Joy in Paperwork (2015–16) is a series of approximately 1,000 drawings by Amalia Pica (b. 1978, Neuquén Capital/London). The drawings on A4 paper are made using bureaucratic stamps that Pica has collected from various places in the world. The works on view in GB11 include new drawings incorporating stamps from Korea, which is where the woodblock printing press was invented in the thirteenth century, a piece of information that Pica came to discover upon her first visit to Gwangju in 2015. As a practice of inhabiting the abstraction of bureaucratic mechanisms and subverting it, Pica creates elaborate decorative drawings with these stamps. As the text of the stamps such as “paid,” “received,” or “copy” are repeatedly imprinted, their utility becomes abstracted, giving way to patterns or recognizable forms—emerging as flowers, volcanoes, or landscapes.
In GB11, new drawings made by Pica onsite in Gwangju are shown alongside other drawings from the series, most of them shown for the first time. These drawings are then laboriously photocopied, filed, and displayed while the originals are archived. From the repetitive gesture of stamping, photocopying, archiving, and displaying emerges not only a defiant attitude, but also a resilience and joy that defy the very oppression of bureaucracy itself. Installed along the vast breadth of a continuous wall, the drawings are meant to overwhelm viewers while also pulling them in for closer inspection.
Pica is interested in things that get lost, that are overheard, forgotten, or miscommunicated. In her work, erasure and compensation happens both at the level of the historical anecdote, and at its mediation through art. Pica’s practice also often incorporates durational performance as well as participation, in which performers and/or visitors are invited to animate—even complete works that are otherwise static and open, such as Eavesdropper (2011), where visitors were asked to listen to glasses attached to a wall for hours at a time. KVP+MW
self-presentation:
Neuquen, Argentina, 1978, missed world cup, apples, fell off monument, after-school drawing lessons, housing block that resembles a labyrinth, Grandma’s plays, Mom’s political meetings, waiting for records at the record shop, two exceptional teachers at high school, Buenos Aires, art school, Tulio de Sagastizabal, Friday meetings, unspeakable game, dance, big crash, tear gas, 2001, teaching contemporary art to kids, yellow, Sigurður Guðmundsson, slides, hotmail, Rijksakademie, first trip to Europe, orange, the rhetorics of nostalgia, the future of it, 16mm film, white handkerchiefs, first immigration lawyer, anxiety, love, money, They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, rainbows in black and white, white horses, newspapers, London, bicycle crash, memory loss, friends reunited, nomadic sculpture, Chisenhale Gallery, chair legs, table legs, eyes of needles, teeth of combs, tongues of shoes, potatoes, Venice 2011, Sunday walks, studio time, MIT and MCA, yet another immigration lawyer, four and counting, Gwangju Biennial, 2016.
