Image Bank
Past event

About

Guest curators: Lauri Firstenberg and Anton Vidokle

 

The source material for this exhibition is the photographic archive of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros who compiled thousands of images over the course of his own extraordinary life. Unique in structure, content and intention, the archive was meant for the use of fellow artists as a means of inspiration and a source of found imagery. Its contents, images from the 1930s to the early 1970s, offer cultural and social portraits of different eras and nations from documentation of anti-fascist demonstrations in New York and the Watts riots in Los Angeles to significant moments in the history of Russian stage and Mexican cinema.

As the title of the project suggests, the archive offers a politicized vision developed in the context of revolutionary struggles in Mexico and abroad. This multi-phase project began with digitizing approximately 5000 images from the archive which has been utilized by international scholars and researcher publicly since the 1970s. It is now made available via the internet for the first time at http://www.e-flux.com/siqueiros. The exhibition will include artist projects by Carlos Amorales, Daniel Buren, Santiago Cucullu, Allan De Souza, Ken Gonzales-Day, Gabriel Kuri, Ken Lum, Mark Manders, Daniel J. Martinez, Mona Marzouk, Ruben Ochoa, Ruben Ortiz Torres, Martha Rosler, Anri Sala and others who will respond to and elaborate upon this archive.

An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life is a collaboration with Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros and e-flux and is made possible in part by the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Etant Donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; The Consulate General of the Netherlands, New York; The Canadian Consulate General, Los Angeles; Andrea Rosen Gallery; Ford Foundation; Perry Rubenstein Gallery; The Puffin Foundation; and CONACULTA. Additional support provided by Campari. In-kind support provided by Dynamic Images. Billboard project by LAXART.