ANDREA JUAN - Setagaya Art Museum

SETAGAYA ART MUSEUM Tokyo Japan September 2015

This catalogue belong to Andrea Juan series from Joint exhibition: ANTARCTIC, with Kaori Tsukikaze, at Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo Photograpy printed onto aluminium in Chromalux system Special thanks to: Kaori Tsukikaze Felipe Gardella Yukiko Watanabe

SOLAR STORM

ANDREA JUAN SOLAR STORM

By Nina Colosi

Andrea Juan’s series of artworks, “Solar Storm” 2014, has emerged from the creative processing of her experiences during many visits to Antarctica that began in 2005. The relentlessly powerful environment and her interaction with scientists have made deep subconscious impressions from which have been flowing intense emotional and intellectual reactions that she has expressed in photography, video and installation artworks. With strong colors and undulating shapes of fluid materials, Juan’s art poetically and metaphorically interacts with the Antarctic winds and desert of ice. Her work creates a bridge between the facts of scientific investigations and an emotional understanding of the Anthropocene.

Astronaut’s say that the awesome experience of seeing the earth in space transforms their perspective of the planet as our shared home without boundaries between nations or species.

Andrea Juan’s art reflects the transforming effect of experiencing Antarctica and the comprehension of its interdependence with all living systems on earth.

It is significant that Juan’s exhibition opens during the launch of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Her work amplifies the question of whether man’s ingenuity and spirit will bring about a movement towards sustainability, and can motivate governments and corporations towards responsible business practices that benefit society and nature. As astronomer Carl Sagan said “We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.”

Nina Colosi, Founder and Creative Director of Streaming Museum, New York, USA

アーティスト、アンドレア・ホアン 南極でファンタスティックな彫刻制作で地球温暖化に挑 む 2014年4月 アルゼンチン人アーティスト、アンドレア・ホアンが南極の海岸線を縁取るウエッデル海の 棚氷が解けていると知ったとき、そして過去数千年の間、誰にも邪魔されずに生きてきた 希少古生物種が危機に晒されていると知ったとき、彼女は一人のアーティストとして、すぐ に行動を起こしたのです。 中毒性のあるガスのサイケデリックな動きをするチュールの布 幅に沿うかのように、消失していく海底に住む動物よりも大きく、輝いているフェルトの塊か ら、まさに身を守るかのように見える彫刻のように思える作品を創りつつ、ホアンは、進行 し始めている生態学上の悲劇に、注意をひきつける為に、これらを氷の上に配しているの です。 科学的研究のハードでドライな面から、詩的な価値をいとも簡単に引き出す 50歳 のアーティストの仕事としては、典型的に叙情的な取り組みです。 ブエノス・アイレスの国立トレス・デ・フェブレロ大学のビジュアル・アートの教授であるホア ンは、過去10年間この何も無い大陸でインスタレーションやパフォーマンスを行うため、 一ヶ月ほどの南極滞在の旅を繰り返してきました。 気が滅入るような統計学からインスピ レーションを受けたとはいえ、彼女の作品は、自然環境に降りかかっている災害を告発し ようとしたり、エコロジカルな思いを引き出そうというものではないのです。 躍動する素材 は楽しさと喜びさえ持っているのです。 （事実、彼女のごく最近のショーは、ファッションの ヴァラナーシ社とのコラボによるもので、同社のガラクタがつまれたスタジオから素材を 持ってきて彼女が手縫いしたものを使っています） このような、人生を肯定的に捉える態度で、ホアンは南極での活動を通して、ある種のフェ ローリサーチャーとして認められ、科学者のコロニーに仲間入りしたのです。 今では彼女は、そこに自身のレジデンシ―・プログラムを持ち、世界中からアーティストを 招待しているのです。

Artist Andrea Juan on Using Fantastical Sculptures to Fight Global Warming in Antarctica

By Noelle Bodick When Argentinian artist Andrea Juan learned that the ice shelves of the Weddell Sea fringing the Antarctic coastline were melting, exposing to annihilation the rare paleobotanical species that have lived there undisturbed for the past millennium, she leapt into action as only an artist can. Creating defensive-looking sculptural creatures out of bundles of felt—much larger and brighter than the animals inhabiting the disappearing sea floor—along with swathes of tulle formed into psychedelic depictions of toxic gasses, Juan arrayed these across the ice's surface to draw attention to the ecological tragedy underway. It is a lyrical gesture typical of the 50-year-old artist's work, which frequently extracts poetic value from the hard and dry facts of scientific investigation.

For the past decade, Juan, who is a professor of visual art at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, has been journeying to Antarctica for monthlong periods to stage installations and performances like these across the empty continent. Though inspired by gloomy statistics, her work does not convey cramped, punitive notions of environmental disaster, and it's not overbrimming with ecological nostalgia—the vibrant materiality even has an undeniable joyful quality. With this life-affirming attitude, Juan has joined the inner circle of the scientific colony working on the South Pole who acknowledge her as a fellow researcher of sorts. She now has her own residency program there, inviting other artists from across the globe to form more unconventional alliances between science and art.

For the past decade, you have been visiting Antarctica and staging performances and making elaborate temporary installations across the snowy tundra. How do you prepare for your journeys to this barely hospitable environment, where you live on an ice sheet three miles thick?

Every year I stay there about a month and a half—it depends on logistics—and I have to think very carefully about what I need before going, because I know that there's nowhere for me to buy anything there. I need to have everything with me: projectors, fabrics, assistants. I also need to prepare a lot when I'm down there because I prefer to take photographs far away from the base. I don’t have a studio, since you share the space with other people, so I always try to find whatever site isn't being used to prepare things. This year, for instance, I used the cinema and auditorium.

