Statements

Short Statement

We seek to develop a body of artworks and art projects as a trail intersecting with layers of class, race, trades and domains, questioning and creating points of entrée in the arts for all, educators, artists, activists, participants or commissioners and clients. Our multi-dimensional search is collaborative by essence and necessity. Our practice is in the context of to-morrow and each output intends to offer a new temporary definition for art. Coming to the South as immigrants speaking and living in two different languages (and every combination of them), Alternate ROOTS has contextualized our existing talents and experiences and gave us an artistic environment and a mission that was aligned with our past experiences in European artists run galleries and dissenting movements. Aggravated by exclusive and selective tastes, behaviors and cultures, we look for establishing an open art practice without elitism and any hierarchical status.

JEMAGWGA Short Statement pdf

Long Statement

We look for establishing an open art practice without elitism and any hierarchical status. Our collaboration started with investigating the relationships between the second and third dimension and that of the schools of French and American Conceptual, Feminist and Minimal Art. We now seek to develop a body of artworks and art projects as a trail intersecting with layers of class, race, trades and domains, questioning and creating points of entrée in the arts for all, educators, artists, activists, any participant, commissioner or client. Our multi-dimensional search is collaborative by essence and necessity. All along, or in the middle and at the end, our practice encourages conversations and the sharing, accumulation or hybridization of tools, perceptions and knowledge. Visual elements develop as art objects, art installations or recordings, and take their value from, or against, their own aesthetics/history and that of the community or business engagement that generated them, as well as from their link to what is next to them or what is to come. Our practice is in the context of to-morrow and each output intends to offer a new temporary definition for art. Aggravated by exclusive and selective tastes, behaviors and cultures, we feel as on a seesaw, oscillating between viewers and actors. We always attempt to keep the journey alive.

Through the process of initiating collaborative experiences and creating art installations, which may mean involving non-artists in a challenge with no known outcome but one we shape together, we attempt to bring out the unspoken and the unspeakable as much as the questions raised by the present dominant culture. In doing so as artists partnering with communities or creating temporary communities, reframing and questioning how communities are perceive, we engage our artistic and social responsibilities in the process, the making and the aftermath of a project and the artwork. We work towards sharing the ownership of the art so produced at all levels, including but not limited to conceptualization, planning, contents, fabrication, outcome, artifacts, marketization and documentation. It does not mean we are all doing the same thing, or all have the same criteria for evaluation, but we thrive for all of us involved in the art project to become aware of the necessity to create a space for complementarities. As opposed to competitiveness. In sharing the ownership, we may dismantle the fabrication of heroes, geniuses, artificial symbols of a dominant culture, which we are conditioned to believe are for ever. We introduce people of every class, every race and every walk of life in a search for a positive unknown. That is the freedom of the Art field. And sometimes it means dissenting from the rules.

We are members of Alternate ROOTS and AZULE. Coming to the South as immigrants speaking and living in two different languages (and every combination of them), Alternate ROOTS contextualized our existing talents and experiences and gave us an artistic environment and a mission that was aligned with our past experiences in European artists run galleries and dissenting movements. Alternate ROOTS underlines its name as “Art-Community-Activism” and its mission is “to support the creation and presentation of original art, in all its forms, which is rooted in a particular community of place, tradition or spirit.” Azule’s mission is “To Provide An Environment Where Artists and Community Meet, Work And Learn Together Through The Arts In Their Many Forms.”

JEMAGWGA Long Statement pdf