00:00 [ Background noise ]
00:17 >> Ana Jota started late as an artist.
00:21 She showed for the first time in a group exhibition in 1979.
00:27 She was born in 1946, so she was already in her early 30s
00:33 when she showed her work for the first time.
00:35 And then in the following years, her work was featured
00:40 in a few group shows until she finally did her first solo
00:46 exhibition in 1987.
00:49 She showed a large series of paintings.
00:53 Since then, she has been showing her work regularly in Portugal.
00:59 She remained until very late a local artist.
01:04 And she has been getting some international attention
01:09 in the last 11 years or so.
01:13 It's growing, the circulation of her work internationally.
01:18 And this show at Kunsthalle Zurich is part of that process
01:24 of recognition.
01:26 Ana Jota is an artist that doesn't attach,
01:36 is not privileging any particular medium.
01:44 So when Ana is making art, it's not that she's following any
01:50 parameters that have to do with medium
01:53 or with certain materials and techniques.
01:57 Her work is extremely diverse.
02:01 And the work throughout the years was structured
02:08 through a series, groups of works that are cohesive
02:17 from a stylistic point of view.
02:18 But then she moves to a different series
02:22 that is completely different in every respect.
02:26 And so on and so forth.
02:28 So as she was moving ahead as an artist, her work was opening up,
02:35 opening up, opening up in a quite amazing way.
02:39 So it's very difficult to frame her,
02:42 to describe her as an artist.
02:46 This exhibition shows a selection of works
02:53 from different periods or years.
03:00 The older work is from '88, '89.
03:04 But in fact, it covers mostly, so to speak,
03:08 the last 25 years of her practice.
03:12 And I think at least that was my idea.
03:18 The exhibition enables the visitor,
03:22 the visitor that has an interest or a predisposition
03:26 to play the game, to enter the work and the world
03:33 of Anna.
03:35 [ Background Conversations ]
04:05 >> One side of the space is just these huge windows
04:14 where you cannot hang anything.
04:16 So if one circulates through the exhibition space,
04:26 especially in the second room,
04:29 the floor pieces are very important
04:33 to counterbalance the main wall, this long,
04:37 almost 19-meter wall.
04:38 I constructed the exhibition using a very simple protocol.
04:46 Instead of following a predetermined framework
04:52 or perspective or guidelines, I decided to choose one work
05:02 and use this work as the trigger
05:04 for the thinking behind the exhibition,
05:07 for a very experimental associative process going
05:12 from one work to another and constructing the exhibition step
05:17 by step through these associations.
05:20 And see where that would take me
05:25 and where that would take the visitor once the exhibition
05:29 would be ready to be experienced.
05:31 So I didn't want to have any kind of demonstrative take
05:37 on Anna's work or try to encompass
05:40 because that would be impossible.
05:43 The whole practice as it has, or the scope of her work as it has
05:52 grown throughout the years.
05:59 It's 45 years of trajectory
06:01 that the exhibition is not trying to encompass.
06:04 I begin with a self-portrait, which is the clown dressed
06:13 as a woman, and it's a self-portrait.
06:17 The title gives a clear indication
06:20 that it's a self-portrait.
06:21 It's called Light of Jota.
06:26 And then I asked myself what if I would use self-portrait
06:31 as a light motive to start this process
06:36 of composing the exhibition.
06:38 And so the works in the first room can be considered
06:43 self-portraits, although that is not the subject
06:46 of what's going on in the first room.
06:48 It was more of an alibi, a stratagem
06:52 to compose the exhibition.
06:57 One thing that becomes very apparent already
07:04 in the first room and continues to be very visible
07:09 in the second room is what an extraordinary appropriationist
07:14 Anna Jota is, borrowing from totally discrepant sources
07:22 and incorporating totally different things in her works
07:28 without the rhetoric of appropriation.
07:34 You see the exhibition, you are not seeing, oh, appropriation.
07:37 You are not labeling the work
07:40 through this term appropriation like we do when we are looking
07:47 at the work, say, of Cheryl Levine,
07:52 that we say appropriation.
07:55 You don't say that when you encounter the work of Anna.
07:59 And that I think is also very interesting,
08:01 and it tells how subtle and -- how subtle her practice is.
08:13 [ Background Conversations ]
08:22 [ Laughter ]
08:44 >> Well, I know that you have talked already with the curator
08:48 and a friend of mine, Miguel van Schneider.
