Slim rectangular low tables are piled on top of the other, some in pairs, others as singles, and placed on the floor like bodies. On top of them we can see a series of photographs, with double prints in black and white, whose layering forms a new corpus. The images are so close-up and abstracted that it is hard to discern what exactly they are. As we come closer we understand they are bodily details from people in demonstrations. Aimée Zito Lema (b. 1982, Amsterdam/Buenos Aires) re-photographed archival images from Argentinian archives referring to revolutionary and guerrilla movements during the last dictatorship (1976–84). The Subversive Body is a fractal documentation of the overlapped gestures performed during these protests, taking the haptical approach as a mode of interpretation of sociopolitical events.
In GB11, the works will familiarize the public with Zito Lema’s interest in histories of subversion, protest, and political confrontation from different historical moments. Having been born in Amsterdam and raised in Buenos Aires, the artist identifies with these narratives because of her own experiences. Her family fled the 1976 military junta in Argentina for the Netherlands, an event which would permanently mark them.
Zito Lema approaches these historical upheavals from the perspective and personal stories of those who have lived through them. She is interested in working collaboratively with specific communities and enabling muted voices to be heard. For her public project with Get Lost Art Route, Mi Casa Es Tu Casa (2014), she worked with nine refugees from different parts of the world, each having fled their country for different reasons, who were settled in the Netherlands. They each told her what objects they brought on their move and from these stories she created fifty cement replicas of them which were then placed in the garden of the G&S Vastgoed and Icon office block.
Zito Lema’s practice takes on the performative, documentary, three-dimensional, and also qualities from social sculpture. Both research-based and intuitive, she is constantly aware of the situations that surround her and is sensitive to those involving inequality and historical migration. Approaching the documental through a new angle and re-addressing the modes of analysis of political media, such as photography, the artist brings forward the gestural and bodily matter to center stage. JV+MM
self-presentation:
It was the newspaper graphic department. She created the newspaper pages, on a light-box, text, and image, selecting and rearranging. I was there as a child. Tall metal drawers filled with black and white images. Ordered carefully. Systematically. I spent my hours photocopying. And creating my own news. Her pages represented facts of the day. Mine was a game.
