Text: Poem by Juan Pablo Plazas, an interview with Tania Nasielski and the artist (EN)
Colombian anthropologist and artist Juan Pablo Plazas is fascinated by the ability of people and communities to interpret the world in different ways. In his practice, he starts from everyday objects and raw materials that have special material or formal properties. With wonder and a sense of humour, he takes them out of their ordinary context, turns them into sculptures or gives them a role in a performance. Through this action, Plazas breaks through the ‘dead normal’ and invites us to understand objects as animated, living matter.
‘Even if You’ is a book in which all the lines set out by the artist in recent years come together as if they were a crossroads.
‘When I think of the art I create and the discourse that surrounds my art, this image comes to mind: a ship adrift between icebergs. The icebergs being the found things, stories, encounters, situations that surface in an unpredictable way. The fact that I’m able to see only the tip of the iceberg, that maybe there are other parts of things that I can’t understand or even put into words. It makes me think of the sublime being portrayed on the top of the mountain, without being able to what’s underneath. Only in this case, the mountain is submerged in water and constantly on the move. What we can’t see in the case of trees, is that they are all connected through a net of roots.’
- Fragment ofBy Any Other Name, a conversation between Tania Nasielski and Juan Pablo Plazas
The book was launched in S.M.A.K., Ghent and HISK, Brussels.
