ASMA Guest Performances and Book Launch

Join artist duo ASMA for a book launch followed by guest performances that animate the theatrical setting of their SculptureCenter exhibition Ideal Space for Music.

ASMA’s recent publication Ibidem is an artist book made in collaboration with designer Olga Borda, as the fourth edition of the annual magazine series Obra. It includes fragmented research citations and installation images of their recent exhibitions: Wander & Pursuit (2022), Inverse Sátiro Envy (2023), Blind Sun Rests in Desire (2023), and their SculptureCenter exhibition, plus a commissioned text by Reilly Davidson.

Following the launch, the event will move to SculptureCenter’s lower level, where artist and ventriloquist Sophie Becker energizes and gives new life to ASMA’s ball-jointed dolls. The event will culminate in a full-room sound activation by Esra Canoğulları (8ulentina) made in dialogue with ASMA.

Please RSVP here.

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ASMA is a Mexico City-based artist duo formed by Matias Armendaris and Hanya Beliá. Their work uses allegorical figures and evocative architectural spaces, exploring formal interrelations between painterly and sculptural expressions. They employ fictional narratives that include forms of nature interwoven with psychoaffective contemporary landscapes. As a result of a collaborative process, the work focuses on hybrid and polluted forms, both in a material and conceptual nature. They explore a nostalgic revisitation of the past through a metamodern lens that oscillates between critical discourses of identity and belonging and ornate formal explorations of beauty.

ASMA’s recent solo exhibitions include Inverse Sátiro Envy I & II, PEANA, Mexico City; Blind Sun Rests in Desire, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp, BEL; The Last of Animal Builders, Edith Farnsworth House, Illinois, US; Wander & Pursuit, House of Gaga, Los Angeles; Vermin Gloom, Project Pangeé, Montreal; Vain Kisses to the Source, Deli Gallery, New York; Janus, Embajada, San Juan, PR; Half Blood Princess, PEANA, Monterrey, MX; Blossoming Carcass, Make Room, Los Angeles. Recent group show exhibitions include Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail, Denver Art Museum, Denver; OTRXS MUNDXS, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; and Anima Mundi, Manifiesta 13, Marseille, FR.

Obra is an annual magazine—an archive of visual expressions generating a record of young and established practices from Latin America and the world through the printed format. Founded and established in Basel, Switzerland, and distributed globally.

Sophie Becker is an artist and ventriloquist based in New York City. She has performed with her Jerry Mahoney figure at MoMA PS1, NADA Miami, Art Omi, Rockaway Film Festival, Chez Bushwick's RECESS Programming, Pageant Space, Blade Study Gallery, and Theatre 80 St Marks, among others.

Esra Canoğullari, also known as 8ULENTINA, is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, music producer, and DJ. Renowned for his dynamic DJ sets and genre-defying compositions, Canoğullari’s projects are characterized by percussive intensity and diasporic storytelling. Canoğullari cofounded CLUB CHAI (2016–21), a record label and curatorial platform, with Lara Sarkissian and currently runs SILLAGE, a platform for contemporary sonic artifacts.