The title Oásis haunts the conceptual scope that constitutes the collaborative and transnational exchange between a group of artists based in Amsterdam and São Paulo city which will take place next June. During the development of the project additional activities as discussions, international telepresence dialogues, radio transmissions from the Netherlands and printed matter presentations will be introduced. Besides, partnerships with local cultural institutions will be fostered.
The project brings
together the works of artists who are thoroughly engaged in the handling of a
wide range of materials and pre-existing sources, be it painting, performance,
text, geometric space, sound and film. Across an array of media they
re-contextualize and address whatever is borrowed or employed in order to challenge
the way we apprehend our immediate surroundings and shared visual culture.
Oásis project will be for the first time
actualized in São Paulo city as ongoing nomadic platform.
Historically, the
location of oases has been of critical importance for
trade, replenishment, transient communality and transportation routes in desert
areas. The ‘Silk Road’ was an
ancient network of trade crossroads that extended across Europe and Asia,
linking powerful civilizations such as China and Rome. Its central corridor
consisted of a broad desert pierced by oeses.
The conceptual
parameters of Oásis refers back to the socio-economic role played by oeses as historic fertile spots where
new ideas and influences were absorbed and negotiated through contact with
incoming goods, knowledge, traders and travellers.
Furthermore, Oásis project aims to promote a close
collaboration between artists from diverse cultural backgrounds in order to
deal critically with the phenomena of Fata Morgana as a metaphor for cultural
misrepresentation, still very much perpetuated through the present-day tide of
global informational webbing spans.
