“Alemanen kanposantue” is colloquial Basque for “the graveyard of the Germans”. It is also the name given by locals to a memorial stele from the Spanish Civil War that stood forgotten and neglected by the side of a road in rural Basque Country, and into which once were engraved the names of three German soldiers who belonged to the Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe.

The surface of the monument has been chipped and damaged by years of vandalism and accumulating layers of political graffiti. We have made a sculptural reproduction of this surface, treating it as a palimpsest of all the informal attempts to dismantle and appropriate the ideologically laden object.

The sculpture is combined with a series of pencil drawings in which we map the “guilty landscape” that surrounds the stone, in a style that closely follows that of original military sketches of the front line during the war.

Read more

The film “Onder de Vleugel” (Under the Wing) will be part of the Official Selection of ZINEBI - Documentary and Short Film Festival of Bilbao! It will be screened on the 17th of November at 16:30 in the Auditorium of the Azkuna Zentroa. The full program of the festival is here

Read more

An ode to Rotterdam under lockdown. This movie is the result of a collaboration between Iratxe Jaio and her 11-year-old son Iñaki, who could not go to school for weeks because of the pandemic.

Read more

Happy to be part of the new exhibition at Gallery Joey Ramone! The space just reopened with “The Day After Tomorrow” presenting works by the gallery's represented artists: Tudor Bratu, Momu & No Es, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Harm Weistra, Cihad Caner, Ilke Gers, Fotini Gouseti, Thijs Ebbe Fokkens, Yasser Ballemans and Roi Alter. You can visit it from Wednesday to Friday 13.00 - 17.00 hrs, until the 21st of August 2020.

Read more

We are participating in the 11th Art Biennial of Leandre Cristòfol in Centre d'Art La Panera, Lleida.

From 27 October until 29 December 2019
Opening: Sunday 27 October 12:00 - 15:00

Curated by: David Armengol, Cèlia del Diego and Julia Morandeira.

Artists: Mercedes Azpilicueta, David Bestué, Lúa Coderch, Joana Escoval, Ariadna Guiteras, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Martin Llavaneras, Pere Llobera, La Más Bella, María Salgado, Mireia Sallarès and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané.

Read more

Iratxe has been commissioned by eremuak to write the long-form essay "The porous stone", in which she reflects on the agency of the object in relation to our artistic practice, taking as a reference our work on the reproduction of an abandoned memorial stone dedicated to three Nazi soldier who died in the Spanish Civil War.

The cahier will be presented in Bilbao on october 17 2019, during the Eremuak Sessions 2019: 'Naturaleza/s' at Azkuna Zentroa.

Download it in English

Download it in Spanish

Download it in Basque

Read an excerpt from the introduction

Read more

La Taller opens the cultural season with a new exhibition format. From 11 to 20 October we will be working alongside with Maite Martínez de Arenaza on a series of lithographs, based on the drawings of mountain landscapes we produced this summer while exploring historical military positions in the Basque Country. At the same time we will display a sculpture based on the reproduction of a Nazi monument dedicated to three German soldiers from the infamous Condor Legion, that had been standing neglected beside a road in the countryside for all these years.

Read more

On the 27th of June 2019, we will talk about uncomfortable heritage and its place in the collective identity, taking the Basque Country as a case study. The presentation will be at 16:00 in the Institute for Art History of the Goethe University Frankfurt. Address: Städelschule, Seminarraum 19.

Read more

How can the unofficial history of a forgotten slab of stone with the names of three Nazi soldiers help us rethink the role contemporary art practices can play in relation to contested heritage?

Read more

Los artistas Iratxe Jaio y Klaas van Gorkum presentarán el libro “400m” en una conversación con el comisario David Armengol. Tendrá lugar el 4 de junio a las 18:30 en la Llibreria La Canibal de Barcelona.

400m es la distancia entre el museo de arqueología y el museo de arte contemporáneo de Vitoria-Gasteiz, en el País Vasco. Es también el título del libro de Jaio y van Gorkum sobre la polémica generada entorno al hallazgo arqueológico de los óstraca de Iruña-Veleia: cientos de fragmentos de cerámica romana inscritos con dibujos, textos en latín y lo que parecían ser las evidencias escritas en euskera más antiguas encontradas hasta el momento. Sin embargo, nada más hacerse público el hallazgo saltó controversia cuando una comisión de expertos puso en duda su autenticidad.

“400m” ofrece una reflexión sobre la cuestión más allá de la dicotomía entre falso-auténtico y partiendo de una aparentemente simple propuesta: la de exponer los contestados artefactos en un museo de arte contemporáneo.

Read more

Pages

Subscribe to Front page feed