Exhibition
opens at the Goethe Institute, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue- Parkwood, Johannesburg on
the 2nd of October at 18:30.
Facebook Event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1467824700158978/
Bianca Baldi’s evocative exhibition project Zero Latitude opens at the Goethe
Institute, Johannesburg in October 2014. The second exhibition of this
travelling project, the body of work consists of installation elements and a
video projection. Invited by Curator Juan Gaitan as one of four South Africans to show work
at the recent 8th Berlin Biennale, Baldi’s Zero
Latitude is a walk through a moment in colonial history told through a
peculiar historical artefact.
Central to the work is the (heavy) portable explorer’s
bed produced by Louis Vuitton as a commission for the explorer Pierre Savorgnan
de Brazza for his 1905 expedition to the Congo. The trunk
contained a collapsible bed frame, a hair mattress, two wool blankets and four
sheets and was designed especially for his expedition by the now renowned
luxury goods brand.
Baldi’s installation shows a video of characters unpacking and
assembling the Vuitton-made explorer trunk, and a large-scale print work which
foregrounds a painted landscape which Felix Nadar, the well-known Parisian
portraitist used as a background for a famous portrait of De Brazza.
Baldi’s research for this project has been extensive. Several years of
work took her to the Henry Morten Stanley
archive at Museum of Central Africa, in Tervuren Belgium, the Equatorium of the
Duisburg Zoo in Germany and the Nadar ArchIve, Paris, France to engage with
historical depictions of De Brazza from the late 19th Century and early 20th
Century to get a further
sense of his character and to inspire the sartorial styling
of the film.
The artist also travelled to
the Louis Vuitton Heritage Warehouse in Paris, France, where she engaged with
the resident historians to study and photograph the object at the centre of
this project.
In the
exhibition, the artist unpacks a series of ‘findings’ related to Brazza’s route
down the Congo River, conscious of the symbolic capital, as well as power of
subtle decontextualization and erasure. The installation simultaneously
transfixes and contests the representation of a mythologized time and place and
its subsequent narration. Not a linear exploration of history, Baldi’s work
places this strange and beautiful artefact at the centre of the analysis. It
evokes any number of connections, being the stark contrast of the international
luxury design brand and the legacy of colonialism on the continent, to the
sheer incongruency of the notion that any one man, with a bed on his back (or the
backs of others) literally walking through the unmapped territories could have
had such an impact on the world today
Says Baldi: “Congo is a representation of Africa in the West.
Equatorial Africa has become the trope
of sub-saharan Africa on which popular mythology of the continent is built.
From the earliest written accounts of explorers like Henry Morton Stanley who
mapped the Congo River and documented his journey in his book, Through the Dark Continent (1878), to
the countless works of film and literature, the Congo River does not only
provide a physical point of access to central Africa from the Atlantic but also
an imaginary access for the Western world.”
Sean O’Toole writes about the piece; “Growing
out of an archival research project initiated in 2012, Bianca Baldi’s Zero Latitude installation essays a
pivotal moment in late-nineteenth European and African history by minutely focusing
on a particular historical artefact: a custom-made portable explorer’s bed
produced by Louis Vuitton, founder of the Parisian luggage goods brand.
Orchestrated as a walk-through installation, Zero Latitude’s variously
showcases this luxury commodity – equal parts relic, sculptural object,
historical cipher and perfomative prop – as a way of addressing a period of
colonial adventurism that both prefigured and decisively contributed to the
irreversible outcomes of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85." (It was at the
Berlin conference that the colonial powers effectively carved up the African
continent between them.)
Says Baldi, “There’s a tension between the real place and the imaginary
one, and through making one connection, you come across others – such as the
archetypical character of the explorer, de Brazza, his cultural and consumable baggage,
as well as the histories of the Congo River.”
This will be the second showing of Zero
Latitude; the first showing of the walkthrough installation was at the 8th
Berlin Biennale. Curated by Juan A. Gaitián. The Biennale’s curatorial focus
was on the unstable relationship between experienced and scientific histography
and thus included artwork such as Baldi’s which offers different readings of
history and the mechanisms of its current representation.
Baldi was invited as one of 58 artists from around the world to mark and
investigate history and its fragments. Zero Latitude (2014) was commissioned and co-produced by the 8th
Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art with the support from the
Goethe-Institute.
Baldi grew up in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa and went on
to complete a BA (FA) in studio practice and theory at the University of Cape
Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2007. Baldi was a guest student at the
Universitá IUAV in Venice, Italy in 2010 and more recently completed her
studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Career highlights include exhibiting on the 8th
Berlin Biennale, selected group and solo exhibitions in Cape Town,
Johannesburg. Frankfurt, Berlin, Naples and Venice.
In 2013 Baldi collaborated with Bridget Baker in an
exhibition project and book entitled ACT I: ÆROLITHE ILLUSION by Bureau de Cinéma
Africain (ABC). The book includes texts by Clare Butcher and Bettina Malcomess.
2014 saw the launch of Baldi’s publication online project
Zero
Latitude: A User’s Manual. Edited by Bianca Baldi including texts by Clare
Butcher and Sean O’Toole with graphic design by Marco Balesteros.
Zero Latitude (2014)
www.zero-latitude.net
HD video, colour, silent; stretched printed
Voile on wooden frame and print elements
Bianca Baldi's project Zero
Latitude, 2014 was commissioned and co-produced by the 8th Berlin Biennale for
Contemporary Art. 29 May-3 August 2014. With the support of
Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg.
Thanks to Louis Vuitton Malletier, Paris;
Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine,
Montigny-le-Bretonneux; Kadist Art Foundation
Film Credits
Assistant director: Emilien Abibou
D.O.P : Olivier Guerbois
Assistant camera: Davy Bauret
Gaffer: Félix Marmorat
Post-production: Christopher Hummel
Character i : Julien Peltier
Character ii: Vincent Berthe
Filmed at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris,
France.
For media enquiries
Kelly McErlean
011 447 2855
Kelly@artsourcesouthafrica.co.za
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