IMMA Project Spaces: Closing Seminar

11am – 1.30pm: Talks & Conversations with Sarah Pierce, Rike Frank & Guests Azar Mahmoudian, Mason Leaver-Yap, and Leire Vergara. Explores the relationship between intimacy and exposure, migration, and education, with a particular focus on communities formed through dispersion and institutes forged through protest.
Ticketed – Book here

IMMA Main Galleries, East Wing: Performances

2pm: Final exhibition performances include Campus (2011), Levitating in the Nauman (2014) and Future Exhibitions (2013).
Drop-in – No booking required.

An afternoon of Live Readings: Sarah Pierce – Shelter Bread & Freedom (2021) / Off-site, Phoenix Park, Dublin 8

Marking the closing day of the exhibition Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth, a community of readers, living or temporarily based in Dublin, who speak a ‘home’ language other than English, forms the live element of the artwork Shelter Bread & Freedom (2021) as featured in the exhibition at IMMA.

Located at the shelter in the People’s Flower Garden at the Phoenix Park, Dublin 8. See location details here

Mason Leaver-Yap
Mason Leaver-Yap works with artists to produce texts, exhibitions, and events and is based in Glasgow / Berlin. Recent projects include work with Ingrid Pollard, Renée Green and Free Agent Media, Oreet Ashery, Emily Wardill, Stefanie Heinze, Onyeka Igwe, Winnie Herbstein, Ima-Abasi Okon, Beatrice Gibson, Laura Guy, Sunil Gupta and the Estate of Tessa Boffin, Andrea Büttner, Iman Issa, Uri Aran, and Jimmy Robert.

Azar Mahmoudian
Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and educator. The ways in which trans-historical bonds, and intergenerational time and memory turn into infrastructures, has been followed in her projects such as multi-chapter program of moving image practices, Sensible Grounds (various venues, 2019-2021) and When Legacies Become Debts (The Mosaic Rooms, London, 2019). The same inquiries have also informed her curatorial practice, in terms of self-organization, collective formations, durational projects and experimental pedagogy. Rethinking how adopting or refraining from exhibiting formats would affect each of these processes. In parallel to teaching inside and outside institutions in the past 10 years, in December 2020 she initiated the independent study program, A Summer School: For a Summer Yet to Come, in Tehran and nearby places. She co curated Shifting Panoramas, program of seminars, residencies and production grants (TMOCA and various off-spaces in Tehran, KW and DAZ Berlin 2017-2020), and co-ran Kaf, a collective self-organized space in Tehran (2010-2015). She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Vienna.

Leire Vergara
Leire Vergara is an independent curator, researcher and co-director of Bulegoa z/b, an office for art & knowledge based in Bilbao. She has curated numerous cycles and exhibitions, among others: In qualche luogo lontano: Roma, Spanish Academy in Rome (2021). The recurring images. On the material conditions of their return (with Pablo Martínez), MACBA, Barcelona (2017). The black or white screen: the power of seeing images together XXIII Jornadas de la Imagen CA2M, Madrid (2016). Dispositifs of Touching: Curatorial Imagination in the Times of Expanded Borders, Trankat, Tetuán (2015). From 2005 to 2009, she worked as chief curator at Sala Rekalde (Bilbao) and from 2002 to 2005, she was co-director of DAE- Donostiako Arte Ekinbideak, a project associated with Arteleku (Donostia-San Sebastián). In 2017, she completed her PhD thesis Dispositifs of Touching: A Curatorial Study on The Plazas of Sovereignty at the Department of Visual Cultures (Curatorial/Knowledge) at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is currently co-teaching the course Curating Positions in the MA in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute, University of the Arts Arnhem. In 2020-2021, she received the MAEC-AECID scholarship at the Spanish Academy in Rome.

Sarah Pierce
Since 2003, Sarah Pierce has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe her project, characterised by forms of gathering, both historical examples and those she initiates. The processes of research and presentation that she undertakes demonstrate a broad understanding of cultural work and a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art, the potential for dissent, and self-determination. Pierce works with installation, performance, archives, talks and papers, often opening these up to the personal and the incidental in ways that challenge received histories and accepted forms. Her interests include radical pedagogies and student work, art historical legacies and figures such as El Lissitzky, August Rodin, and Eva Hesse, and theories of community and love founded in Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille.

Pierce’s work has shown widely in the EU, US and Canada with major exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2016), CCS Hessel Museum & CCS Galleries, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2016 and 2012), and Tate Modern and MuMOK Vienna (2010). In 2014 she presented a major solo exhibition in three-parts, Lost Illusions/Illusions perdues, developed jointly with Walter Phillips Gallery Banff AL, Mercer Union Toronto ON, and SBC Galerie Montreal QB. Other solo presentations include: No Title at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Derry (2017); The Meaning of Greatness at Project Arts Centre (2006). She has participated in major international biennials including Glasgow International (2018), Eva International (2016, 2012), Lyon Biennial (2011), International Sinop Biennial (2010), Moscow Biennial (2007), and in 2005, Pierce represented Ireland in a group exhibition at the 51st Venice Biennale.

Rike Frank
Rike Frank works as a curator and writer and teaches exhibition histories and curatorial practice. She is Executive Director of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme, as well as co-director of the European Kunsthalle. Her practice often reflects on temporality, textility as well as instituting and the documentation of curatorial articulations. Past institutional affiliations include Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Art of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts/KHIO (2014–2018); head of the exhibition space at Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (2012–2014); member of the Artistic Program team, European Kunsthalle (2010–2012); Curator, Secession, Vienna (2001–2005); head of the Curatorial Office, documenta 12 (2007). Publications as editor and co-editor include Of(f) Our Times. Curatorial Anachronics (2019), Ane Hjort Guttu. Writings, Conversations, Scripts (2018), Textiles: Open Letter (2015), Textile Theorien der Moderne. Alois Riegl in der Kunstkritik (2015), Timing – On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (2014), and Sketches of Universal History: Compiled from Several Authors by Sarah Pierce (2013).

Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth momentarily brings together twelve installations spanning twenty years of artistic practice in three configurations. These artworks, comprising performances, videos, large-scale installations and archive, have been selected specifically for IMMA. See more details here.