Allora & Calzadilla to Venice

08/09/2010

The Indianapolis Museum of Art have selected Puerto Rico-based artist collaborative Allora & Calzadilla to represent the United States at the 54th Venice Biennale, 4 June - 27 November 2011.

Through sculpture, photography, performance, sound and video, Allora & Calzadilla's work has been informed by questions of mark making, traces, and survival in a way that is simultaneously metaphorical and spatial. For them a material is never simply self-evident in its meaning but is always marked with histories, cultures, and politics that are at once irreducible to and indivisible from the material in question. Through work that is both poetic and playful they engage with contemporary geo-political realities and local social conditions, making concrete a facet of globalisation often portrayed through the abstract and the absurd. Six new works by Allora & Calzadilla will premiere at the 2011 Biennale.

Allora & Calzadilla have also been shortlisted for London's 2011 Fourth Plinth commission.

Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, Philadelphia, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.1971, Havana, Cuba) live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They have previously had solo shows at Lisson Gallery in 2007 and 2004. Major exhibitions also include the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2009); Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2009); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2007) Kunsthalle Zurich (2007); Dallas Museum of Art (2006). Allora & Calzadilla were short listed for the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize (2006) and received a DAAD fellowship for 2008.