Showing posts with label LAGOS BIENNIAL. Show all posts

Saturday, February 28, 2026

Operational Continuity and Field Consolidation * Verified Trajectory

The present moment marks not expansion but consolidation. Over a twenty-five-year arc (2001–2026), the work associated with Socioplastics demonstrates continuous activity across architecture, relational art, performance documentation, academic affiliation, and institutional inscription. The recent sequence of essays—addressing operational continuity, relational density, structural stabilization, cross-domain verification, and epistemic fixation—should be understood as analytic clarification of accumulated practice rather than the initiation of a new phase. The evidentiary base is public and verifiable. Architectural engagement is externally documented. Collaboration with MVRDV appears in the Mirador housing project in Madrid and in related architectural archives and publications. Professional inscription and publication records are available through COAM. These records situate the early phase of practice within the discipline of architecture, establishing traceable authorship and participation. The trajectory then expands without rupture into relational and performative domains. Exhibitions, performances, and relational series are documented through cultural journals, museum listings, and theatre networks, demonstrating cross-domain continuity rather than disciplinary departure.

This document delineates not a portfolio but a distributed verification layer: a cartographic assemblage of externally corroborated inscriptions that stabilise Anto Lloveras’ trajectory across architecture, urban systems, relational art, and curatorial research between 2001 and 2026.

Its operative thesis is that authorship, when dispersed across heterogeneous institutional strata, acquires infrastructural resilience. From early architectural entanglements with MVRDV—including the emblematic Mirador project documented in transnational archives—to formal accreditation within COAM records, the architectural substratum establishes a systemic literacy in spatial metabolism. This foundation subsequently migrates into post-disciplinary arenas: relational performances indexed by Redescena, theoretical articulations in Revista Replicante, and institutional anchoring through an ORCID identifier, each functioning as nodal confirmations of epistemic continuity. The 2024 participation in the Lagos Biennial, intersecting with textile research platforms and national press coverage, exemplifies disciplinary displacement without ontological rupture: architecture mutates into environmental inquiry, exhibitionary device, and metabolic critique. A specific synthesis emerges in the convergence of textile waste research, curatorial documentation, and distributed media platforms, where digital archives, museum exhibitions, and social channels coalesce into a persistent public ledger. Consequently, cross-domain persistence becomes empirically traceable, not through self-narration but through institutional echo. The cumulative effect is an infrastructural continuum wherein built form, performance, research identification, and networked dissemination operate as mutually reinforcing strata. Authorship here is neither singular nor static; it is a metabolic archive, sustained by verifiable dispersion and consolidated through systemic coherence.

The transdisciplinary intersection between architectural scale, textile materiality, and relational art establishes a critical dialogue where the urban fabric meets social practice. By integrating the structural logic of MVRDV and the Mirador Building—conceptualized as the Trole Building, a white "high-rise" landmark in Madrid's south—with the fluid, unstable installations of Anto Lloveras and LAPIEZA, the work transcends traditional boundaries. This practice treats "context as a ready-made," spanning from the Lagos Biennial 2024 and environmental textile research at Contextile to the performative depth of Double Sided (Doble Cara) and the hyperplastic writing of Fireworks. The pedagogical dimension is anchored by lectures at NTNU, academic research at UAM and COAM, and the development of the ARCO Madrid 2026 guest lounge. The result is a synthesis where architecture, environmental consciousness, and relational aesthetics converge into a singular, evolving narrative for the 2024–2026 period

SOCIOPLASTICS — VERIFIED EXTERNAL NODES & FIELD ANCHORS (2001–2026)

This document consolidates the externally verifiable inscriptions of Anto Lloveras’ trajectory across architecture, urban systems, relational art, curatorial practice, research identification, biennials, residencies, institutional records, and distributed media platforms between 2001 and 2026. These links operate as field anchors across heterogeneous domains: built architecture (MVRDV, COAM records), international biennials (Lagos), textile research platforms (Contextile, RE-(T)eXhile), national press (El País), academic identifiers (ORCID), museum exhibitions, performance networks, curatorial documentation, and digital archives. Together they confirm cross-domain persistence, disciplinary displacement, and infrastructural continuity. This is not a portfolio; it is a distributed verification layer.

