Sam Prize for Contemporary Art 2011

The “strategy” in question relates to the method of tackling historical and human material: the living communities created in the 1970s in Bogotá by “revolutionary” groups. Through those communities, the groups set up a system of “truths” filtering their vision of the world and an everyday reality interspersed with physical, intellectual and mental exercises. This way of life was intended to prepare them for the revolution, should it come about.

With a group of young Columbians, Iván Argote reconstructed one of those communities on the basis of stories passed down by word of mouth. Together they immersed themselves in the spirit and absurdities of the previous generation. The asynchronous visual archive they produced, because it is anchored in the present, switches between fiction, history and reality. The works exhibited constitute the traces of an experiment, and participate in the building of a story that questions the transformation of ideals, and their influence.