Join us for a conversation between Kobe Matthys (Agency) and Uriel Orlow, artist of the exhibition Learning from Artemisia. Orlow will discuss his multidisciplinary and research-based practice in which he uses the world of botany as a lens through which he explores the ramifications of colonization and the postcolonial. Together, Matthys and Orlow will engage with shared themes in their practice including questions of patenting and intellectual property.

Biographies

Uriel Orlow lives and works between London and Lisbon. He studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design London, the Slade School of Art, University College London and the University of Geneva, completing a PhD in Fine Art in 2002. Orlow’s work is presented widely in galleries, museums, film festivals and international survey shows including 6th Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018), 2nd Yinchuan Biennial (2018), 13th Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), 7th Moscow Biennial (2017), EVA International, Limerick (2016), 2nd Aichi Triennale, Nagoya (2013), Bergen Assembly (2013), Manifesta 9 (2012), 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Mainz (2019); Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris (2018); Market Photo Workshop & Pool, Johannesburg (2018); Kunsthalle St Gallen (2018); PAV – Parco Arte Vivente (2017); Parc Saint Léger (2017), The Showroom, London (2016); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2015); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2015); Depo, Istanbul (2015), Spike Island, Bristol (2013). In 2018 Sternberg Press published the major monograph Theatrum Botanicum and in 2019 Shelter Press published the monograph Soil Affinities.
Orlow is visiting professor at the Royal College of Art London and is currently Reader (associate professor and senior researcher) at University of Westminster, London and lecturer at ZHdK, the University of the Arts, Zurich.

Kobe Matthys
“Agency” is an international initiative that was founded in 1992 by Kobe Matthys and has office in Brussels. Agency constitutes a growing “list of things” that resist the radical split between the classifications of nature and culture. This list of things is mostly derived from juridical cases and controversies involving intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc.) in various territories around the world. The concept of intellectual property relies upon the fundamental assumption of the split between culture and nature and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, etc. Each “thing” or controversy included on the list bears witness to a hesitation in terms of these divisions.