Re-(t)exHile * Stories of Waste and Resilience * LAGOS, NIGERIA * ART and ARCHITECTURE Biennial

In the bustling heart of Lagos, Nigeria, the 4th Lagos Art and Architecture Biennial unfolded from February 3 to 10, 2024, transforming Tafawa Balewa Square—a site steeped in colonial history as a former racecourse turned post-independence civic hub—into a vibrant arena for reflection on sovereignty, belonging, and alliance. Curated by Folakunle Oshun and Kathryn Weir, this edition, themed "Refuge," eschewed traditional exhibition formats in favor of dynamic, process-oriented interventions that spark ongoing dialogues rather than static displays. Amid this experimental landscape, the relational installation re-(t)exHile emerged as a poignant critique of global textile waste, postcolonial economies, and environmental violence, weaving discarded fabrics into a tapestry of exile and repair. Conceived as an ongoing project (2024–present), re-(t)exHile traces the shadowy journeys of secondhand clothing from the Global North to African markets, where they embody both economic lifelines and ecological burdens. Collaboratively crafted by artists Martinka Bobrikova, Óscar De Carmen, Adebola Badmus, María Alejandra Gatti, and Anto Lloveras, the work draws from extensive field research in Lagos (2022–2023), including site visits to textile dumps and markets. Photographic archives by Mide King capture the raw materiality of these streams, while digital storytelling via social media reels and blogs amplifies voices from the margins. At the Biennial, the installation materialized as ephemeral structures: migrant textiles draped over found debris, forming a "living document" that stitches together narratives of displacement, memory, and resistance.

FILM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgUK2ppLQbE&t=12s

The project's site-specific resonance at Tafawa Balewa Square amplifies its themes. Once a symbol of colonial leisure, the square now hosts civic gatherings, mirroring how discarded cloths—remnants of fast fashion's overproduction—reclaim space in Lagos's informal economies. Re-(t)exHile invites interaction, blurring lines between art, activism, and archive. Visitors navigate the pavilion, encountering layers of postcolonial trauma: fabrics as carriers of "material memory," evoking forced migrations and environmental degradation. As Lloveras notes in his blog reflections, the work resists closure, evolving through collaborations and public engagements, much like the Biennial's generative ethos. Beyond aesthetics, re-(t)exHile confronts urgent realities. In Lagos, where secondhand markets thrive amid waste crises, it highlights how global capitalism dumps its excesses on the South, perpetuating cycles of exploitation. Yet, it offers hope through "repair"—reimagining waste as refuge, fostering alliances across borders. Featured in outlets like The Guardian Nigeria, the installation underscores art's role in illuminating overlooked economies and sparking ecological justice. This polyphonic intervention exemplifies how contemporary art can activate possibilities in a fractured world. As the Biennial challenges "universal" exhibition models, re-(t)exHile stands as a critical fabric, mending the tears of history while questioning futures of sustainability and solidarity. In an era of accelerating waste, it reminds us: refuge lies in the threads we choose to weave.

Re-(t)exHile * Site Specific Tension

The textile canopy, suspended between monumental equestrian sculptures and industrial concrete, embodies both shelter and rupture, generating a space of contingent collectivity amidst urban residues.

Central to the project is the reuse of second-hand textiles, sourced from Katangua Market, one of Africa’s largest hubs for the circulation of discarded garments from the Global North. Purchased in bulk bags from the lowest-priced section, the fabrics—subjected to resistance testing—bear the wear of global consumption and the imprint of economic asymmetries. Their transformation into a resilient canopy challenges normative notions of material obsolescence, embedding within the structure a tangible critique of circular economies. While discourses around sustainability often celebrate reuse, Re-(t)exHile underscores the paradoxical violence of material dumping, where “recycling” veils extractive trade practices. The project aligns with Ibrahim Mahama’s jute installations and El Anatsui’s reconstituted bottle-top tapestries, yet departs in its deliberate impermanence, crafting a temporal occupation that resists commodification. The red line becomes a symbol of marginality, invisibilized yet persistent, evoking questions of exclusion, mobility, and visibility in urban and artistic domains. Its in-betweenness redefines the installation as a space of latency, where meaning flickers between presence and absence, structure and cloth, power and fragility. Set against the monumental backdrop of Tafawa Balewa Square’s equestrian figures and rigid architectural geometries, Re-(t)exHile intervenes with softness, adaptability, and symbolic tension.

