No Limestone No Marble
Curated By: Ionit Behar
Chicago Cultural Center
2022 - 23
“The line between public and private no longer coincides with the outer limit of a building. We might even argue that the envelope is no longer to be found on the outside. It has coiled itself up within an imaginary body.”
–Beatriz Colomina, “Skinless Architecture,” 2003.
Nelly Agassi: No Limestone, No Marble is a site-specific exhibition of Israeli-born Chicago-based artist Nelly Agassi (b. 1973) developed in direct conversation with the Chicago Cultural Center’s “Chicago Room” and the building as a whole. If architectural discourse has from its beginning associated building and body, this formulation requires that we abandon the traditional thought of architecture as object, and start thinking of it as a system of representations just like drawings, collages, sculpture, and sound. Agassi’s artistic strategy is what she calls the “biography of the site” in which she develops a personal relationship with the past, present, and future history of a place in connection to her own. With this methodology, Agassi “sculpts” the site as a material, and creates a project from the specificity of the place in relation to the city of Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center’s impact. She takes inspiration from the experience itself of spending physical time on-site, researching the archives, and developing relationships with the institution’s staff. If most of Chicago’s historical architecture is known to be made with marble and limestone, then Agassi, with both large scale and intimate works, proposes to experience the site with alternative materials. Throughout the Chicago Rooms there is a process of domestication, an unmasking of the institutional, and a transgressive exploration of forbidden spaces. Agassi challenges the home/architecture opposition which has worked so hard for so long to gender our understanding of the relations between architecture.
Nelly Agassi: No Limestone, No Marble is curated by Ionit Behar, PhD and designed by Andrew SchachmanSound Collaboration with Ryan Packard
Performance:
Safe and Sound Performance: HVC air vent piping, prepared speaker cones, subwoofer, rice, tin foil, bells, plastic drum head, audio playback, prepared melodics, pipes, air compressor, mirrors, contact mics, spring drums, tuning forks, string, bows, super ball.
This installation is a collaboration between Nelly Agassi and myself for her solo exhibition, “No Limestone, No Marble”
Nelly Agassi’s solo exhibition, “No Limestone, No Marble” is a site-specific installation in the monumental Chicago Rooms gallery at the Chicago Cultural Center, curated by Ionit Behar and designed by Andrew Schachman. Israeli-born Chicago-based artist Agassi calls this project a “biography of the site” in which she develops a personal relationship with the past, present, and future history of a place in connection to her own. With this methodology, Agassi “sculpts” the site as a material, and creates a project from the specificity of the place in relation to the city of Chicago and the institution’s impact. A publication and performances are being planned in conjunction with this exhibition.
“No Limestone, No Marble” is funded in part by Artis and Konstnärsnämden, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee
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Performance