.png){kind=logo}
.svg)
.svg)
Who?
My name is Euridice Zaituna Kala. I was born in Mozambique in 1987. I grew up and studied photography in Johannesburg. I have been living and working in France for the past five years.
My work as a visual artist focuses on researching and highlighting the multiplicity of narratives from bygone eras to shed light on the hidden facets of history. My pieces seek to develop an alternative viewpoint on historical accounts. In doing so, I am continuing a quest to find and build what Senghor once termed the “Kingdom of Childhood”. Drawing from the transformations, manipulations, and adaptations imposed on history, my work takes the form of installations, performances, images, objects, and books.
Through my interest in archives, both personal and collective, I have become acquainted with a wide array of research protocols that has strongly influenced my artistic output. The goal of my residency in New York will be to research and construct an extensive catalog of sounds.
A graduate of experimental photography at the Johannesburg Market Photo Workshop in 2012 and winner of a Villa Vassilieff/ADAGP Grant (2019–20), Euridice Zaituna Kala is currently a resident at Villa Medici in Rome. She has given numerous performances, including Je suis l’archive (2020) at Villa Vassilieff and Sea(E)scapes DNA: Don’t (N)ever Ask (2022) at the Salon H Gallery in Paris, and she has taken part in many group exhibitions and residencies. Her work will be featured at the 5th Biennale in Casablanca. She is also the founder and co-organizer of the Ephemeral Archival Station (e.a.s.t.), a laboratory and platform for artistic research projects that launched in 2017.
What?
The aim of my research trip was to map the history of International Style architecture in New York City, using a sound catalog that will draw extensively from such living archives as the Pan Am Building-MetLife (1963) and the Seagram building (1956–58), as well as other emblematic buildings (UN headquarters, etc.). This iconic style was greatly inspired by the first "glass house" buildings of the late 19th century, a time also marked by colonial world fairs.
I am interested in this particular architecture, since their raw materials – glass and metal – match my own chosen materials for observing and creating "heterotopic" (a term coined by Michel Foucault) episodes. When we go through the glass, do we experience an encounter with ourselves? Are we attuned to the ways in which identity becomes compounded by other people, the outside world, passers-by, city sounds, and so on?
During my residency, I also intended to expand this historical cartography into new geographies, as informed by the shifting nature of this style and the resulting social impacts. I studied social housing projects in and around the city, whose primary effect has been the ghettoization of African-American and Latino communities. For this, I looked at more recent builds, such as 111W57, as well as sites of memory and absence, including the 9/11 memorial and museum.
Where?
Housing represents a major challenge for megacities such as New York. How do we build and divide up habitats for such immense populations? In my art, research and archive visits, I place particular emphasis on places imbued with great symbolic power, such as the Crystal Palace, an iconic international-style building constructed primarily from glass and iron. This architectural current has strongly informed our ways of building urban environments, whereby architecture is used as a tool of social segregation. Moreover, it is indicative of a certain capitalism, which is especially visible in the clusters of luxury housing in Manhattan. I hope to meet with a cross-disciplinary group of practicing architects, artists, and historians.
This helped me produce and expand a catalog of audio recordings collected from historical international-style buildings, such as the Pan Am Building-MetLife (1963) and the Seagram building (1956–58). I was also seeking to understand the development of social housing throughout history, some of which have alienated entire populations of Black Americans, including the Queensbridge and Promonok projects in New York City. As well as this, I felt that a visit to the 9/11 memorial and museum was important in continuing my exploration of themes connected with memory and emptiness. What once was and no longer is…
.png){kind=logo}
Who?
My name is Euridice Zaituna Kala. I was born in Mozambique in 1987. I grew up and studied photography in Johannesburg. I have been living and working in France for the past five years.
My work as a visual artist focuses on researching and highlighting the multiplicity of narratives from bygone eras to shed light on the hidden facets of history. My pieces seek to develop an alternative viewpoint on historical accounts. In doing so, I am continuing a quest to find and build what Senghor once termed the “Kingdom of Childhood”. Drawing from the transformations, manipulations, and adaptations imposed on history, my work takes the form of installations, performances, images, objects, and books.
Through my interest in archives, both personal and collective, I have become acquainted with a wide array of research protocols that has strongly influenced my artistic output. The goal of my residency in New York will be to research and construct an extensive catalog of sounds.
A graduate of experimental photography at the Johannesburg Market Photo Workshop in 2012 and winner of a Villa Vassilieff/ADAGP Grant (2019–20), Euridice Zaituna Kala is currently a resident at Villa Medici in Rome. She has given numerous performances, including Je suis l’archive (2020) at Villa Vassilieff and Sea(E)scapes DNA: Don’t (N)ever Ask (2022) at the Salon H Gallery in Paris, and she has taken part in many group exhibitions and residencies. Her work will be featured at the 5th Biennale in Casablanca. She is also the founder and co-organizer of the Ephemeral Archival Station (e.a.s.t.), a laboratory and platform for artistic research projects that launched in 2017.
What?
The aim of my research trip was to map the history of International Style architecture in New York City, using a sound catalog that will draw extensively from such living archives as the Pan Am Building-MetLife (1963) and the Seagram building (1956–58), as well as other emblematic buildings (UN headquarters, etc.). This iconic style was greatly inspired by the first "glass house" buildings of the late 19th century, a time also marked by colonial world fairs.