The tensile structure, suspended by three stainless steel cables and securely anchored to the concrete ground, creates spatial dynamism through subtle shifts in height, movement, and light. This ephemeral spatiality contrasts with the square’s permanence and symmetry, recalling Gordon Matta-Clark’s acts of architectural incision, and Do Ho Suh’s fabric architectures that transpose domesticity into public space. As with the 2016 Venice Biennale’s “Reporting from the Front”, which emphasized architecture as social action, this work challenges the authoritative monumentality of the plaza, transforming it into a contested zone of dialogue and occupation. The project’s transdisciplinary approach—merging architectural design, textile knowledge, and performance—reflects a collaborative ethos resonant with the Sharjah Biennial’s emphasis on artistic networks and spatial justice. Beyond its physical form, Re-(t)exHile operates as a platform for collaborative acts, a refuge not only from environmental elements but from dominant narratives of space and belonging. The act of constructing together becomes a political gesture, emphasizing process over product, relation over object. In Re-(t)exHile, the ephemeral canopy is more than an architectural intervention; it is a spatial manifesto against exclusion, waste, and fixity. By embedding hidden messages, engaging with precarious materials, and occupying a charged urban site, the work enacts a critique of global material flows while crafting a space of temporary resistance and care. It challenges us to rethink what architecture can do—to shelter, to question, to reveal—and how artistic interventions might disrupt and reimagine the narratives inscribed in public space.

Re-(t)exHile – Refuge 2024, presented at the IV Lagos Biennial of Art and Architecture, was an intersection of ephemeral architecture, urban memory, and material circulation that converges into a powerful spatial critique. Conceived by a transdisciplinary team of artists, architects, and cultural practitioners including Lloveras, Bobrikova, Carmen, Gatti and Badmus.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

IV Lagos Art and Architecture Biennial ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: re-(T)exHile :::::::::::::::: 3 to 10 February 2024 ************* Tafawa Balewa Square ____ Lagos, Nigeria

REEL I https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18039450481656614

REEL II https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18024309838821136

re-(t)exHile http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-pavilion-to-be-showcased-at-4th-art.html ++ http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2024/01/lagos-biennial-2024-3-to-10-february.html Research trip http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2022/09/lagos-nigeria-september-2022-biennial.html + http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2023/09/iv-bienal-de-arte-y-arquitectura-lagos.html REFUGE 2024 https://lagos-biennial.org

The 2024 edition of the Lagos Biennial takes place in the heart of Lagos on the grounds of Tafawa Balewa Square, a site named in honour of the first Nigerian Prime Minister. The Biennial occupies this historical space, linked to entertainment in the colonial period as a racecourse and to political, cultural and commercial events after Independence, in order to reflect on its possible meanings in relation to political allegiance, territory, sovereignty, regionality, notions of belonging, encounter, and alliance. It moves the cursor away from a history of ‘universal’ exhibitions and biennials towards experiments in non-conventional modes of exhibition making, shifting from the idea of the work as an end in itself towards generative models and prototypes that continue to activate possibilities in the world.

https://lagos-biennial.org

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Lagos-Biennial 2021 2024________________________OUTSIDER

OUTSIDER

https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2021/12/outsider-premiere-s5d-2021-lagos.html

