MARY-AUDREY RAMIREZ – Unsolicited Awakening
Exhibition: June 5 – September 15, 2024
Curator: Gesine Borcherdt
Mary-Audrey Ramirez (*1990 in Luxembourg City; lives and works in Berlin) creates imaginary beings that invade space by means of digital installations and sculptures made of fabric. Entrenched since her childhood in gaming – the pursuit of electronic video games – she lures us into her cosmos where virtuality and reality coalesce. Her apocalyptic, yet humorous pictorial language illuminates our pleasure in escapism as well as the immanent thrill of the potential of new technologies. For her solo exhibition in KAI 10 | ARTHENA FOUNDATION she has transformed the venue into an immersive sci-fi parkour flooded with specially designed sounds and light effects, similar to those experienced on launching a video game. During their visit, viewers are invited to play a video game she herself developed.
Mary-Audrey Ramirez studied fine art at the Berlin University of the Arts and has had solo exhibitions in the Casino Luxembourg (continuing until 28 April 2024), the Kunsthalle Gießen, the Dortmunder Kunstverein, the Overbeck Gesellschaft Lübeck, and at Trauma Bar und Kino Berlin. Institutions where she has participated in group exhibitions include the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, KAI 10 | ARTHENA FOUNDATION in Düsseldorf, Haus Mödrath in Kerpen, and Berghain in Berlin. She is represented by the Cologne-based gallery Martinetz.
With the support of Kultur | lx Arts Council Luxembourg
Thanks to
The video game FORCED AMNESIA, 2023-2024 is supported by
Images
Exhibition leaflet
Further information on the exhibition can be found here.
Accompanying program
, 7 pm
MARY-AUDREY RAMIREZ – Unsolicited Awakening: Opening
Welcome: Monika Schnetkamp, Chairwoman Arthena Foundation
Introduction: Gesine Borcherdt, Curator of the exhibition
, 4 pm
How can gaming become art? | Finissage with artist talk
Artist talk with Mary-Audrey Ramirez and Gesine Borcherdt
Mary-Audrey Ramirez transforms the world of video games into a cosmos full of fantasy creatures that we encounter in real and digital spaces: Craft and new technologies become one, virtuality and reality merge. But how does gaming actually become art? What is the idea behind a work that looks cheerfully at a world without people? How did the artist develop her visual language and what role does her childhood play, to which everything goes back? Gesine Borcherdt, curator of the exhibition Unsolicited Awakening, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez discuss these and other questions in conversation.
Public guided tours
Public guided tours | 3 pm: 9.6., 23.6., 7.7., 21.7., 4.8., 18.8., 1.9., 15.9.2024