Ana Mendes
"Self-portrait”
2010
Self-portrait is a play about Mendes’s identity. Over the years, she collected her personal details and wondered what is the role that inheritance plays in our life. It could be a police questionnaire, a medical survey or a manifesto, but it is not. It is just a self-portrait. Perhaps, automatic.
Mendes creates works in video, performance, drawing, photography, text and installation to speak on subjects such as memory, language and identity. Her work is experimental, based on concept/idea and created using fewer resources as possible. Quite often, Mendes develops collaborative projects in which she invites other artists, workers or scientists to work with her. Usually, she spends a considerable amount of time on her own, experimenting and playing with new ideas until she arrives at a concept that she finds sustainable. Afterwards, she invites other people to collaborate with her, going through a mutual learning process, through error, trial and mistake. Mendes aims to create works, which although show some concerns with content and engage with current affairs, are playful and experimental in terms of form. Her work is quite often described as minimalist and poetic.
Ana Mendes is a visual artist and writer working and living in London and Stockholm. She studied performance at Goldsmiths College London, video at Royal Institute of Art Stockholm, animation film at La Poudrière, Valence and fine art at Bauhaus University, Weimar. Mendes started to work as a writer, having published plays, books and stories in Portugal, France and Brazil. Her writings have been translated into German, English, French, Bosnian, Spanish, Polish and Korean. Her performance work started by accident in 2010, when she wrote Self-portrait, a play based on the collection of her personal details. Since then, her work shifted into visual arts. Recent group shows include Kunsthalle Zurich, 2018, Seoul Arts Space Geumcheon, 2019 and Lagos Biennial, 2019. Solo shows include the Natural History Museum Vienna, 2017; Linden Museum Stuttgart, 2017, and Platform Arts Belfast, 2018.
Lina Lapelytė
“The Best of: (Ongoing)”
2020
Candy shop, Lost my eyes, Instructions for the woodcutters, Yes.really! and more old and new song works from Lina Lapelytes archives. Expect rap and trash, song and dance, curves and bends. Performed by Lapelyte and Estonian friends with voice, accordion, keyboard, violin.
Lina Lapelytė is an artist and musician who lives and works in Vilnius and London. Her performance-based practice flirts with pop culture, explores gender stereotypes, ageing and nostalgia. In her recent work, Lapelytė traverses between disciplines and explores various forms of performativity. Her works engage trained and untrained performers often in an act of ‘singing’ through a wide range of genres such as mainstream music and opera. The singing takes the form of a collective and affective event that questions vulnerability and silencing. By ‘unlearning’ their classical formation, and internalising the resonating dynamics between visual and sound art, Lapelytė unsettles the passive/active foundation of listening. In 2019 her opera-performance Sun & Sea (Marina) (co-authors: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and Vaiva Grainytė) won the Golden Lion for the best national participation at the Venice Biennale of Art. Lina's Recent shows include Nomadic Night at Cartier Foundation in Paris; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Kunsthalle Praha, Riga Biennial (RIBOCA2).
