Walead Beshty, among others.

Installation view of Open House: Gala Porras-Kim, October 7, 2019–May 18, 2020 at MOCA Grand Avenue. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo by Jeff Mclane.
Installation view of Open House: Gala Porras-Kim, October 7, 2019–May 18, 2020 at MOCA Grand Avenue. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo by Jeff Mclane.
Installation view of Open House: Gala Porras-Kim, October 7, 2019–May 18, 2020 at MOCA Grand Avenue. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo by Jeff Mclane.

Gala and Sabel will show written records and emails from artists and estates to demonstrate the many ways explicit communications, fragments of information from the past, or the lack of records, can influence institutions and their staff when interpreting, exhibiting and transforming art.

Gala Porras-Kim (Colombia/USA) investigates institutional and linguistic frameworks that define, legitimise and preserve cultural heritage. Her work has been exhibited at Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2021); São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2021); Whitney Biennial (2019), among others. She has received awards including Art Matters (2019), Artadia (2017), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2016), Creative Capital (2015) and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2015). Forthcoming solo exhibitions in 2021 include Kadist NY and Gasworks London. Gala was a recent David and Roberta Logie Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and current artist-in-residence at The Getty and Delfina Foundation.

Sabel Gavaldon (Spain/UK) is curator at Gasworks, London. His research explores minoritarian poetics and politics, often engaging in unorthodox curatorial formats. His most recent major group exhibition, Elements of Vogue: A Case Study in Radical Performance —first presented at CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2017–2018); then at Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2019–2020)— transformed the museum into a dance floor. In 2016, he was nominated for the ICI New York Independent Vision Curatorial Award.