Guillermo Calzadilla
| Allora & Calzadilla | |
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Allora & Calzadilla, "Stop Repair, Prepare", 2008
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| Born | Jennifer Allora March 20, 1974 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Guillermo Calzadilla January 10, 1971 Havana, Cuba |
| Education | Jennifer Allora: University of Richmond, Virginia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Guillermo Calzadilla: Escuela de Artes Plasticas, San Juan and Bard College |
| Known for | performance, sculpture, video art, and sound art |
Jennifer Allora (born 20 March 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 10 January 1971) are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They were the United States Representatives for the 2011 Venice Biennale, the 54th International Art Exhibition, in 2011.
Jennifer Allora was born in 1974 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1996 she received a BA from the University of Richmond in Virginia. In 2003 she attained a Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between 1998-99 she was a fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.
Guillermo Calzadilla was born in 1971 in Havana, Cuba. In 1996 he received a BFA from Escuela de Artes Plásticas in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1998 he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and he attained an MFA from Bard College in 2001.
They began working together after meeting while studying abroad in Florence, Italy in 1995.
Since the beginning of their collaborative career in 1995, Allora & Calzadilla have worked in a variety of media to produce a body of work spanning sculpture, photography, performance art, sound and video.
Starting in 1999, Land Mark is a series of projects that encompasses film, video, photography and performance pieces related to the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, which, for 60 years, was used by the United States for military operations, leading to a civil disobedience campaign waged by local residents. The works include Land Mark (1999/2003/2006), Land Mark (Footprints) (2001–02), Returning a Sound (2004), Under Discussion (2005) and Half Mast\Full Mast (2010). Allora & Calzadilla interrogate the economic, cultural, and political markers that differentiate one area of land from another, and the processes of colonization and gentrification that come to define its changing status. As a whole, these works connected performances typical of political activism to artistic traditions like engraving. Land Mark is explained semantically as an instrument for reading marks left on the territory (landmarks) instead of as a simple point of spatial orientation (landmark). The spatial investigations in Allora & Calzadilla's work are made in terms of what the artists call “the trace.” At once a poetic trope and a set of material operations, the trace links presence and absence, inscription and erasure, preservation and destruction, and appearance and disappearance.
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