The Copenhagen Declaration at The Foundry

13 Jun 2015

The Copenhagen Declaration is travelling! Come join us in France:

Opening of The Foundry with The Copenhagen Declaration by Jens Haaning and Santiago Sierra - Reception 13th June 2015 from 5pm.

The Copenhagen Declaration is an artistic collaboration by Jens Haaning and Santiago Sierra, curated by Marie Thams. a/political will be showing the work and thus mark the opening of their new space The Foundry in Maubourguet, France.

invite

Press Release:

a/political are pleased to announce the opening of The Foundry in Maubourguet, France. Located west of Toulouse, The Foundry is situated 50 kilometers from the Pyrenees mountain range.

Founded in 1870 by Jules Fabre, the iron foundry mobilized during the First World War to produce armaments and military equipment for the National Defense. After the war, the secluded industrial area became a center for Communists. Emigrating from the Fascist regimes of Franco and Mussolini, an international immigrant community developed, working together under a shared identity and ideology.

Traveling to France from Denmark, a/political opens The Foundry with ‘The Copenhagen Declaration’, a collaboration by Jens Haaning and Santiago Sierra. The sentence TIRED OF THIS GLOBAL SADISTIC REGIME comprises 31 black painted wooden letters, each measuring up to 360 x 250 x 100 cm. Installed in the central epicscale room, the statement forms a dialogue with The Foundry’s political history.

Recently converted, The Foundry is now an experimental art space, hosting ambitious projects outside the controls of the contemporary art market. Artists will be invited to produce large-scale work in the neighboring factories. In addition, a/political will acquire artworks for permanent installation at The Foundry to compliment the collection currently located in London.

Context

a/political is dedicated to dynamic collaboration with socio-political artists. Structured around an expanding collection, tracing the history of engaged art from the Russian Revolution to the present day, the organization works with a network of artists and leading institutions on projects, commissions and the production of new work.

Jens Haaning (b. 1965) has been involved with political activities long before he entered art school at the age of 23, where he fostered a political approach to his own existence and our co-existence in his early works of the late 1980s. Many of his works take their starting point from marginalized groups, investigating intolerance and the human condition of being alien or different. Haaning works with meanings inherent within our language and the way we communicate visually, often making use of a direct aesthetic to deal with complex situations.

Santiago Sierra (b. 1966) is known internationally for his socially engaged work, formally deriving from the Minimalist and Conceptual movements of the 1960s. Hiring subjects who are seemingly on the outskirts of society, such as immigrants, political prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes, he enlists them in demeaning and pointless labour for minimal remuneration. Restaging the power structures inherent in Capitalism, Sierra critiques society through the magnification of the individual's desperation and exploitation.

The collaboration between Jens Haaning and Santiago Sierra was initiated by Marie Thams (artist and curator based in Copenhagen) who is the curator of The Copenhagen Declaration. The work was first shown at the Faurschou Foundation’s exhibition premises in The Free Port of Copenhagen, and will travel internationally.

The Foundry will be open to the public upon request.

For more information and to R.S.V.P. for the opening reception, please email: info@thefoundry.fr

The Foundry
Rue de la Fonderie
65700 Maubourguet
Midi-Pyrenees
France

Websites
www.thefoundry.fr
www.a-political.org

The Foundry

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