Instalación "Fábrica de afectos" - Galería Policroma 2024

Project Details

“Factory of Affections” Installation – Policroma Gallery 2024

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DESCRIPTION

I would like to be more of a cat.

In the urban port lingo, where much of my daily life nurtured, the word "gato" (cat) or its adjectival appropriation of the human character, carries a certain derogatory halo. In a few words, calling someone a "gato" is an insult. However, in the field of friendships, which are defined within the intimacy of social circles, "gato" is a nickname rich in affectionate camaraderie and a touch of playful irony. That gato friend embodies some of the most endearing traits of domesticated felines: their nocturnal nature, their elusive character, that emotional oscillation between affection and disdain, but above all things, hat enviable ability to always land on their feet. Between elegance and the cryptic, the curious and the clever, the loving and the selfish, is defined that field of attraction that arouse these characters, both bipedal as quadrupeds.

Driven by an obvious attraction, Antonio Yemail has spent over a decade working on architecture specifically designed for elusive beings. A path that spans through research, academia, practice, and from now on, exhibition framed through scientific-architectural and, indeed, artistic lenses. The project, built through a long and methodical process, involved case studies of the relationship between cats and their human counterparts. To label the human partner a "master" or "owner" would be a lack of truth, as demonstrated in the itinerant exhibition Post Post Post 2010. These studies later resulted in a catalog of formal expressions and spaces of feline appropriation, grouped under the name of The Vitrinazo, an installation project for the old Liga gallery League in Mexico City, a project that unfortunately never saw the light. Recently, the research shifted to the academic field, where, through the workshop Architectures between various forms of life, deepened, along with a group of students, into the disciplinary capacity to blur boundaries when examining the very idea of habitat, but through a multi-species lens.

I empathize with the quixotic nobility of someone who builds and sustains an idea for so long, although I'm afraid that that is also where one embraces the madness. But, above all, respect the decision to launch the project publicly at the Policroma Gallery, under the curatorship of Paula Builes.

Domesticity is, from my point of view, the most highly developed of human cultural constructs, defined as much by its technical capabilities as by its aesthetic forms. In an unequal worldit is shaped by both necessity and extravagance, and therein lies its effectiveness as a strategy of contact,as a unifying and synthesizing theme, and as an encyclopedic experiment in translating the relationship between ourselves and others. To think, design, to discuss the domestic, means to define ourselves more by our relational being that for the individual.

After all, we are social beings and however much some might long for it, we cannot live alone, and that is without a doubt one of the fundamental issues to be addressed by our contemporary world: How do we live? With whom do we live?

The field of the domestic addresses from a long time ago a construct that is today's agenda: the co-existence, whether voluntary or involuntary; between members of the same species, as those belonging to other kingdoms, such as the plant and animal worlds. Where we live, cohabit and how we take responsibility for that reality, form part of the foundations of future practice. How should be a house that respects all the species that travel through it, use it or live in it? Can we define it in terms of equity by dedicating the same level of formal commitment to all its inhabitants?

This installation weighs a pragmatic essay towards a practice of coexistence, through the installation, performance, potential use, and some willingness by socialization experiments in public programs that do not do more to build bridges and relationships,much like those we believe our feline counterparts will forge.

Now is the time for cats, to inhabit, to dwell, to discover, to transgress, but above all, to demonstrate with a certain haughtiness how we can and must live out what we envision within the domestic realm.

Martin Huberman

Architect and curator

DETAILS

Use

Installation

Area

100 m²

Location

Policroma Gallery – Medellín, Antioquia
Binario Project – Bogota D. C.

Meters above sea level

384 m

Year

2023-2024

Client

Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Knowledge

Design

Yemail Architecture

Design

Antonio Yemail + Martín Jiménez

Construction

Hernan Medrano

Architectural Model

Sara Aristizabal

Photo credits

Paula Buyles
Santiago Beaume and Paola Bermudez

Categories: 1.3 Facilities, 1.4 Galleries, Culture