Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai showcases new commissioned artworks by Jac Leirner

TEXT:Sue Wang    DATE: 2016.10.28

poster-of-jac-leirner-borders-are-drawn-by-hand

Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, will present Jac Leirner: Borders Are Drawn By Hand in the MoCA Pavilion, guest curated by Victor Wang. Jac Leirner: Borders Are Drawn By Hand is the first solo exhibition by the Brazilian artist to be held in China. The artist was invited to Shanghai for an extended amount of time to experience the city, and to develop the exhibition on site. The exhibition comprises of all new commissioned artworks made during Leirner’s stay in Shanghai.

Jac Leirner's multifaceted work is formulated through a process of collecting and ordering; tapping into what the artist has described as the ‘infinity of materials’. Since the mid-1980s, Leirner has amassed the ephemeral and incidental products of consumer culture, and reappropriated them into visually compelling sculptures and installations that demand to be both seen and read. Through their seriality and bold accents of colour, her work references both the history of Brazilian Constructivisim as well as the legacy of Arte Povera and Minimalism.

The exhibition also performs as the second event under the Guest Curator Project of MoCA Pavilion. WANG Weiwei, MoCA’s in-house curator who launched MoCA Pavilion, says that both domestic and foreign professionals in the art field will be invited into Guest Curator Project every year to present and recommend remarkable trends of contemporary art to the audience from their specific contemplation and inspection, which will collect more dimensions and vigor to MoCA Pavilion as well.

About the artist

Jac Leirner was born in São Paulo, 1961, where she lives and works. She graduated in visual arts from Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado - FAAP. In 1983 and 1989, Leirner participated in the Bienal de São Paulo and in the Aperto at the 44th Venice Biennale (1990). In 1991, she had a residency and exhibition at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. She participated in dOCUMENTA (IX), Kassel (1992) and represented Brazil at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997). Further solo exhibitions include Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderna, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2014), Museo Tamayo, Mexico (2014), Yale School of Art (2012); Centre d’Art de Saint Nazaire, France and the Estação Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2011); Miami Art Museum (2004); Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (1999); Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva (1993).

About the curator

Victor Wang is a curator and exhibition-maker based between London and Shanghai. In 2016 he was awarded the AICA Incentive Prize for Young Critics by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Recent exhibitions include Ensemble sin órganos (2016) the first all performance based exhibition at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana; Inside China – L’Intérieur du Géant (Shanghai Station, 2015), a collaborative exhibition between Palais de Tokyo, Paris and the K11 Art Foundation. He is currently curating the exhibitions Jac Leirner: Borders Are Drawn By Hand (2016), a solo presentation by Brazilian artist Jac Leirner at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Pavilion), Shanghai and Neïl Beloufa: Soft(a)ware (2016), at the chi k11 art museum, Shanghai.

Wang has worked on curatorial teams for biennials such as the Twelfth Havana Biennial (2015) and the Vancouver Pavilion at the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012), and From 2014 - 2015 he was the Curator in Residence at Contemporary Art Heritage Flanders (CAHF), a multi-institutional collaborative platform initiated by and built around the collections of the four contemporary art museums in Belgium: S.M.A.K. (Ghent), Mu.ZEE (Ostend), M HKA and Middelheimmuseum (Antwerp). Wang holds a MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London.

About the exhibition

Dates: Nov 7, 2016 - Nov 27, 2016

Opening: Nov 7, 2016, 18:30, Monday

Venue: MoCA Pavilion

Courtesy of the artist and MoCA Pavilion, for further information please visit www.mocashanghai.org.