Isabel de Sena

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Isabel de Sena

Participating Project	Research Residency Program
Activity Based	Germany
City	Tokyo
Period	2016.2 - 2016.3

Purpose of the residency

Largely inspired by Ming Tiampo's 'GUTAI: Decentering Modernism' (2011), in which she expounds the necessity to attain agency into the "politicized centres of the art world" as they continue to live on today, this research aims to build on and extend the Gutai-legacy. Undaunted by their lack of means and institutional support, Gutai's artistic strategies in reaching a broad public hold the potential to become newly relevant for Tokyo today. Taking this as her point of departure, Isabel aims to contribute to a re-writing of the Gutai art history and to deregulate the romanticized and politically precarious adherence to 'pure' artistic innovation and originality. It is performative and hands-on in its intention to pursue research through theoretical, as well as practical engagement on-site.

Plan during the residency

Isabel will begin by researching the tentative impact of 'GUTAI: The Spirit of an Era', a very late first retrospective of Gutai in Tokyo (NAC, 2012). She will then research the conjectural presence of Gutai's artistic strategies in the current curriculum of Tokyo University of the Arts, and in the practice of contemporary Tokyo-based artists. In the second month, the research will take a more hands-on approach through a mail-art exchange between Tokyo and Berlin, and a series of interventions in public space. Though modelled on Gutai's initiatives, they depart from Gutai's attempts at pure and original expression, as well as their "Food-court metropolitanism" (Tiampo) and failure to transcend nationhood. Each month will culminate in the publication of journal with theoretical texts and artists' contributions.

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