Other Projects

VIII Sara Modiano Grant: winning project “Roca acelerada de la amistad” by José Sanín

For the VIII Sara Modiano Grant, its winner, artist José Sanín, continues his investigations into the creative process based on what can be considered waste: the material collected during the sweeping of the spaces we inhabit. In previous projects such as "Pastas El Gallo" (2019) and the exhibition "El camino más largo. Arte contemporáneo en Antioquia" held by the MAMM in 2021, the artist began his exploration by creating an excretory machine that conglomerated and generated a new mass from the waste collected from these places. Later, for the collective exhibition "Fracaso" at Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá - Chapinero in 2022, the artist presented a technical and aesthetic evolution of that mass through the practice of marbling. These initial experiments and pieces led him to delve into the vast universe of an apparently incorporeal mass that is at the same time a living organism that accompanies us permanently: dust.

For this project, "Roca acelerada de la amistad" (Accelerated Rock of Friendship), it is essential to reimagine, as well as understand, the places and concepts from which the artist positions himself in order to delve further into his interests. Dust represents both the transience of our days and the traces of our own existence. Rocks, on the other hand, are witnesses that take years to form, compacting through pressure. Marble, a naturally occurring and highly valued material, whose creation time is measured in millennia, contrasts with the technique of marbling, an accelerated human act used in construction and architecture to coat elements and simulate the former, granting a sense of "value."

In this proposal, each of the objects that compose it represents the convergence of different places. In a single element, multiple spaces and, therefore, countless stories appear. The dust collected from the homes of those closest to the artist undergoes an accelerated transformation to acquire the appearance of marble. It is a careful exercise that compresses the mass formed by tiny traces of our everyday life, composed of various situations, emotions, and affections. This transformation of matter urges us, especially, to examine with attention and delicacy the meanings of our existence and what it entails, as well as the meanings we attribute to such simple actions as our obsession with organizing the world: cleaning and sweeping. The material collected for this artwork is inverted as it becomes an archaeological exercise of recovering a treasure.

─ Andrea Muñoz. 

Sara Modiano Grant

The Sara Modiano Foundation for the Arts (SaraMo Foundation) was created to commemorate the life and work of Sara Modiano, a conceptual artist from Barranquilla who represented Colombia in various international exhibitions. In the 1970s, she participated and received a special mention at the Valparaíso Biennial; in the 1980s, she exhibited at the São Paulo and Sydney Biennials; and in the 2000s, she represented Colombia in Europe and the United States. After forty years dedicated to art, Modiano left behind an artistic legacy, now considered a Cultural Heritage of Colombia. With the aim of preserving and promoting this legacy, in 2011 her three children, Katherine, Silvana, and Simón, established the SaraMo Foundation.

The Sara Modiano Grant, established in 2013, is a private initiative through which a Colombian artist under the age of 35 is awarded, with the aim of promoting their career nationally and internationally. Now in its eighth edition, the Grant provides the winning artist with a working grant to develop a specific unpublished artistic project. The recipient of the Grant is selected through a private call for entries, for which a nominating panel, a selection panel, and an awarding panel are convened annually.

VIII Sara Modiano Grant

• Principal Advisor: María Mercedes González.
• Awarding Panel Members: Alexia Tala (Independent Curator), Alexa Halaby (Director of the Patricia Cisneros Phelps Collection), Andrea Muñoz (Director of Plural Nodo Cultural).
• Nominating Panel: Adriana Pineda, Danaela Arguelles, Tatiana Rais, Nicolás Cadavid, María Isabel Rueda, Breyner Huertas, Fernando Arias.
• Selection Panel: Alejandra Sarria, Fredy Alzate, Francine Birbragher, Erika Martínez.