Juan Covelli presented Modern Ruin, a project using publicly available media and a mapping platform to document and locate failed constructions across Colombia. These engineering mega-projects have unexpectedly collapsed before reaching completion, and sometimes only days after their inauguration. Symptomatic of an emergent national crisis, these pre-emptive ruins are the result of ingrained corruption and have even caused loss of life. Modern Ruin was developed for the Google Maps Residency Programme by Off Site Project.
Screen Walks is a series of live-streamed artist/researcher-led explorations of online spaces and artistic strategies designed to illuminate a thriving – often overlooked – digital cultural scene. A new online collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. Screen Walks is kindly supported by: Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.
Biography
Juan Covelli is a Colombian artist and independent curator currently living and working in Bogatá, where he teaches at Universidad El Bosque/Universidad Javeriana, he also runs the online art platform Nmenos1. A graduate of MA Contemporary Photography; Practice and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, Covelli’s practise revolves around the technological potentials of 3D scanning, modelling and printing to readdress entrenched arguments of repatriation and colonial histories. Using video, modelling, data sets and coding; he creates IRL and URL installation-based works which collapse historical practices with current models of display and digital aesthetics.
Covelli was recently awarded the Lumen prize for Moving Image. Solo and group shows include: How to dust the surface, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery, Warrington (2018); and Nexcuitilamatl, Galería ADM, Mexico City (2017). As well as groups shows: Imagen Regional 9, Museo Miguel Angel Urrutia, Banco de La República, Bogotá Colombia, Transición hacia una civilización Planetaria, El Parqueadero, Banco de la República, Bogotá, Freeport, Epoch Gallery, Online; TERMINAL, Festival de Arte, Pensamiento y Tecnología FAP-TEK, Centro Cultural España, Montevideo, UruguayColombi Pressentness, Esación Terrana, Bogotá; Well Now WTF?, Silicon Valet, Online; Simbiosis Entropica, Museo de Pereira, Pereira; Pixels Fest, Yeltsin Centre, Yekaterinburg (2020); ARTECAMARA, Artbo, Bogotá; Roca Lunar, Planetario Distrital, Bogotá; Festival de la Imagen, Centro Cultural Rogelio Salmona, Manizales (2019); INSIDE INTEL, Centre for Investigative Journalism; New Materialities in the Digital Age, Harlesden High Street Gallery curated by Anti-Materia, London; Out of Space, AVD Gallery, Online; The image of things, Guttormsgaard Arkiv, Oslo (2018); and The Choice of a New Generation, The Muse Gallery, London (2017); Deep Inside, V Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Trekhgornaya Manufaktura. Moscú, Rusia (2016)
