Wisrah Villefort, Nicolas, Liste Showtime 2021


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75010 Paris

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(i) NICOLAS

     Wisrah Villefort for Liste Showtime 2021

 

NICOLAS

Wisrah Villefort

Goswell Road for Liste Showtime Online, 2021


15 - 30 September 2021

Archived on Liste Expedition


Goswell Road is pleased to present Nicolas, a solo presentation of new works by São Paulo-based artist Wisrah Villefort for Liste Showtime Online 2021.


Using a combination of research-based practice and personal stories, Villefort explores the relationship between the human and non-human with particular attention to those mediated by capital and informed by labour - from food to domestication - addressing death, damage, and colonisation.


Far from a binary critical position, the works deconstruct the complexity of these themes, relating them to Villefort's own life dynamic. In Chop, a 3min34sec audio piece, the artist repeats "commissioned texts to international slaughterhouse companies" which could be understood as a direct reference to their side job as a ghostwriter. This information can be taken on a literal, personal level, but Villefort leaves enough space for it to exist metaphorically, in a much broader sense.


The side job - a common need for early-career artists to sustain their creative practice financially - can lead to performing works that arouse disgust in the worker and may go contrary to their political positions.


Villefort’s oeuvre is largely image-based, frequently making use of found-footage and ready-mades to create video works and installations. For Liste Showtime Online 2021, the artist focuses instead on the possibilities of sound and text to build the narratives presented here in Nicolas.


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Wisrah Villefort (Buritizeiro, 1989) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Within their work, the artist incorporates sound, sculpture, text, photography, and video in installations and hypermedia works that explore the relationship between nature and capital considering modernity and colonialism.


Institutional collections and commissions include Kadist, France; and Instituto Moreira Salles, Brazil. In 2020, the artist participated in the Pivô Research residency program. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Goswell Road, Paris; and GUAVA, Brasília; and group shows at the 14th Curitiba Biennale and OLHÃO, São Paulo. Forthcoming projects include SALTS, Basel; Centre d'Art Waza, Lubumbashi; British Council Residency Grant for Mid-Career Artists in partnership with the Wysing Arts Center, Cambridgeshire and Digital Arts Studios, Belfast; and a residency at La Becque, Tour-de-Peilz for which the artist was awarded the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Residency Grant.