INFERNO

ALLORA & CALZADILLA: CHALK – Curator: Victoria Sung, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis – from Febraury 14, 2019 through December 1, 2019.

View of Allora & Calzadilla’s Chalk (1998/2013) in the exhibition More Love: Art, Politics and Sharing since the 1990s, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013 (Photo: courtesy the artist)
Based in Puerto Rico, collaborators Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971) create works that reach across sculpture, video, performance, and photography. Chalk (1998) is an ongoing art project in which the artists place human-size sticks of chalk—each piece measuring 64 inches in length—in public spaces for passers-by to use as they choose. Previously installed in Lima, Peru; Paris; Boston; and New York, the work takes on a new personal and political identity in each new location.

The exhibition will be presented in the Walker’s Gallery 7, a space adjacent to the museum’s outdoor terraces, which are a hub for seasonal programming. Treated with a special chalk-friendly paint, the gallery will serve as a center of activity for audiences of all ages, encouraging participation. Visitors will be invited to draw or write with the chalk on the gallery’s floor and walls, transforming the space into an immersive site for self-expression.

This is not the first time Allora and Calzadilla have presented works at the Walker Art Center.

In February 2003, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s Charcoal Dance Floor–a highly detailed floor drawing of young clubgoers that slowly disappeared as the shoes of gallery visitors scuffed it–was featured in the Walker exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age. Since then, they’ve visited twice more as artists-in-residence in 2003 and 2004 developing “Radio Re-Volt: One Person .ooOne Watt,” a project in which they imagined a network of micro-radio stations across the Twin Cities and hosted transmitter-building workshops to help realize it.

The pair has exhibited their work worldwide through solo shows in Zurich, Munich, Indianapolis, and more; group shows like documenta 13; and high-profile honors, including representing the United States at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 (their five-installation work Gloria included, among other elements, a flipped-over 52-ton army tank on which was mounted a jogging treadmill complete with an Olympic runner).

View of Allora & Calzadilla’s Chalk (1998/2013) in the exhibition More Love: Art, Politics and Sharing since the 1990s,Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013(Photo: courtesy the artist)