Felipe Castelblanco solo exhibition in the Haus für Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg.
The Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg presents a major solo exhibition by Felipe Castelblanco: Counter-Expeditions, title for the exhibition, features several new works as well as a retrospective of his ten-year interdisciplinary practice. On view are films, video installations, and photographs created in collaboration with communities in various regions—from the foothills of the Andes-Amazon to the North Atlantic. Rooted in a conceptually rich practice of site-specific research and artistic intervention, Counter-Expeditions proposes a radical rethinking of the colonial and epistemological legacy of the expedition.
While the traditional expedition is understood as an act of conquest, discovery, or exploitation, Castelblanco’s counter-expeditions open up a reciprocal form of movement that prioritizes encounter, engagement, and dialogue with people and places. These works invite us to cross the physical, mental, and political boundaries that separate knowledge systems and worldviews. In the counter-expeditions, the movement of the travelers through the terrain forms a continuum that brings one place into dialogue with the next. The counter-expeditions therefore do not aim to take possession of the memory, the place, or the novelty of the encounter. Nor do they attempt to claim parts of the landscape for themselves in order to justify their journey. Instead, the counter-explorers bring new energy to the eco-social fabric they encounter through offerings, reciprocity, celebration, contemplation, and collaboration with those who live in and care for the places that welcome them. Unlike the flâneur, the counter-expeditionist is exposed, and their own body endures, filters, absorbs, and even carries each place within them as a collection of experiences, mixtures, detours, and strange encounters with ever-changing biocultural landscapes.
Felipe Castelblanco in the Haus für Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg.
Opening July 2nd.
Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg
Katharinenstraße 23
D-26121 Oldenburg