Water My Plant

PROJECT

Water My Plant

In October the studio of wpZimmer is traditionally reserved for Mestizo Arts Platform, which invites for the second year in a row the artist duo Agustin Jais and Denise Lara Margules for a residency.

Water My Plant is an artistic research into cultural ecologies towards the creation of alternative institutional relations between Belgium and Argentina. Ten cultural organizations are linked through exchanging scale models of their buildings, that help trigger experimental collaborations between its managers. The artists moderate these exchanges while documenting the process in different media, from video to embroidery. The duo will premiere in Belgium the result of this 16-months project in wpZimmer as a performative installation.

Agustín Jais

Agustín Jais is an artist, curator, cultural manager, designer and professor. He is founder of Club Cultural Matienzo, an independent umbrella organization that runs a venue for the arts, culture and community life. His artistic practice is linked to this experience, taking form as context-based projects, developed mostly in collaboration, that experiment with institutional dynamics, community building and the collective re-learning of accessible technologies. He has presented projects at Hamiffal (Jerusalem), Centro Cultural Juan de Salazar (Asunción, Paraguay), Centro Cultural Parque España (Rosario, Argentina), and CETC-Teatro Colón, Espacio Telefónica and Centro Cultural San Martín (Buenos Aires, Argentina). He participated in residencies in New York, Ciudad de Mexico and Antwerp, and was speaker about collective initiatives at Beursschouwburg (Brussels), HaMiffal (Jerusalem), Fundación PROA and Fundación Lebensohn (Buenos Aires). In 2015 he made Soulseek/2016, his first collaboration with Denise Lara Margules.

Denise Lara Margules

Denise Lara Margules' artistic practice involves and intertwines the creation of documentary film and video, embroidery-based installations and cooking. She studied filmmaking at Universidad del Cine, and attended workshops by Martín Rejtman, Andrés Di Tella and Matías Piñeiro (Universidad Di Tella), Juan Campanella and Werner Herzog (EICTV, Cuba). At the same time and after years of cooking with her female relatives, she became a professional cook at IAG, Gato Dumas' school and with Pamela Villar. Since 2014, she studies embroidery with Guillermina Baiguera. Her short films were presented at BAFICI (14), MALBA, Festival Internacional de Cine de Cali (FICCALI) and Family Fiction Film Project, Portugal. In 2017, she was artist-in-residence at Casa Xitla, Ciudad de Mexico.

Credits

A project by: Agustín Jais & Denise Lara MargulesCommissioned by: Mestizo Arts PlatformIn cooperation with: Club Cultural Matienzo, wpZimmer & TaMacO-cheLaWith participation and support by: Femke Hellemans & Joris Baeten, Sol & Bárbara Echevarría, Franc Paredes, Dominique Willaert, Santiago Villanueva & Sofía Dourron, Dirk Seghers, Paula Baró, Geert Verbeke, Ruth Vanreusel & Rob Gielen, Geert Steendam & Angela Tillieu, Evi Swinnen, Pieter Willems, FabLab Leuven, FabLab+ Antwerpen, Karen Claessens