Labinac - 'What we always did'

“LABINAC – What We Always Did” is the title of the exhibition, which has a curatorial text by Jacopo
Crivelli Visconti and will bring together approximately 40 authorial works conceived from the idea of
developing a hybrid between a sculpture and a utilitarian piece. “The LABINAC was not conceived by its
founders as an artistic project, but as ‘a design collective initiated with the dual purpose of designing and
making things as well as supporting the artisanal work of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America,’” writes
the curator in the show’s presentation text.
The founders are the artists Maria Thereza Alves (São Paulo, 1961) and Jimmie Durham (USA, 1940–2021),
unavoidable references within the scope of an artistic production that is never dissociated from an active
engagement in the struggle to defend the rights of Native Peoples. Many of the pieces at LABINAC were
designed and executed directly by them, but other artists are also often invited to collaborate on the
project, as is the case with Philipp Modersohn and Elisa Strinna, who are part of the exhibition.
“The genesis of the project lies in an understanding of life as a choreography of movements and pauses.
And what most immediately characterizes these pauses, which often become temporary for individuals
and peoples under constant threat, is the construction of a house and, above all, of what makes us feel
at home: ‘a chair, a table, a lamp, a vase.’ The objects that accompany us while eating, writing, thinking,
and dreaming of perhaps another life and another world,” writes Jacopo, who adds, referring to the poem
DETAIL OF “PINO (MODELS 0, 3, 7)”, 2019, JIMMIE DURHAM
martinsemontero.com
from which he takes the title of the exhibition: “The things that we always did. The poem, even though
unsigned, seems carved in stone or wood in the unmistakable style of Jimmie Durham’s poetic writing
(who, in addition to being an artist, was an extraordinary poet), and projects the LABINAC objects into
a realm that transcends the boundaries of what we usually call design, because it is imbued with an
authentically philosophical, universal, and timeless dimension.”
In the exhibition, objects are placed in relation to and in friction with contexts that allow for different
readings of them. The dialogue is primarily with pieces produced by the artists Maria Thereza Alves and
Jimmie Durham.