BIANCA BALDI – ZERO LATITUDE (2014)

Goethe-Institut Johannesburg presents BIANCA BALDI – ZERO LATITUDE (2014). Bianca Baldi’s project begins with a particular design object, The Louis Vuitton Explorator.
Commissioned by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza for his expedition to Congo, the highly stylised form of this explorer’s day bed is capable of containing and unfolding not only physically but also conceptually, the trappings and projections accompanying the aesthetic of colonial ambition at Zero Latitude. Along de Brazza’s route down the Congo river, to the place that would eventually bear his name, Baldi unpacks a series of related ‘finds’, conscious of their symbolic capital, as well as the power of elegant decontextualisation and erasure. The wild mythologising of place and time, lived experience and its subsequent narration, are presented in an installation which simultaneously transfixes and contests the fashioning of representation.
The exhibition runs until 28 October 2014. Bianca Baldi's project Zero Latitude (2014) was commissioned and co-produced by the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art with support from the Goethe-Institut. The online publication can be found on http://zero-latitude.net/.
Opening: Thursday 2 October 2014, 6.30pm
Artist Talk: BIANCA BALDI – ZERO LATITUDE
11 October 2014 11 am Goethe Institut Johannesburg
Bianca Baldi elaborates on the video installation as well as the accompanying publication "Zero Latitude: A User’s Manual". As an extension of the exhibition, in collaboration with graphic designer Marco Balesteros and texts by Clare Butcher and Sean O'Toole, the online publication and visual maps assemble images from the artists collection.
Admission to the exhibition and artist's talk is free.
Goethe-Institut, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue (off Newport Road)
Parkwood 2193, Johannesburg
www.goethe.de