Forecast II, 2010
Jennifer Allora
b. 1974, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Guillermo Calzadilla
b. 1971, Havana, Cuba
Live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Allora and Calzadilla’s collaborations bear a distinctive hallmark. Bizarre humour, bordering on the absurd, runs through their work, yet there is a strong social and political foundation underlying this, as areas of political tension in the public realm are magnified through their wide-ranging body of work. They are meticulous researchers that identify the stress and eventual ruptures in societal systems, nationhood, environmentalism, states of war, and resistance, through a variety of media including performance, sculpture, sound, video, and photography.
This artistic duo, who have been collaborating since 1995, make hybrid works, often a unique mix of sculpture, photography, performance, sound and video, which are experiments that challenge ideas of authorship, nationality, borders, and democracy with respect to today’s increasingly global and consumerist society. Through their work, Allora and Calzadilla explore the physical and conceptual act of mark-making and its ephemeral capacity as metaphorically historical, cultural, and political.
The couple’s artistic career has led them to exhibit in the world’s most important museums. Select recent solo exhibitions include ‘Klima’, Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, Spain (2024); ‘Entelechy’, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal, (2023), ‘Allora & Calzadilla Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on „Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano’ Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, (2022), 'Specters of Noon', The Menil Collection, Houston, TX, USA (2020); 'Chalk', Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2019); 'The Tropical Pharmacy', Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (2019); ‘Hope Hippo’, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); 'La noche que volvimos a ser gente', El Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia (2018); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2018) 'Blackout', MAXXI, Rome, Italy (2018); ‘Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact’, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (2016); ‘Intervals’, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA, USA (2014); Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney, Australia (2012); Museum of Art (2012); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2008); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); Kunsthalle Zurich (2007) and Walker Art Center; Minneapolis (2004). Among numerous group exhibitions, they participated in documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and Performance 9 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011). They also represented the USA in the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
In 2004 they won the Gwangju Biennale Prize in Korea, while in 2006 they were finalists for the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize in New York and the Nam June Paik Award in Dusseldorf. In 2010 they were shortlisted by the Fourth Plinth Commission to create a temporary sculpture for London’s Trafalgar Square. Their work is held in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others.