The exhibition “Composição” presents the work of Ana Jotta, a Lisbon-born artist known for her radically polymorphous and versatile artistic output. Curated by Miguel Wandschneider, the exhibition aims to introduce Jotta’s diverse work to a largely unfamiliar audience. Instead of following a specific thematic or chronological order, the curatorial process relied on intuitive associations between selected artworks to reveal the intricacies of Jotta’s practice and her subjective world.
Jotta’s art is characterized by the absence of a consistent style, marked instead by continuous deviations and discontinuities. Her work involves the appropriation and transformation of a wide array of found objects, images, and texts, driven by personal identification and affection rather than aesthetic detachment. Despite the apparent disarray, the exhibition highlights her consistent frugality of means, conciseness of expression, and energetic creativity. Jotta views art as a quotation from life, reflecting her belief in the ongoing reintegration and revelation of existing elements rather than creating anew.
Ana Jotta: Composição at Kunsthalle Zürich runs until September 15, 2024.
Ana Jotta: Composição / Kunsthalle Zürich. Exhibition walkthrough and interviews with Ana Jotta and Miguel Wandschneider, June 7, 2024.
Jotta’s art is characterized by the absence of a consistent style, marked instead by continuous deviations and discontinuities. Her work involves the appropriation and transformation of a wide array of found objects, images, and texts, driven by personal identification and affection rather than aesthetic detachment. Despite the apparent disarray, the exhibition highlights her consistent frugality of means, conciseness of expression, and energetic creativity. Jotta views art as a quotation from life, reflecting her belief in the ongoing reintegration and revelation of existing elements rather than creating anew.
Ana Jotta: Composição at Kunsthalle Zürich runs until September 15, 2024.
Ana Jotta: Composição / Kunsthalle Zürich. Exhibition walkthrough and interviews with Ana Jotta and Miguel Wandschneider, June 7, 2024.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 [ Background noise ]
00:17 >> Ana Jota started late as an artist.
00:21 She showed for the first time in a group exhibition in 1979.
00:27 She was born in 1946, so she was already in her early 30s
00:33 when she showed her work for the first time.
00:35 And then in the following years, her work was featured
00:40 in a few group shows until she finally did her first solo
00:46 exhibition in 1987.
00:49 She showed a large series of paintings.
00:53 Since then, she has been showing her work regularly in Portugal.
00:59 She remained until very late a local artist.
01:04 And she has been getting some international attention
01:09 in the last 11 years or so.
01:13 It's growing, the circulation of her work internationally.
01:18 And this show at Kunsthalle Zurich is part of that process
01:24 of recognition.
01:26 Ana Jota is an artist that doesn't attach,
01:36 is not privileging any particular medium.
01:44 So when Ana is making art, it's not that she's following any
01:50 parameters that have to do with medium
01:53 or with certain materials and techniques.
01:57 Her work is extremely diverse.
02:01 And the work throughout the years was structured
02:08 through a series, groups of works that are cohesive
02:17 from a stylistic point of view.
02:18 But then she moves to a different series
02:22 that is completely different in every respect.
02:26 And so on and so forth.
02:28 So as she was moving ahead as an artist, her work was opening up,
02:35 opening up, opening up in a quite amazing way.
02:39 So it's very difficult to frame her,
02:42 to describe her as an artist.
02:46 This exhibition shows a selection of works
02:53 from different periods or years.
03:00 The older work is from '88, '89.
03:04 But in fact, it covers mostly, so to speak,
03:08 the last 25 years of her practice.
03:12 And I think at least that was my idea.
03:18 The exhibition enables the visitor,
03:22 the visitor that has an interest or a predisposition
03:26 to play the game, to enter the work and the world
03:33 of Anna.
03:35 [ Background Conversations ]
04:05 >> One side of the space is just these huge windows
04:14 where you cannot hang anything.
04:16 So if one circulates through the exhibition space,
04:26 especially in the second room,
04:29 the floor pieces are very important
04:33 to counterbalance the main wall, this long,
04:37 almost 19-meter wall.
04:38 I constructed the exhibition using a very simple protocol.
04:46 Instead of following a predetermined framework
04:52 or perspective or guidelines, I decided to choose one work
05:02 and use this work as the trigger
05:04 for the thinking behind the exhibition,
05:07 for a very experimental associative process going
05:12 from one work to another and constructing the exhibition step
05:17 by step through these associations.
05:20 And see where that would take me
05:25 and where that would take the visitor once the exhibition
05:29 would be ready to be experienced.
05:31 So I didn't want to have any kind of demonstrative take
05:37 on Anna's work or try to encompass
05:40 because that would be impossible.
05:43 The whole practice as it has, or the scope of her work as it has
05:52 grown throughout the years.
05:59 It's 45 years of trajectory
06:01 that the exhibition is not trying to encompass.
06:04 I begin with a self-portrait, which is the clown dressed
06:13 as a woman, and it's a self-portrait.
06:17 The title gives a clear indication
06:20 that it's a self-portrait.
06:21 It's called Light of Jota.
06:26 And then I asked myself what if I would use self-portrait
06:31 as a light motive to start this process
06:36 of composing the exhibition.
06:38 And so the works in the first room can be considered
06:43 self-portraits, although that is not the subject
06:46 of what's going on in the first room.
06:48 It was more of an alibi, a stratagem
06:52 to compose the exhibition.
