Open meeting with the artist Iván Argote

Iván will introduce the project he is developing at the Fine Arts Library of the UCM.

What would the tables in this library say, if we let them speak? What other things, besides books, circulate from this library?

We organised an open meeting with the artist Iván Argote, inviting him to share with us the trajectory of his career and the processes of his work as a sculptor, organiser and filmmaker. Iván will also introduce the project he is developing in collaboration with the Fine Arts Library of the Complutense University and the association Concomitentes.A project of intervention and celebration of the modes of encounter that this library favours, and which will have a collective production process in June 2023, open to the students of this faculty. Come, come, come, come!

Iván Argote (Bogotá, 1983) is a Colombian artist based in Paris. Iván's work explores the relationship between history, politics and the construction of our own subjectivities, through a variety of formats including video, sculpture, collages and installations in public space, tending to raise questions about how we relate to others, the state, heritage and traditions.

His works are critical, and address the idea of bringing affects to politics and politics to affects, with a tone somewhere between the strong and the tender. In his interventions in public space - be they monuments, large-scale, ephemeral or permanent, Argote proposes new symbolic and political uses of the community and the public space they inhabit. In this line, his recent projects at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and Science Po universities in Paris (both 2022) stand out., as well as his site specific installations at Desert X 2019 (USA), at the South Douala Public Art Triennial (2017) or the future commission for the Spreepark public park in Berlin (2025). Recently Iván Argote has been the winner of the St. Anne Park's Land Art Commission competition organised by Sculpture Dublin.

A selection of recent projects and exhibitions include: Prix Marcel Duchamp 2022, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Chaflierplatz, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany, 2021; A Place for Us, Perrotin, New York, 2021; All Here Together, Artpace, San Antonio, Texas, 2021; Juntos Together, ASU Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, 2019; Radical Tenderness, MALBA, Buenos Aires, 2018; Somos Tiernos, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico, 2017; Somos, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, 2017; La Venganza del Amor, Perrotin, New York, 2017; Let's write a history of hopes, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, 2014; La Estrategia, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; Sin heroísmos, por favor, CA2M, Madrid, 2012.

See the full gallery of the public meeting here.