ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Visual artist Aimée Zito Lema (Amsterdam, 1982) engages in her practice with questions around social memory and the body as an agent of resistance. Zito Lema studied at the University of the Arts (UNA), Buenos Aires, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and holds a Master degree in Artistic Research from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Recent solo exhibitions include: '214322' at the Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam (2019), 13 Shots, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018), Imprinted Mater, Looeirsgracht 60, Amsterdam (2017) A Series of Gestures, Kunsthall Trondheim (2017). Group exhibitions include: 2 Unlimited, De Apple, Amsterdam (2018), Idiorritmias and Muestreo #1, MACBA, Barcelona (2017), the 11th Gwangju Biennial (2016), Dorothea von Stetten Art Award, Kunst Museum Bonn (2016), Horse Pistes, L’art de la Revolte at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016), and New Habits, at Casco, Utrecht (2014).

She was artist in residence at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2015-16).

Her work has been supported in the last years by the Mondriaan Fonds, the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

Zito Lema lives and works in Amsterdam, and is currently represented by tegenboschvanvreden.

 
 
 

ABOUT THE WORK:

“(…) Het zijn deze poëtische momenten waarin de kracht van Aimée Zito Lema’s werk schuilt. Ze lijkt steeds te zoeken naar een metaniveau: de geschiedenissen als uitgangspunt voor het ontleden van bepaalde tijdloze mechanismen. Dit doet echter niets af aan hun originele impact: ze weet de bestaande verhalen van een nieuwe laag te voorzien. Opgegroeid in een zeer politieke context heeft ze een eigen vorm moeten vinden voor iets wat altijd als vanzelfsprekend in haar leven aanwezig was. Tegelijkertijd heeft ze de Argentijnse dictatuur of Amsterdamse krakersrellen zelf niet bewust meegemaakt, wat het onmogelijk maakt deze situaties volledig te begrijpen. Om toch een ingang te vinden, zijn afstand en transformatie misschien wel noodzakelijk. In haar doorlopende onderzoek naar geheugen en nalatenschap blijkt Zito Lema in staat om geschiedenis opnieuw tot leven te wekken en in leven te houden.” Fragment uit Metropolis M - Features - Aimée Zito Lema - 'Aangeraakt door de Tijd' - door Yasmijn Jarram - October 2017

"Aimée Zito Lema investigates the way events are remembered, recorded, and how they influence the future (...) For human beings this concerns experiences and memories; for materials physical actions also have an afterlife with permanent repercussions (...) Zito Lema unites human skin and material history in works that deal with memories and traumas in a poetic manner. Here, history quite literally interacts with the body." (Fragment of catalogue text by Vincent van Velsen, Rijksakademie Open, 2016).

"In her work people are most often at the center, people are often the subject of the works (...) And they are seen with such warmth and care. Simultaneously I also come to ask like, does she do so in a manner that an accelerationist would feel allergic to, namely by doing what he calls “folks aesthetics” that is blindly benevolent to people and believe in horizontal (or ever flat) local, grassroots movement? Or that a post-humanist finds uncritically anthro-centric, having no clue of the state of the planet we live today? By entering a constellation of Zito Lema’s practice made of a loose and open ensemble of things that she has been making with her families, friends, children, (former) factory workers, domestic workers, cleaners, patients or other fragile audiences, or the living ghosts in recent pasts, however, one may find that such questions are irrelevant, not to say right or wrong or good or bad. The irrelevance is not because a political urgency does not matter, desire to hasten not exists, the need for strategizing is not recognized. Instead there’s such an unyielding position, as if never questioned or as if inherited, that a way to move forwards is always with others." (Fragment of catalogue text by Binna Choi "A body of works or bodies that scatter in concert - On the production of “vulner-ability” in the works of Aimée Zito Lema" - Dorothea von Stetten Award, Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2016)

 
 

 
   
   
 

Contact: e-mail contact.aimeezitolema.at.gmail.com  
or tegenboschvanvreden Amsterdam: info@tegenboschvanvreden.com  
   
   
 

Website designed by Paul Gangloff and build by Jakub Straka.