Artist Jordi Colomer and curator Manuel Segade have been chosen to represent Spain at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Their project, called Ciudad de Bolsillo (which roughly translates to “Pocket Cities”), will focus thematically on nomadism, El Cultural reports.
“Colomer studies the way in which the modern city influences human behavior,” the press release states, “and explores the ubiquity and drawbacks of modernism in the urban environment.”
Colomer is based in Barcelona and Paris. His recent work focuses on imagined city life, like the 2015 X-Ville, a 23-minute video documenting a two-week workshop where a group studied the work of Yona Friedman and built a fictional, utopian city.
In his 2014 videos titled “Medina Parkour,” the artist jumped across rooftops of the UNESCO world heritage-listed old town, or “medina,” of Tétouan, Morocco.
Writer Holland Cotter of the New York Times praised Colomer’s video work, Avenida Ixtapaluca, in the 2014 exhibition “Beyond the Supersquare” at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City. The art critic assessed the work as “heartening evidence” that the subjects Colomer depicts “are at least inventively customizing their homes, however they feel about living in so faceless a place.”
Manuel Segade is the current director of Madrid’s Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M). He has a similar focus on ideas of city life: In 2012, for example, he curated “Madrid Subterráneo” an exhibition of work by artist Lara Almarcegui, that focused on wastelands, and what lies beneath the city. In 2013, he curated “La Citoyenneté,” a project with Carme Noguira exploring the social implications of Paris’ city plan.
Ciudad de Bolsillo was selected from a shortlist of four proposals from artist-curator duos, which also included Luis Bisbe and Alicia Chillida, Christina Lucas and Gerardo Mosquera, and Eugenio Ampudia and Blanca de la Torre.
The 57th International Art Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia takes place from May 13 – November 26, 2017.