Iratxe Jaio + Klaas van Gorkum

EITB Kultura ha hecho un reportaje sobre 'Atlas de un Imperio de Papel' que realizamos para el programa Museo Bikoitza en el San Telmo Museoa de San Sebastián. Se puede ver aquí.

Atlas of a Paper Empire is a cartography of the San Telmo Museum in Donostia / San Sebastian through the old maps from its archive. After digitizing the documents, the artists Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum have created an algorithm that plots a random path across a world bound only by the limits of the museum’s own collection. In this way, Atlas of a Paper Empire reduces the world to the scale of the museum, directing the gaze from its building towards the city, the province, the state, the continent, until reaching the former colonies.

Atlas of a Paper Empire was produced for Museo Bikoitza (Double Museum), an annual program of rereadings of the San Telmo Museum collection and its narratives of display. The opening presentation is on the 28th of July 2022, at 11:00 a.m., with drinks at 12:00 in the museum patio. The installation will be on display for a whole year, after which it will form part of the museum's collection.

The strict division between the categories of fine art and ethnography in museums of cultural heritage is a contentious topic. Any attempt to redress the balance between the two tends to meet with resistance, as soon as it challenges the core values and conventions from which museums derive their authority.

With Museo Bikoitza, however, the San Telmo Museum in Donostia / San Sebastian has generously opened up a pioneering space of experimentation between these categories, and granted a prominent role to artistic practices in the development of innovative approaches to its own ethnographic collection and narratives of display.

To do justice to the scope of this undertaking requires a certain cultural sensibility, and a capacity to look beyond the horizon of one’s own discipline. That is why, after careful deliberation, we are pleased to nominate Hinrich Sachs as our successor in the Museo Bikoitza project.

Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum are presenting their installation False Flag in Brutus, the largest contemporary art exhibition and performance space in the Netherlands. Their work will be on display from 1 July to 31 July 2022, as part of the Wild Summer of Art, an enormous exhibition with selected young talent and established names with new work by a total of 180 artists.

The Dutch variant of the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Wild Summer of Art offers an overview of the current state of affairs. Visitors can purchase the exhibited works directly from the artist. Depending on the results, Wild Summer of Art will become a recurring annual event similar to the Summer Exhibition at London's Royal Academy.

BRUTUS, the location of Wild Summer of Art is unique in its raw appearance. In this Artist Driven Playground, participants can go as big as they want. The composition of Wild Summer of Art is in the hands of a curatorial team led by Piet de Jonge (former curator of the Van Abbemuseum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Museum Kröller-Müller), Jessy Koeiman (curator Collective Learning, Art Institute Melly) and Liesbeth Bik (visual artist and curator). The curators were advised by twelve professional scouts, who suggested artists, which resulted in a broadly composed whole.