Mazenett Quiroga
How would you describe your artistic practice and your experience as an artist in Berlin?
We met at the University while we were studying our bachelor in Bogotá, we have been working as a two-person collective since 2014. Now Lina is based in Berlin she is doing the master "Art in Context" at the UdK – Berlin University of the Arts, and David is going back forth between Bogotá and Berlin. For us it has been quite exciting to meet artists from all over the world, that make Berlin a quite international and vibrant art scene.
One of the most significative things that influenced our practice a lot was the experience of living in the Colombian Amazon, and now as artist living in Berlin, we try to connect this experience and bring this knowledge and cosmologies into the urban context. How can we understand daily objects under the light of Amerindian cosmologies and expanded ontologies. Something that we consider is extremely important in understanding the complexities of the world around us.We seek to reveal and re-inscribe every day and ordinary objects within a mythology, to re- connect them with an origin.
Our practice oscillates between past and present, science and mythology, the native cultures and those of western influence. In our work, interstices between apparent cultural polarities are manifested, at the same time that it covers a wide range of media, from sculpture to found objects, video and painting.
We are constantly trying to bring together western scientific fields of geology, astronomy, and economy, alongside cosmological, ritual, and social knowledge.
In what ways does your studio / place of work influence the way you work?
The place of work has a great influence on our work, especially in the last years, that we have carried out artistic residencies in very different contexts, such as in the UAE, Switzerland and Mexico.
These specific contexts have become the points of convergence and dialogue with our experiences that we bring especially from the Amazon.
We have been interested in approaching events, local histories, vernacular knowledge of the places in order to reconstruct lost or forgotten links with other beings/objects beyond the human world.
Now in the context of Berlin, we are still discovering and learning a lot about the city and what the context offers us, it is a city that never ceases to surprise.
Lately, for example, we have been working on a project called Rejaguarification, which we started in Colombia in 2021. It involved collecting jaguar footprints in collaboration with a biologist. This was followed by urban interventions, where we stamped the jaguars' footprints in the streets of Bogotá, and now we want to expand these interventions in Berlin city.
What does it mean for you to exhibit at LAGE EGAL [Kimgo] and how do you relate to it as an exhibition space?
Particularly in our recent practice we are interested in including elements such as smell and fog, to generate changes in perception and create immersive or experiential spaces.
For us it was a surprise that the Project Space where we are showing for BAP was not allowed to use these elements. So we finally had to rethink the installation for this exhibition space.
Photo Credits: Courtesy the artists