Culture

AD Minoliti in Cornwall

An imaginary world made up by a visual puzzle of ideas useful for exploring sexuality and biology. Starting from here, the artist Ad Minoliti within geometric abstraction combines queer and feminist theory (she is co-founder of the feminist artistic collective PintorAs) in multiple expressive techniques.
In her installations and in her paintings and installations it is difficult to distinguish between life and being an artist because both serve as vectors to challenge social hierarchies in art and politics. Within her expressiveness Minoliti conceptualizes herself, without closing off, proposing an original being of her own among painting, design and past explorations.
In 2022, Tate St Ives in Cornwall planned the first UK solo by Ad Minoliti: Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush.
The exhibision has been conceived as a critical speculation of Biosphere 2, the world’s largest Earth science experiment launched in 1984, in the Arizona desert. Funded by oil tycoon, Ed Bass, Biosphere 2 was created to study whether or not humans could create and sustain life in an artificial environment such as space stations. B2’s team tried – consequently failing – to isolate eight people (all white Americans and one European) for two years. This monumental experiment is a perfect example of the space race being an extractivist colonising endeavour, enhancing the interests of the already powerful – including major economic and military institutions – and exacerbating pre-existing detrimental processes such as wars, economic inequality, and environmental degradation.
Biosfera Peluche / Biosphere Plush intends to work in the opposite direction to Biosphere 2. Its environment has been conceived as a community centre open to all, offering a space for intersectional feminist education and fantasy.
The exhibition has been produced by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, curated by Irene Aristizábal. This exhibition has been creatively adapted for Tate St Ives in collaboration with Anne Barlow and Giles Jackson. Adding at Tate St Ives a further exhibition connected with the territory of West Cornwall linking two artists. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE (1912–2004) and Jonathan Michael Ray (b.1984): the show considers how both artists draw inspiration from the local landscape, exploring the idea that there is more to experience in nature than can be found on the surface.

Biography

Adriana Minoliti is an Argentinian Postwar & Contemporary painter born in 1980. Their work is currently being shown at multiple venues like La Casa Encendida in Madrid. Numerous key galleries and museums such as MCA, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago have featured Ad Minoliti’s work in the past.Ad Minoliti’s work has been offered at auction multiple times. Among the artist’s sold works is “Queer Deco Intervention”, which realized $16,250 USD at Phillips New York in 2019.
Ad Minoliti earned a BFA from the National Academy of Fine Arts P. Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They have been an agent at the Artistic Investigation Center of Argentina since 2009, the year in which they also co-founded the group PintorAs – a feminist collective of Argentinian painters. They have won numerous prizes in Argentina and their work has been exhibited at galleries, institutions and museums worldwide. Recent exhibitions include the Bienal del Mercosur in Porto Alegre, the Aichi Triennal in Japan, Front Cleveland Triennal, Venice Biennale 2019 and Gwanju Biennale 2020.

AD Minoliti
Tate St Ives
28 May – 30 October 2022
Open Monday to Sunday 10.00 – 17.20

by Alain Chivilò