In early February, in a narrow basement space at the New York Sculpture Photography Studio, Ventriloquist Sophia Becker adjusted the metal legs of a doll with long black hair, a single guarache made of metal and a lingerie-like medical material, looking stylish. “Oh, God Feel good. “The people I watched came, but they didn’t meet. I hope they will!”
Becker held a live night performance in Mexico’s artists duo Hanya Beliá and Matias Armendaris (known as Asma), activates the exhibition “Ideal Music Space”. Becker fakes the dolls while sitting in a museum showing his monologue of life as a work of art. The room was packed and the overflowing audience watched the live broadcast on the floor above. Becker takes the audience to another room, another doll waiting for her chance to live, this time singing. Subsequently, interdisciplinary artist and DJ Esra Canoğullari (also known as 8ulentina) performed musical performances, including elements from Foley Sound production to emphasize the drama of the exhibition.
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The past year has played a decisive role in the duo, represented by Peana and Gaga House in Mexico City, which has locations in Los Angeles and Guadalajara. Last October, they opened the exhibition of sculpture photography—their first institutional exhibition—and then, a few weeks later, the Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, opened its own exhibition of the work “Wrander & Pursuit,” which will close in late February. They also held speeches at Art Basel in June with House of Gaga and the Singapore Biennale in October.
Asma and Josue Eber collaborate I should be your Adam. But I am the fallen angel…2024.
New York / Courteous Sculpture Photographer; Gaga, Los Angeles and Guadalajara; and Mexico City Peana / Photo: Charles Bentonphoto Charles Benton
For the “ideal musical space”, until March 24, Asma used the sculptor’s basement to reflect on the subconscious, a consistent theme of their nine-year collaboration (which may not be surprising considering Armendaris’s career as an art therapist). The exhibition includes a series of metal spheres, video works, soundscapes, ink paintings, and lamps made from discovered objects that transform the cold concrete space into a bunker of thought, a post-traumatic landscape of collective psychology.
“This makes the work feel different, and we don’t usually use bodies, characters to convey our thoughts about the unconscious,” Belia told Artnews After the performance. “We can Feel It’s in the studio when they’re alive. All the parts are missing, but the tension is there and she can stand alone. Just like magic. ”
After establishing the inner structure of the doll, Belia and Amandaris used the discovery and engraving objects to piece together the unique body and sensitivity of each doll: fragments of denim, synthetic hair, a clarinet, sink faucet, tooth impression tray and silicone to combine each material together to create a specific personality for each doll.
The doll has a long history of literature, psychoanalysis and art, and Asma draws it from the show. While talking to it Artnewsthe duo mentioned the work of Hans Bellmer’s radical, weird and sex dolls that made him labeled as depraved by the Nazi regime, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s work on the doll’s doll, in which the doll’s emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emerge emergence works by the duo’s radical, the radical, the radical, the radical, the radical, the radical, the radical, the radical, and the radical sensible work of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the radical strait of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the radical strait of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the radical strait of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the radical strait of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, and the straits of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, and the straits of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, and the straits of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, and the straits of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, and the straits of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, and the straits of the straits of Hans Bellmer’s radical, the straits of
“We mixed together in dolls, as if in test tubes, everything we are going through is unrecognizable… This doll has no imagination at all, so much that we imagine it is inexhaustible.” Rilke wrote in “The Unhappy Destiny of Childhood Dolls.” “But I have to believe that when our double inspiration is pierced, we suddenly sit in front of it, expecting some reaction, it’s a long afternoon.”
In a sense, Rilke’s meditation on dolls may be a suitable analogy for the artist’s experience in the material. However, the image of an artist who strives to project fantasy onto an unresponsive object is the countdown of Asma’s attempt in practice. Instead of projecting their ideas onto the material, they immerse themselves in the hard material process in an attempt to collaborate between themselves and emerging objects. This led to the reputation of complex works where silicone married wood, electrical devices, brass and even old desktop computers. This interest in hybrids is embedded in their common practice.
Artist-Duo Hanya Beliá and Matias Armendaris, well-known Asma.
Courteous Artist/Photo by Melissa Lunar
In their independent practice, Beliá was a painter and writer, while Armendaris worked in printmaking and painting. But in 2016, when Beria was 21 and Armendaris was 25, the artist began sharing studio space in the Centro Historico community in Mexico City. The neighborhood itself had a huge impact on the artist’s practice, as ancient architecture and local industries encountered riots in multiple materials and aesthetics. They soon discovered a serious overlap in their interests, which grew into a budding collaboration.
“We started to assist each other, but soon we started to empower each other’s decisions, so we decided to formalize them. We gave each other six months of experiments,” Beria said. “We never thought we would work together for so long.”
(Beliá and Armendaris are also romantically involved.)
To find a medium for real sharing, the sculptural practice of the duo settles, whose mixed nature not only talks about the work they do together, but also has an interest in criticizing tainted binary documents, pure, natural and artificial. But even if they continue to evolve the materials they use, their consistency in themes and conceptual approaches ensures that their work is always recognizable At its core.
Since the end of the pandemic, ASMA has shifted its approach to focusing less on objects and more on creating psychological landscapes as an opportunity to demonstrate its scale in international and larger spaces. Their show, “Wander & Pursuit”, was first exhibited at Gaga Los Angeles House in 2022, giving artists the first opportunity to test this new work. During the show, the duo built an office space with silicone paintings: mirrors, castles, knights, charming woods.
“Through this work, we have shifted from speculativeness to our current anxiety,” said Amandaris. Asma is committed to realizing our deepest, most unknown self in the environment that shapes us. The internal behavior of translation is the basis of Asma’s practice.
“We always translate between ourselves,” Amandaris said.
“We have different images in our ideas because we have two different ideas,” Belia added. “Working together and figuring this out, we end up going into places we never thought about. Maybe if I worked independently, I would have more control and be able to execute my image of the work more accurately.”
But, as the duet explains, the control vision is not appealing.
“When we first started, we realized we could work together better,” Belia said. “It was hard to collaborate, but for us it was worth it because we loved the work.”
However, in Asma’s eyes, their creative behavior is not binary, but triads. They can not only translate their own ideas to each other, but also have to translate the synthesis generated through materials, in which they find something other than themselves in the limitations of these materials and the materials provided. This is a inevitable process, and for the duo, they will never be a shortcut. For example, they are currently studying on their own Pate de verrean ancient Egyptian glass making technology popularized by new French artists. Asma does not have a master’s degree in this technology in Mexico, they are self-educating the technology in books. However, even with teachers, they prefer to learn by themselves.
“It may be easier to learn from people, and it’s beautiful. But, investigate, think about how you’re going to do it, find books, and in the process, some failures will take you into new places,” Belia said.
“You end up discovering the muscles of the material in this way, not the language of the material,” Armendaris continued. “The time you put into the simulation process produces a transformation, and it becomes the perfection of the idea. We don’t want to lose what you can learn by making things.”
In this age, AI-generated images and texts are increasingly moving into our media range and the physical world – Asma’s deep and slow contact with hand-made practices is more gravitational without regression or nostalgia.
Whether it’s a doll made up of discovered parts or exploring the psychosocial landscape of a company’s office, Asma’s work, even in the past, is closely involved in the present, feels futuristic. Somehow, if there is enough time, the two can be like Pate de verre Become an opportunity to explore the never-ending interaction between thought and the world it embeds. They just need to respect the process.
