Catalogue of the artist's exhibition in the Portuguese pavilion at
the 58th Venice Biennale: a sculpture project engaging the heritage of
post-war Italy's architecture and Italian vernacular craftsmanship.
Engaging the histories of art, architecture, and design, Leonor Antunes
reflects on the functions of everyday objects, contemplating their
potential to be materialized as abstract sculptures. She investigates the
values and ideas embedded in things as well as in vernacular traditions
and craft. Over the last two years, the artist has researched postwar
figures active in Venice, Milan, and Turin who had a predominant role in
postwar reconstruction as well as how craftsmanship traditions, associated
with particular forms of knowledge and making, intersect with this
history. Accompanying Antunes's exhibition in the Portuguese Pavilion at
the 58th Venice Biennale, a seam, a surface, a hinge, or a knot
features texts by Briony Fer, Suzanne Cotter, Ana Teixeira Pinto, and
curator João Ribas, as well as an artist's project of approximately twenty
die-cut sheets based on drawings in the archive of Egle Trincanato, an
architect, writer, photographer, and curator who worked in Venice.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Portuguese
Pavilion at the 58th International Exhibition of visual arts – La Biennale
di Venezia, from May 11 to November 24, 2019.
Born 1972 in Lisbon, Leonor Antunes lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions were presented at CAPC (Bordeaux), Tensta konsthall (Stockholm), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museo Tamayo et Museo Experimental El Eco (Mexico), Pérez Art Museum (Miami), Kunsthalle Basel, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof (Hamburg), Kunstverein Dusseldorf, Museu de Serralves (Porto), Museo Nacional Reina Sofia ( Madrid), Credac (Ivry-sur-Seine)... Her work has also been included in a number of international group exhibitions, including the 12th Sharjah Biennial, UAE, and the 8th Berlin Biennial, and has recently been exhibited in venues such as the Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), CNEAI (Chatou), and MIT List Visual Arts Center (2012).
