Poznań

202/
Maria
João Salema
curator PAM
co-curators Raphaele Shirley and Lee Wells
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(Mozambique, Portugal)
Maria João Salema is a painter born in Mozambique, she lived in Lisbon, Portugal,
studied in Fine Art Faculty of Lisbon, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Represented by Modulo Gallery, Lisbon.
Primarily a painter, she has been working with the flow of raw footage on Youtube:
Youtube Open Mics at Monkey Town, Brooklyn in 2006; Artists Meeting arts
collective Youtube Parties at Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2008 and 2009;
At Rodney Dickson’s Fucked Up performance / installation/art environment
at Grace Space, Brooklyn, 2009, for which she did the Street Fight film.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
2010 Vernissage TV video screening, Art Cologne, Cologne, DE (group) /
2009 Youtube Triptych Party, Postmasters Gallery, NY, US (group) /
Fucked Up, collaboration, Rodney Dickson’s Art Event at Grace Space,
Brooklyn, NY, US (group) / System: System, St. Cecilia’s Convent,
with Lee Wells, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY, US (solo) / Youtube Triptych Party,
Artists Meeting at DokFest, Kassel, DE (group) / AM-AM, Artists Meeting Art
Machine Installation, Pulse Art Fair, Miami, US (group) /
2008 National Centre for Contemporary Art, In Transition, Moscow,
RU (group) / Conflux Public Art Festival, Artists Meeting, NY, US (group) /
2007 Dumbo Arts Festival, Artist Meeting, Gumbo@Dumbo, Brooklyn,
NY, US (group) / 2005 Painting, Joymore Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, US (solo) /
2000 Painting, Módulo Gallery, Lisboa, PT (solo)
Girls And Boys Fight is a film that stems from blending of two street fight videos found
on Youtube. One of two young women and another one of two young men, maybe
in their teens.
Both films are of low resolution image quality as it is usual on Youtube; with its real
sound, shortened in length and alternated with each other in slices of a little over
1 second.
We don’t know why they are fighting. In both cases one of the parts comes to the other
one’s neighborhood and leaves in the end with her/his friends. The women’s fight
is furious with no rules, no giving up till the end, having to be separated by the crowd.
The men’s fight, who seem to have a bit of boxing training, is more paced, almost
reluctant, the loser doesn’t want to acknowledge defeat, trying to keep face till
the end when finally, he lets his arms down and unclenches his fists, it is over.
There is a crowd watching in both situations, and also a person with a video camera,
the fighters don’t even seem to notice the camera, this is as things are aer all:
they will be filmed, posted on Youtube and the world will watch their fight.
>
Girls And Boys Fight, 2010
video, 4’4”
FOT. M. João Salema
Maria João Salema