06:57 One thing that becomes very apparent already
07:04 in the first room and continues to be very visible
07:09 in the second room is what an extraordinary appropriationist
07:14 Anna Jota is, borrowing from totally discrepant sources
07:22 and incorporating totally different things in her works
07:28 without the rhetoric of appropriation.
07:34 You see the exhibition, you are not seeing, oh, appropriation.
07:37 You are not labeling the work
07:40 through this term appropriation like we do when we are looking
07:47 at the work, say, of Cheryl Levine,
07:52 that we say appropriation.
07:55 You don't say that when you encounter the work of Anna.
07:59 And that I think is also very interesting,
08:01 and it tells how subtle and -- how subtle her practice is.
08:13 [ Background Conversations ]
08:22 [ Laughter ]
08:44 >> Well, I know that you have talked already with the curator
08:48 and a friend of mine, Miguel van Schneider.
08:51 But there is no -- it was him with me that we decided
08:56 to make an ensemble of different periods of my work.
09:03 And I don't think -- I think --
09:07 I know you wrote on the presentation of the show
09:11 that at first sight it looks like a collective.
09:15 But I don't think so.
09:17 I think there is something a little bit,
09:20 I wouldn't say peculiar.
09:23 I would say maybe -- maybe what?
09:27 What could I say about the mood of the thing?
09:31 It's -- first, the space is very beautiful.
09:35 It looks empty, although it has a few pieces.
09:40 But I would say that it is eccentric.
09:45 It does look like a collective, because a collective for me
09:50 in general, if it is very well installed, pieces,
09:56 you can feel that they are --
09:58 they don't belong to the same person.
10:00 And here, if you have some attention --
10:03 and when I say eccentric, means out of the center.
10:08 Because it's -- I am out of the center.
10:11 I'm not much in the artist plot.
10:18 I start long time ago with the theater.
10:25 And I decided to become a plastic artist,
10:30 although I'm a bit professional.
10:33 Because it was the only way to work with myself.
10:39 So that's why I -- after I -- some galleries and all this.
10:44 But I am not in the -- much in this universe
10:48 of plastic arts, especially nowadays.
10:52 Because as you know, and everybody knows, this is a --
10:54 this -- the times have changed.
10:57 And so this is more a kind of political, economical stuff.
11:03 But no big deal for me.
11:06 I am also -- and I always have been, even when I was
11:12 in another kind of works, out of the market.
11:18 So anyway, you cannot escape.
11:21 I am in the market, but I don't deal with that in general.
11:26 So it can be eccentric, out of the center.
11:33 But I think it's very -- it's not difficult to understand
11:38 that it's just one man show, one woman show, or whatever.
11:44 [ Background noise ]
12:12 >> Okay. I love a lot of things.
12:22 And I simply go out in the streets, or --
12:26 and I see very standard, normal things that I use.
12:33 It's -- I don't choose special things.
12:40 Even I don't -- never, never think.
12:43 If I need to think, I can think.
12:45 But I am irrational.
12:47 This is visual arts and way of dealing with art.
12:51 I think it -- you might be more irrational than a thinker.
12:57 A thinker is another kind of work for other kind of workers.
13:01 I just -- I go around.
13:05 It's for me to eat and to live, to sleep, and to work.
13:10 It's the only thing I know.
13:11 So -- and to have pleasure.
13:14 I only do things with pleasure.
13:16 And pleasure -- and with energy.
13:19 You need energy to make things with pleasure.
13:21 And that's all.
13:22 It's very simple.
13:23 There are so many things that nobody notices
13:27 in everyday life, that's all.
13:30 That's what I -- that it's my reality.
13:34 That I can transform as an artist.
13:36 Not to -- I transform a lot.
13:39 And -- but in a very discreet way.
13:43 Because something that I don't feel very comfortable nowadays.
13:50 Not only nowadays, but nowadays special.
13:53 It's that I don't like violence in art.
13:57 And I hate that kind of stuff.
14:00 You have violence in your life every day.
14:03 But I never could use that.
14:05 Art is not for political things.
14:09 There are political -- the political things are everywhere
14:14 around, but not -- it's not an art matter for me.
14:19 [ Background noise ]
14:48 I have no ideas.
14:51 And I don't make sketches.
14:52 If I make sketches, everything is a sketch.
14:55 Even our life.
14:56 But if I make a sketch, which I like very much,
15:01 it's a final thing.
15:02 It's -- I don't make a sketch for passing it
15:08 to another kind of thing.
15:12 No. A sketch is a sketch, and that's all.
15:15 No need anything else.
15:18 Sometimes I produce a lot.
15:20 Other times I do nothing, almost nothing.
15:23 I'm maybe receiving information, visual information,
15:30 but I don't notice it.
15:31 So you mean since I am a plastic artist?
15:35 Well, I am quite old, so I work for 40 years, more than 40 years.
15:42 I might say not millions, but maybe 5,000.
15:48 A lot of things.
15:49 I work a lot.
15:50 But I'm not a maniac of working.
15:52 I prefer to feel free.
15:55 I'm a bit of a -- old -- eccentric and a free bird.
16:02 It's -- I don't like to work for anybody, which I never could.
16:09 That's why I left the cinema and the theater.
16:12 I'm not a product.
16:16 I'm an artist.
16:18 That's all.
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