Ana Mendes

20 to 26 February

Ana Mendes, Map Series (Germany), 2014-ongoing, performance/installation (old paper maps, thread, sound, video), variable dimensions. Photo Simon Mills.

31 October to 7 November

Ana Mendes, Inariyama, sacred mountain in Kyoto, Japan. May 2023.

Still water, on the top of the mountain. Waiting for change to come.

1 March to 8 March

Ana Mendes, Woman, Lviv, 2011, Digital photography, variable dimensions.

In 2011, I visited Lviv for the first time to take part in a video-art festival. This lady approached me, asked me to take her photo and send it to her by post, which I did. The issue with the war, which luckily I never experienced, is that it reduces persons to numbers. One of a million, two hundred of a tone. One truck, two trucks, thirty tanks, one plane, 30 miles, 3000 meters, one country, two empires. So much junk. Dear friend, your face, all the faces shall not be forgotten.

8 February to 15 February

Self portrait.

Self-portrait is a play based on the collection of my personal details, from my birthday to the track of diseases in my family. I always collected my personal details and wondered what is the role that inheritance plays in our life. It could be a police questionnaire, a health survey or a manifesto against all the interrogatories that we have to fill in over our lives. But, it is not. It is just a self-portrait. Perhaps, automatic.

2 November to 9 November

5 October to 12 October

28 September to 5 October

September 7 to September 14

August 31 to September 7

August 3 to August 10

July 27 to August 3

July 20 to July 27

July 13 to July 20

July 6 to 13 July

June 22 to June 29

June 15 to June 22

April 6 to April 13

March 2 to March 9

February 23 to March 2

February 9 to February 16

February 2 to February 9

January 5 to January 12

December 8 to December 15

November 24 to December 1

November 17 to November 24

November 10 to November 17

November 3 to November 10

September 22 to September 29

September 15 to September 22

September 8 to September 15

September 1 to September 8

August 18 to August 31

August 4 to August 11

July 28 to August 4

July 21 to July 28

July 14 to July 21

July 7 to July 14

June 30 to July 8

June 23 to June 30

‘Artist pair-up skill’ was my lockdown project. It is is part of the initiative ‘Project School’, which explores the connection between identity, talent and skill – to what extent talent is an inherent part of our identity, if it can be acquired/taught and what is the role that informal sharing networks play in the education system. In the frame of ‘Project School’, I created ‘Artist pair-up skill’, an initiative in which one artist (giver) is paid to teach a skill to another artist (receiver). The goal is to help artists financially, to strengthen the bond between artists and to facilitate the acquisition of skills by artists in a critical time. For me, this project was a form of dealing with the difficulties that I witness around (and within) me, transforming something negative in, eventually, something positive. More bits at the blog Project School.

June 16 to June 23

POLYPHONIC MANIFSTO

June 2 to June 9

May 26 to June 2

May 19 to May 26

The hair is a video filmed with 2013, with Lisa Lemaine part of the series ‘This is my god’, in which I invited different people to visit me in my studio and bring and object that meant god for them in abstract terms. Using that object, I created a series of videos and photographs. In the case of Lisa Lemaine, Latvia, chose the hair, as it reminded her mother. Looking back, from a lockdown time, it is interesting to notice how the same basic elements – bread, money, love, hair, and similar always stay with us.

May 12 to May 19

‘The bread’ is a video in which I filmed myself baking a bread, in order to speak on god in abstract terms. The work was created in 2012, in Germany, whilst attending a residency subordinated to the idea of god in the 21st century. Thus, I filmed this work to use an abstract approach to the idea of god, because the bread as strong symbolism in catholicism. Besides, the dough is like any other artistic or thinking process, in which you get involved, fight, think, step back, return and accept. Moreover, in Germany many rituals involve the bread, which can also be seen as a form of cultural freedom in a very structured society – the German bread, the Turkish, the Syrian, the French, etc.

To my great surprise, when I exhibited the video in Germany, several women approached me to speak about their love/domestic interpretations of the video. I always thought of Germany as a very rightful country, where women could afford some independence. So, these silent shares of violence, even if emotional hit me hard.

Seven years later, during the lockdown, I keep seeing online posts about baking, the lack of flour and yeast, in parallel invisible stories of violence. Thus, it made me think on how rituals can be forms of liberation/canalisation of violence.

May 5 to May 12

Thinking about sustainability, I have shopped almost exclusively second-hand products over the last ten years. During the local down, I headed to my local second-hand store and I found this pearl. An American brand that labels Hong-kong the British Crown Colony. I am not sure if the British people would say this, even back in the day. Yet, it did make me think even more on how colonialism, capitalism, the industrial revolution and other soft machines played such an important role on the condition of the world in which we now live in. It is especially painful to acknowledge the impact of such activities have had on our ecosystem. It is also difficult to envisage how can we move forward.

April 28 to May 5

From_To_No_No_Rush

After the initial shock of the escalation of Covid 19, the first thing that I felt like doing was to get back to my experiments with concrete poetry. I think that creating images out of words helps me to think a way out, or to combine the two things that I like the most: concept/language and visuals.

Ana Mendes is a visual artist and writer working and living in London and Stockholm. She studied writing for performance at Goldsmiths College London UK, video at Royal Institute of Art Stockholm, Sweden, and animation film at La Poudriere, Valence, France.

Mendes creates works in video, performance, photography, video, text, concrete poetry and installation to speak on subjects such as memory, language and identity.

Some of her works are created in collaboration with other people – be they artists, labour workers or scientists. She follows a method, in which she spends a considerable amount of time by her own experimenting and playing with new ideas, until she arrives at a concept that she finds sustainable. Afterwards, she invites other people to collaborate with her. Together with these invited guests, they go through a mutual process of learning through error, trial and mistake.

Recent solo shows include: Konstepidemin, GIBCA Extended (Gothenburg International Biennial Cotemporary Art), Gothenburg, Sweden, 2021; Chelsea College, Telephone Gallery, London, UK, 2019; Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria; Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria, 2017 and Linden Museum Stuttgart, Germany, 2017. Group shows include: Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 2021; Taoyuan International Award, Taoyuan Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan, 2021; Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition, Denmark, 2021; Korean Cultural Centre NY, USA, 2021; Gothenburg International Biennial Contemporary, Gothenbourg, Sweden (2021).

Mendes has been the recipient of numerous awards, nominations and fellowships, including: Taoyuan International Award, Honourable Mention and Audience Choice Award, Taiwan, 2021; Artist Revelation Award ADAGP/ MAD Days, finalist, Paris/France, 2019; Jerwood Drawing Prize, second prize winner, London, UK, 2017, Prize of the Jury, Honorable Mention, MAAT Museum/Fuso Festival, Lisbon, Portugal, 2016; MAC International Ulster Bank Prize, finalist, Belfast, UK, 2016; Prize of the Jury Sophiensaele, winner, Berlin, Germany, 2014; Fellowship Akademie Schloss Solitude 2015/17, Stuttgart, Germany; IASPIS, Stockholm, Sweden, 2017, Fellowship Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, Portugal, 2010/11/13/16, among others.

Mendes serves on the advisory board of Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, Fellowship programme, since 2020.

More details at: www.anamendes.com