SPARK is a collaborative platform located in Malmö, Sweden with the purpose of strengthening the interface between architecture, art, research, and societal advancement through exhibitions and lectures. The aim is to promote artistic processes in architecture and urban development by activating intersections between art, architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture.
SPARK aims at exhibiting works that provokes critical discourse in current city building through explorative, experimental, trans- and interdisciplinary practices. SPARK collaborates with Lund University Department of Architectrue and the Built Environment, Architects Sweden Skåne, and Molekyl Gallery.
Current exhibition
Giuditta Vendrame
Unfinished Worlds
2023/12/01 - 2024/01/14
Opening December 1st 17-20
SPARK is delighted to present a solo exhibition with Rotterdam-based Italian artist Giuditta Vendrame opening December 1st. The show will present the site-specific installation, Unfinished Worlds.
We are largely accustomed to physical and political maps, leaving little space for other perspectives in our collective imagination. Geographical and political maps often contain overlooked elements. For Vendrame, the unobserved details include the subtle lines of parallels and meridians.
The geographic coordinate system, established by Ptolemy, forms the basis for modern maps. According to geographer Franco Farinelli, this system domesticated the globe into space, a concept that considers any part as equivalent, whether land or sea. Maps have historically served as tools for spatial orientation and control, occupation, and colonization. Challenging this modern spatial concept, Giuditta Vendrame deconstructs and reinterprets maps and globes in her works. Using cobblestones and nails, she creates a link between the ordinary surfaces we navigate daily and the sky. The nails, resembling upward-pointing mini monuments, symbolize the 'set of points' derived from astronomical observations, forming new connections.
These dotted maps can be seen as Unfinished Worlds, offering an opportunity for imagination or to envision desired worlds. Vendrame transforms maps, atlases, and globes from tools of control into tools for imagination.
Unifinished Worlds was initially conceived as a site-specific installation at the Palm House in Villa Waldberta, Feldafing, within the framework of Artist in Residence Munich in cooperation with The Artist and the Others.
Giuditta Vendrame intertwines art and design, navigating legal infrastructures in works that center on personhood, space, and mobility. In her installations, objects, works on paper, video and performances she deals with control of movement and the prevention of unwanted movement across different spatial scales. Vendrame challenges societal constructs by juxtaposing physical geography and natural forces, deconstructing and reconstructing worlds to transform perceptions of boundaries, territories, and movement.
Her artworks have been exhibited and presented in prominent exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, Walker Art Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, RMIT Gallery Melbourne, OCAT Shenzhen, among other venues.