JAN 8th-11th, 2017
Imagining the Labyrinth: Making Individual Spaces in Community Art Spaces
Master Workshop with Architect Jose Roberto Paredes + laberinto projects
PROGRAM SUMMARY
This intensive ten day workshop invites a multidisciplinary group of architects, artists, writers, designers, scholars, psychologists and cultural workers to collaborate and explore the idea of individual practice within community art spaces transforming the site of laberinto institute into a creative laboratory. We will explore Central America’s diverse contemporary architectural landscape and thriving artscape against its historical backdrop. We invite you to join us in this process of discovery that involves participants in excursions, cultural visits and hands-on design-building, readings and discussions.
Laberinto Institute, the physical site of laberinto projects, is in the early stages of its evolution as a cultural center and international artist residency. Together we will reimagine the space as a multi-functional venue and an incubator of creation and exchange. This collaborative workshop offers each participant the opportunity to reinvigorate and reorient personal practice while engaging and shaping international dialogue around the arts at this historically significant site.
This workshop is applicable to anyone with an interest in architecture, design, visual arts and cultural works. The course will be taught in English and Spanish.
MASTER ARCHITECT JOSE ROBERTO PAREDES
laberinto projects welcomes architect and designer Jose Roberto Paredes for our first master workshop at Laberinto Institute, in the geological and archaeologically rich western region of El Salvador. Jose Roberto is an internationally recognized architect and designer recently named by the New York Post as one of “the 4 edgiest architects designing around the world.” His practice is grounded in social entrepreneurship and conceptual design derived from deep regional and environmental research. Paredes’ award winning work has been featured in international exhibitions including the Museum of Art and Design in New York, Bergdorf Goodman, New Iberoamerican Architecture in Buenos Aires and most recently New Territories at the Albuquerque Museum of Art. His work has been published in Architectural Digest, Dwell, Elle Decor and the New York Post. He is founder and director of the architectural and design firm Cincopatasalgato. The work can be seen here www.cincopatasalgato.com
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTION
Muriel Hasbun is an artist and educator specializing in the art and culture of El Salvador. Her expertise focuses on issues of cultural identity and memory, while generating socially engaged art projects. Through an intergenerational, transnational and transcultural lens, Hasbun constructs contemporary narratives and establishes a space for dialogue where individual and collective memory spark new questions about identity and place.
Muriel Hasbun is a 2014 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, a 2006-08 Fulbright Scholar and the recipient of numerous distinctions and awards, including the Howard Chapnick Grant (2014), Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in Photography (2015 & 2012) and in Media (2008), an Escuela de Bellas Artes Artist in Residence in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and the Corcoran College of Art + Design’s Outstanding Creative Research Faculty Award (2007). Most recently, she was Professor and Program Head of Photography at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at GWU in Washington, DC.
Laberinto Institute was brilliantly designed by the French-Salvadoran Janine Janowski, a renowned arts icon in the country and the architect Javier Sagarra. After building it she famously said that the view was so beautiful, it distracted her from getting any work done. The architecture embodies the four classical elements of nature –earth, water, fire and air. It features two distinct spaces that offer the perfect balance of contemplation and connection-- the outward beauty of the landscape and the internal recognition and reflection of it.
The house is perched over the beautiful Coatepeque lake, across from the Santa Ana and Cerro Verde volcanoes. The lake, in the center of the volcanic crater, is mythically known as being the unofficial 8th world wonder. We encourage you to search Lago de Coatepeque, and read more about the lake and the surrounding area.
Laberinto Institute, a landmark in the history and legacy of galería el laberinto, is a living distillation of Janine Janowski’s artistic and curatorial vision. The house was conceived by Janine and the late Salvadoran architect Javier Sagarra within a kind of artistic and social activism. Built with salvaged materials of personal and historical significance, the leading architectural principle was an expression of cultural recovery and a response to the natural landscape. Architectural drawings reveal the labyrinthian design of the house and hint at Janine’s philosophical framework for the creative life.
We are seeking major partnerships and support to actualize the potential of this space and to make it the center of laberinto projects. (MORE IMAGES)
ABOUT LABERINTO PROJECTS
laberinto projects is an arts, education and cultural legacy preservation platform that fosters contemporary art practices, social inclusion and dialogue in El Salvador and its diaspora, through exhibitions, art education, artist residencies and community engagement initiatives.
Inspired by the late Janine Janowski's galería el laberinto art gallery (1977-2001), laberinto projects provides a framework for cultural understanding, dialogue and education through the country’s most significant and only collection of art produced during the civil war. The surrounding archive, in its developing stages, provides unique documentation of a thriving arts and cultural haven during the most brutal years of the war and its aftermath. As an extension of Muriel Hasbun’s artistic and teaching practice, the archive and collection become a living, transnational body, activated in the present through relational exchanges across borders and socio-cultural divides.
laberinto projects’ main goals are:
1. to preserve the legacy of Janine Janowski, her galería el laberinto and its artists, through the conservation, digitization and dissemination of the historically-significant laberinto projects archive and collection, and through the production of new works based on the study of the archive;
2. to promote and nurture contemporary arts in El Salvador and its diaspora, through exhibitions and residencies for artists and scholars; and
3. to foster dialogue, post-war healing and social inclusion with art education and community engagement.
Please contact us for more questions