When you bring researchers and other artists to Antarctica, do you fear your presence has a deleterious effect on the environment? Do you take any safeguarding measures?

Well, all of the trash comes back to the continent—only the organic trash that can be treated stays, and the rest, plastic or non-organic, comes back to Argentina by boat. For me, it’s very important that the landscape remains the same. After working there, the place should be the same as it was when I started.

Why did you begin to represent environmental catastrophe in your art?

I had been working in this Southern part of Argentina on projects about the glaciers and how they are disappearing all around the world. I made no installations, though, and only recorded the landscapes and the pollution. And then I heard that there were some scientists working in Antarctica, doing research there for the summer. I thought that it would be great to continue my work there, so I asked permission to go. The director accepted me, and after that I was considered one of the researchers of the program, doing "research of the arts."

Speaking of research, what is your background in science? Some of your descriptions sound like scientific synopses; you write about phytoplanktons, the Larsen Ice Shelf, CO2 emission with fluency.

Nothing at all. I have always been interested in scientific research in general, but I studied art, and my entire background is in art: print-making, photography, and video. But in my family—I think that it may be for this reason—my father and my mother are doctors, one sister is a sociologist, and the other sister is a biochemist. So, I don’t know, maybe it’s something in my genes.

You talk about the melting polar icecaps with urgency and regret. And yet, the work you make to represent this apocalyptic future are staggeringly elegant. Can you talk about this breach?

I want to be in dialogue with the visitor, not shut them out. I don’t like it when the images are aggressive or sad in relation to what’s going on. You see, I have a very positive way of thinking, and I think that with this kind of attitue you can get bigger change. Beautiful images encourage us to modify behavior more effectively than an ugly image, and I feel that through a poetic way of communication the viewer can feel more confident to continue thinking about the problems on their own. And through art, science is made more accessible to the general public. The language of poetry goes everywhere.

In the 19th century, natural science and artistic feeling were understood by scientists and artists alike to be united by a strong bond. The disciplines’ separation is a more recent effect of modernity. Working in such close proximity to scientists in Antarctica, do you see a convergence between your artistic project and their scientific investigations?

Science is more in relation to facts; art is more in relation to feelings. But sometimes the way that a scientist works through an investigation is in the same manner that we do. I think that both scientists and artists have to look at a place where nothing exists and, from nothing, create new possibilities.

アンドレア・ホアン 1964年 アルゼンチン、ブエノス・アイレス生まれ。

学歴： 国立芸術大学（IUNA）、ブエノス・アイレス2003 CIEVYC ビデオ・フィルム・写真センター、ブエノス・アイレス 1998 アートの哲学、フェルミン・フェブレ、ブエノス・アイレス 1996 国立美術学校、ブエノス・アイレス 1988

アンドレア・ホアン・ビオ 作家について 凍った南極のツンドラに魅惑されたアーティスト、アンドレア・ホアンは、この世のものとは思 えないような氷河を背景に、大胆な色彩のオブジェを並べた作品を創っています。 輝く花の イメージの「新人類」シリーズ（2011）は、地球温暖化を傍観しているだけの人達が物思いに ふけっている間にも、温まっていく氷の上に、展開されています。 アーティストは 次のよう に述べています。『一日かかって色を変化させる光は、水平線が、太陽が跳ね返って決して 沈まない白い平面に交じり合う間、強烈に輝くのです。』

ビジュアル・アートの学位を取得したホアンは、2005年にグッゲンハイムのフェローになり、カ ナダ政府、ユネスコの賞（フランス）、アントルチャス財団、国立芸術財団（アルゼンチン）から 受賞しています。 賞の中にはベニン写真フェスティバル（2011）での金のアマゾナスも入っ ています。 その他には、中国の第4回北京国際アート・ビエンナーレ（2010）、イデンティ ダッ・ポラール、アメリカ合衆国カリフォルニアのスイッチ・ジャーナル（2009）、アルゼンチン ン美術批評家協会（2002）、同じくアルゼンチンのコネックス財団（2002、2012）等からも受賞 しています。 最近の個展は、イェオス・エクスポのアルゼンチン・パビリオン（韓国）、シャン ハイ・エキスポと国立パフォーミング・アート・センター（中国、北京）と、チェルシー・アート・ ミュージアム（アメリカ合衆国、ニューヨーク）で、開催されました。

She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is based in Bilbao, Spain and Buenos Aires.

Juan works with photography, digital video, graphic art and installations. In 2005 to 2014 she carried out performances and video installations in Antarctica based on scientific research related to climate change. She has participated in 9th Antarctic Campaigns as Art Researcher up to now.

During 1996/1998 she developed a project on non-toxic printmaking with Photopolymers plates.

Since 1999 Juan has been a Professor of Art at National University of Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires.

She is currently Head of Cultural Projects at National Antarctic Bureau from the Ministry of Foreign Office and worship, Argentine Republic.

EDUCATION 1984-88: National School of Fine Arts/, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1989-96: Philosophy in Art. FermĂ­n Fevre Studio, Buenos Aires.

1996-98: CIEVYC. Video/film/photography Centre, Buenos Aires.

2001-03: National University of Arts, UNA, Buenos Aires.

AWARDS 2010: Canadian Studies Faculties Research Program, Montreal, Canada 2007: Canadian Studies Faculties Research Program, Montreal, Canada 2006: Art Omi International Arts Center, Artist in Residence, New York, U.S. 2006: URAV - Unit of Research in Visual Arts - University of Quebec, Trois Riviere, Canada.

2005: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, U.S. 2004: National Founds of Art Grant. FNA, Buenos Aires 2000: Visual Art Grant, Antorchas’ Foundation, BA 1999: UNESCO-ASCHBERG Grant - France -in collaboration with Vienna, Austria.