Josefina Labourt
1985, Buenos Aires
How do we deal with the strangeness of having/being a body and being surrounded by other bodies and in turn by ideas and words in the context of language? How do we relate to our own body and the rest of the materialities that surround us (food, other bodies, etc.)? How do we adapt our matter to social demands and deal with our somatic and emotional anxieties and discomforts? What meaning do we convey to what the body expresses, to the visible signs of the constant transformation of our own matter? Where does my body end and where does the other begin?
My practice develops these questions by exploring different forms of the corporeal through processes that relate and overlap diverse materials, languages and operations (collage, oil, cartapesta, resin, video, words, etc.); resulting in a rehearsal of a mise-en-scène of the body and its physicality, on the borderline between desire and abjection, empathy and rejection. I’m interested in exploring the interstices between THE SKIN, the liminal concerning an exchange, between bodies, between the body and language, everything that escapes from our language but moves us, from a different side. I think of my work as a corporeal presence in space, as interstices where subject and object are confused. When the spectator comes across my work, they may encounter a visceral and affective experience, that may disturb the normative symbolic aesthetic order as well as the corporeal perception of their own body.
BIO / CV ↯
Josefina Labourt (Buenos Aires, 1985) has a degree in Visual Arts from the National University of the Arts (IUNA, Argentina) and an MFA from Goldsmiths University of London (UK). She participated in the Artists Program (2012) and the Film Laboratory (2013) of the Torcuato Di Tella University and carried out private clinics and workshops with Patricio Larrambebere (2009-2011), Guillermo Roux School (2006-2008) and with Luis Terán (2018-2020)
She carried out the individual exhibitions “Señora” (PIEDRAS, 2021),“La llaga perfecta” (PIEDRAS, 2019), “Yo también” (Ruby Galería, 2017), “Without resistance” (Goldsmiths University of London, 2016), “La fuerza domesticadora de lo pequeño” (Galería Big Sur, 2014), “Vigor linyera” (Rayo Lazer, 2012), “Erizo” (Galería Isla Flotante, 2011), and presented the performance “Querida otredad,” (Performance Masiva, 2017).
She participated in collective exhibitions at places such as Larreta Museum (“La espada y la cruz”, 2021), BARRO Gallery (“Espíritu nómade”, 2019), Centro Cultural Recoleta (“Cosecha Herida”, 2019), MUNAR (“Fuego Sonámbulo”, 2019), Palais de Tokyo (“Video Sur”, 2018), Nexialism Centre of Research (“Project your desire (here)”, Paris, 2016), Castagnino Macro Museum (“James eres tan inteligente…”, 2013), among others.
In 2022 she was selected for the XXVI KLEMM Prize (Fundacion Klemm) and the 74° Salón Nacional of Rosario (Castagnino Macro Museum).
In 2021 the Modern Museum of Buenos Aires acquired her work “This is my body doing this thing”. In 2020 she won the Fundacion Oxenford traveling grant for artists.
