Cura, Issue 41

PLEASE NOTE:
Magazine cover varies and particular cover cannot not be specified for order, but you can state your cover preference in the order notes at checkout and, if available, we will send that one.

Cura includes specific sections devoted to the curatorial approaches of the past and present and special interventions by expressly invited curators and artists, the actors of novel interactions between text, graphics and images. Conversations, visual essays, critical texts, thematic analyses, lab projects are just some of the various formats through which the contents of the magazine are developed and presented.

The different sections allow the exploration and presentation of a wide range of artistic practices and are the facets of a single and organic research project, conducted through the pages of the magazine and also developed within the other activities of Cura. platform. The paper medium is intended as a dynamic and flexible exhibition space in constant evolution, where the reader can discover the most interesting expressions of contemporary visual arts.

In this issue:

Through an extensive investigation of the new searches and work productions of international artists, the brand new CURA. 41, New World AgencyTM raises questions related to the ability of art and artists to have a transformative role as regards the apparent irreversibility of the events that impact our present. In a shift between fiction and reality, New World AgencyTM explores, with a transgenerational gaze, the artists who foresaw the building of new possible worlds and new modes of agency for alternative futures. Not only AI, CGI, videogames and virtual reality, but also highly advanced analog tools, animatronics, and mechanical devices are able to forge the imaginative, creative and narrative space of artists, founding new realities, in which mythology, ghosts, topoi, fables, childhood memories, technology, pop culture and magic intertwine, in the comprehensive illusion to be in different places and in part of it.

“A World is a super-organism you can believe in…
Worlding is the art of an individual creating a World” —Ian Cheng.

CURA. 41 presents 4+1 covers with works’ premiere by: Diego Marcon introduced by Travis Diehl; Mark Leckey presented by a long mixtape of undead voices created by Charlie Fox; Cécile B. Evans presented by Asma Barchiche; plus a cover story and an insert by trans woman artist and activist Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), photographed by Myles Loftin.

Anticipating the special cover coming out in December, Jordan Wolfson, in conversation with Caroline Busta and Lil Internet, reveals the production and what goes on behind the scenes of his third animatronic sculpture. Essays, interviews, and projects include an introductory text by Ian Cheng; a focus on the pioneering work of the American artist Mike Kelley, presented by the double gaze of the curator of La Bourse in Paris, Jean-Marie Gallais, and the artist, raised in his myth, Matt Copson; a conversation between Agnieszka Kurant and Hans Ulrich Obrist, investigating the evolution of culture and also “the relationship between predicting the future and how this is impacting the actual future”; new narratives, articulated in the visual essay conceived by Helen Marten.

Furthermore, we present the new film and corpus of work by Martine Syms, introduced by the British curator Ben Broome; a special section curated by Countersubject that introduces us to the work of the multi-disciplinary art collective Bernadette Corporation; Anna Uddenberg’s totemic sculptures, presented by David Andrew Tasman; a photo shoot commissioned to the New York-based fashion duo of artists and activists Women’s History Museum which is introduced by a conversation with Ada O’Higgins. The New Now section also features the work of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, with a text by Wong Binghao (Bing), of Gabriel Massan, investigated by Tamar Clarke-Brown, and Alice Bucknell in conversation with Sarah Johanna Theurer. The Portraits’ section features the work of Pete Jiadong Qiang with a text by Tadej Vindiš; Shuang Li with a text by Lina Martin-Chan; Gray Wielebinski presented by Francesca Gavin; Omsk Social Club with a text by Estelle Hoy; Ndayé Kouagou presented by Madeleine Planeix-Crocker.