OSCAR DE CARMEN - MARTINKA BOBRIKOVA

ANTO LLOVERAS

MARÍA ALEJANDRA GATTI

REFUGE

Lagos Biennial 2021.2023 ___ Online 04-16.12.2021

The joint Third and Fourth Editions - launches on 4 December 2021 with the online presentation of videos from the 13 teams selected from the 2021 open call process. This process-based format was developed during the period of the Covid 19 pandemic to work around reduced travel possibilities and to create a new format with a cohort of artists working across a longer duration. The Biennial received applications of the highest quality with artists from across Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas and Europe, leaving the Jury with a tough job in identifying the proposals which best responded to the established theme of <Refuge >. The 13 selected teams, each comprising a curator, artists, and designers, were recognised by the jury as responding in conceptually complex and currently pertinent ways to ideas of < Refuge >. They each were able to combine critical practice with aesthetic strategies and approaches to the theme. Their proposals, which the public will see presented from 4 December, will further be developed over the next year and then realised in Lagos in 2023. The 13 teams were selected by our expert Jury members, N’Gone Fall, Kathryn Weir, and Kunle Adeyemi.

@lagos_biennial

ARTISTIC DIRECTORS. Kathryn Weir. Folakunle Oshun. SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR. N'Goné Fall. PROJECT MANAGER. Gina Amama. TECHNICAL DIRECTOR. Jolomi Awala. PRESS SECRETARY. Opeyemi Balogun. ARTWORKS, ARTISTS, DESIGNERS AND CURATORS. DIS-ASSEMBLING THE CLOUD(S) Temitayo Ogunbiyi (Nigeria), Lisa Ann Parks (USA), Laila Shereen Sakr (USA), Miha Vipotnik (Slovenia). Data Centered Collective. Temitayo Ogunbiyi (Nigeria) BLACK TALES. Mónica Miranda (Angola/Portugal), Chullage (Portugal/Cape Verde). Cindy Sissokho (UK). ALIENS IN ERITREA. Sephora Woldu (Eritrea/USA), Shushan Tesfuzigta Eritrea/USA), Rezene Tsegai Eritrea/USA), Nahom Abraham Wael (Eritrea), Gzoly Vishnu Balunsat (Philipines/Germany/USA). Sephora Woldu (Eritrea/USA). AS THE CARBON WE ARE Jade Montserrat (UK) INIVA Alexandra Moore (UK). EWORO YI NGBE: PLANT TEMPLE Yussef Agbo-Ola (Nigeria/USA) Olaniyi Studio (UK) HANGING IMAGINARIES Feda Wardak (Afghanistan/France), Kassir Kossoko (Benin), Platform Aman Iwan Ayodele Arigbabu (Nigeria) MARE A MARE Meriem Chabani (France/Algeria), Zoe Paul (UK), Mohssin Harraki (Morocco) Leone Contini (Italy), Asuncion Molinos Gordo (Spain) Anïssa Touati (France). MUSING THE BORDER. Helena Uambembe (South Africa/Angola), Kiluanji Kia Henda & Paulo Moreira (Angola/Portugal), Marina Camargo (Brazil), Sammy Baloji (DRC) Paula Nascimento (Angola), Suzana Sousa (Angola) OUTSIDER. Martinka Bobrikova (Slovakia) Oscar de Carmen (Spain) Anto Lloveras (Spain) María Alejandra Gatti (Argentina/Italy). RADIO BORN THROW WAY Adéọlá Ọlágúnjú (Nigeria)THE ALBANIAN CONFERENCE Anna Ehrenstein,(Germany), Vidisha Saini (Fadescha) (India) Rebecca Pokua Korang (Germany) Blair Opara and Clinton Opara DNA (Nigeria) Shaunak Mahbubani (India) TRACES OF ECSTASY Temitayo Shonibare (Nigeria), Nolan Oswald Dennis (South Africa) Evan Ifekoya (UK), Raymond Pinto (USA), Adeju Thompson (Nigeria) Kojo Abudu (UK/Nigeria) XTRÆNCESTRAL Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald (USA/Liberia) Julia Cohen Ribeiro (Argentina), Lina Lasso (Colombia), Jasmin Sánchez (Brazil), Florencia Victoria Gomes (Argentina) Kukily, afrofeminist arts collective.

OUTSIDER

THE FLAG SQUAD