08:51 But there is no -- it was him with me that we decided
08:56 to make an ensemble of different periods of my work.
09:03 And I don't think -- I think --
09:07 I know you wrote on the presentation of the show
09:11 that at first sight it looks like a collective.
09:15 But I don't think so.
09:17 I think there is something a little bit,
09:20 I wouldn't say peculiar.
09:23 I would say maybe -- maybe what?
09:27 What could I say about the mood of the thing?
09:31 It's -- first, the space is very beautiful.
09:35 It looks empty, although it has a few pieces.
09:40 But I would say that it is eccentric.
09:45 It does look like a collective, because a collective for me
09:50 in general, if it is very well installed, pieces,
09:56 you can feel that they are --
09:58 they don't belong to the same person.
10:00 And here, if you have some attention --
10:03 and when I say eccentric, means out of the center.
10:08 Because it's -- I am out of the center.
10:11 I'm not much in the artist plot.
10:18 I start long time ago with the theater.
10:25 And I decided to become a plastic artist,
10:30 although I'm a bit professional.
10:33 Because it was the only way to work with myself.
10:39 So that's why I -- after I -- some galleries and all this.
10:44 But I am not in the -- much in this universe
10:48 of plastic arts, especially nowadays.
10:52 Because as you know, and everybody knows, this is a --
10:54 this -- the times have changed.
10:57 And so this is more a kind of political, economical stuff.
11:03 But no big deal for me.
11:06 I am also -- and I always have been, even when I was
11:12 in another kind of works, out of the market.
11:18 So anyway, you cannot escape.
11:21 I am in the market, but I don't deal with that in general.
11:26 So it can be eccentric, out of the center.
11:33 But I think it's very -- it's not difficult to understand
11:38 that it's just one man show, one woman show, or whatever.
11:44 [ Background noise ]
12:12 >> Okay. I love a lot of things.
12:22 And I simply go out in the streets, or --
12:26 and I see very standard, normal things that I use.
12:33 It's -- I don't choose special things.
12:40 Even I don't -- never, never think.
12:43 If I need to think, I can think.
12:45 But I am irrational.
12:47 This is visual arts and way of dealing with art.
12:51 I think it -- you might be more irrational than a thinker.
12:57 A thinker is another kind of work for other kind of workers.
13:01 I just -- I go around.
13:05 It's for me to eat and to live, to sleep, and to work.
13:10 It's the only thing I know.
13:11 So -- and to have pleasure.
13:14 I only do things with pleasure.
13:16 And pleasure -- and with energy.
13:19 You need energy to make things with pleasure.
13:21 And that's all.
13:22 It's very simple.
13:23 There are so many things that nobody notices
13:27 in everyday life, that's all.
13:30 That's what I -- that it's my reality.
13:34 That I can transform as an artist.
13:36 Not to -- I transform a lot.
13:39 And -- but in a very discreet way.
13:43 Because something that I don't feel very comfortable nowadays.
13:50 Not only nowadays, but nowadays special.
13:53 It's that I don't like violence in art.
13:57 And I hate that kind of stuff.
14:00 You have violence in your life every day.
14:03 But I never could use that.
14:05 Art is not for political things.
14:09 There are political -- the political things are everywhere
14:14 around, but not -- it's not an art matter for me.
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14:48 I have no ideas.
14:51 And I don't make sketches.
14:52 If I make sketches, everything is a sketch.
14:55 Even our life.
14:56 But if I make a sketch, which I like very much,
15:01 it's a final thing.
15:02 It's -- I don't make a sketch for passing it
15:08 to another kind of thing.
15:12 No. A sketch is a sketch, and that's all.
15:15 No need anything else.
15:18 Sometimes I produce a lot.
15:20 Other times I do nothing, almost nothing.
15:23 I'm maybe receiving information, visual information,
15:30 but I don't notice it.
15:31 So you mean since I am a plastic artist?
15:35 Well, I am quite old, so I work for 40 years, more than 40 years.
15:42 I might say not millions, but maybe 5,000.
15:48 A lot of things.
15:49 I work a lot.
15:50 But I'm not a maniac of working.
15:52 I prefer to feel free.
15:55 I'm a bit of a -- old -- eccentric and a free bird.
16:02 It's -- I don't like to work for anybody, which I never could.
16:09 That's why I left the cinema and the theater.
16:12 I'm not a product.
16:16 I'm an artist.
16:18 That's all.
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