I am interested in this particular architecture, since their raw materials – glass and metal – match my own chosen materials for observing and creating "heterotopic" (a term coined by Michel Foucault) episodes. When we go through the glass, do we experience an encounter with ourselves? Are we attuned to the ways in which identity becomes compounded by other people, the outside world, passers-by, city sounds, and so on?
During my residency, I also intended to expand this historical cartography into new geographies, as informed by the shifting nature of this style and the resulting social impacts. I studied social housing projects in and around the city, whose primary effect has been the ghettoization of African-American and Latino communities. For this, I looked at more recent builds, such as 111W57, as well as sites of memory and absence, including the 9/11 memorial and museum.
Where?
Housing represents a major challenge for megacities such as New York. How do we build and divide up habitats for such immense populations? In my art, research and archive visits, I place particular emphasis on places imbued with great symbolic power, such as the Crystal Palace, an iconic international-style building constructed primarily from glass and iron. This architectural current has strongly informed our ways of building urban environments, whereby architecture is used as a tool of social segregation. Moreover, it is indicative of a certain capitalism, which is especially visible in the clusters of luxury housing in Manhattan. I hope to meet with a cross-disciplinary group of practicing architects, artists, and historians.
This helped me produce and expand a catalog of audio recordings collected from historical international-style buildings, such as the Pan Am Building-MetLife (1963) and the Seagram building (1956–58). I was also seeking to understand the development of social housing throughout history, some of which have alienated entire populations of Black Americans, including the Queensbridge and Promonok projects in New York City. As well as this, I felt that a visit to the 9/11 memorial and museum was important in continuing my exploration of themes connected with memory and emptiness. What once was and no longer is…
Who?
My name is Euridice Zaituna Kala. I was born in Mozambique in 1987. I grew up and studied photography in Johannesburg. I have been living and working in France for the past five years.
My work as a visual artist focuses on researching and highlighting the multiplicity of narratives from bygone eras to shed light on the hidden facets of history. My pieces seek to develop an alternative viewpoint on historical accounts. In doing so, I am continuing a quest to find and build what Senghor once termed the “Kingdom of Childhood”. Drawing from the transformations, manipulations, and adaptations imposed on history, my work takes the form of installations, performances, images, objects, and books.
Through my interest in archives, both personal and collective, I have become acquainted with a wide array of research protocols that has strongly influenced my artistic output. The goal of my residency in New York will be to research and construct an extensive catalog of sounds.
A graduate of experimental photography at the Johannesburg Market Photo Workshop in 2012 and winner of a Villa Vassilieff/ADAGP Grant (2019–20), Euridice Zaituna Kala is currently a resident at Villa Medici in Rome. She has given numerous performances, including Je suis l’archive (2020) at Villa Vassilieff and Sea(E)scapes DNA: Don’t (N)ever Ask (2022) at the Salon H Gallery in Paris, and she has taken part in many group exhibitions and residencies. Her work will be featured at the 5th Biennale in Casablanca. She is also the founder and co-organizer of the Ephemeral Archival Station (e.a.s.t.), a laboratory and platform for artistic research projects that launched in 2017.
What?
The aim of my research trip was to map the history of International Style architecture in New York City, using a sound catalog that will draw extensively from such living archives as the Pan Am Building-MetLife (1963) and the Seagram building (1956–58), as well as other emblematic buildings (UN headquarters, etc.). This iconic style was greatly inspired by the first "glass house" buildings of the late 19th century, a time also marked by colonial world fairs.
I am interested in this particular architecture, since their raw materials – glass and metal – match my own chosen materials for observing and creating "heterotopic" (a term coined by Michel Foucault) episodes. When we go through the glass, do we experience an encounter with ourselves? Are we attuned to the ways in which identity becomes compounded by other people, the outside world, passers-by, city sounds, and so on?
During my residency, I also intended to expand this historical cartography into new geographies, as informed by the shifting nature of this style and the resulting social impacts. I studied social housing projects in and around the city, whose primary effect has been the ghettoization of African-American and Latino communities. For this, I looked at more recent builds, such as 111W57, as well as sites of memory and absence, including the 9/11 memorial and museum.
Where?
Housing represents a major challenge for megacities such as New York. How do we build and divide up habitats for such immense populations? In my art, research and archive visits, I place particular emphasis on places imbued with great symbolic power, such as the Crystal Palace, an iconic international-style building constructed primarily from glass and iron. This architectural current has strongly informed our ways of building urban environments, whereby architecture is used as a tool of social segregation. Moreover, it is indicative of a certain capitalism, which is especially visible in the clusters of luxury housing in Manhattan. I hope to meet with a cross-disciplinary group of practicing architects, artists, and historians.
This helped me produce and expand a catalog of audio recordings collected from historical international-style buildings, such as the Pan Am Building-MetLife (1963) and the Seagram building (1956–58). I was also seeking to understand the development of social housing throughout history, some of which have alienated entire populations of Black Americans, including the Queensbridge and Promonok projects in New York City. As well as this, I felt that a visit to the 9/11 memorial and museum was important in continuing my exploration of themes connected with memory and emptiness. What once was and no longer is…
.jpg)
