Public Presentation: Emma Smith, Azucena Sanchez

We are happy to introduce you Emma Smith and Azucena Sanchez; the artists selected for the Residency dedicated to artists with parental responsibility at Halle 6, taking place from 16 – 30 March, with their final presentation at @habibi_kiosk

For this residency, we intentionally paired one international and one local (Munich-based) artist, creating a framework of exchange and mutual support while expanding networks and perspectives.

Emma Smith is a visual artist based in the UK. She has a social practice and creates platforms for people to share research, experiences, knowledge and ‘no-how’ of relationships with one another, our entangled ecologies, and the places we co-habit.

Through social sculpture, installations, performances and actions, Smith’s work reveals the subtleties of connectivity: relationship, communication, and entanglement. Her work looks in particular at hidden forms of connection: the tacit, the intimate, the transient, the subconscious, the remote, and the invisible.

During this residency she will instigate a new research project into the blurring of boundaries of form on a molecular level and interconnectivity at distance. This work will draw on the collections of the Mineralogical State Collection. Through this research she will develop a proposal for new work and exhibition.

Emma Smith, Gwelen, 2022. Photo by Mike Newman.

Azucena Sánchez is a media artist working at the intersection of art, science, and the living world. Her work spans biomedia, tech-sculpture, multimedia, and site-specific installations, as well as experimental photography. Her artistic research draws inspiration from the natural processes of Earth, its infrastructure, its chaos and its resilience. Through hybrid, rhizomatic methodologies that deal with co-evolution, disruption, and transformation, Sánchez explores the intimate relationship between humans and the more-than-human world.

Sánchez takes on a practice that allows materials and organisms to develop at their own pace, while embracing the fleeting and spontaneous moments of life itself. Whether working in the field, where change is a constant, or in the controlled environment of a laboratory, where life unfolds on its own terms, she adopts an approach that balances intention and emergence. By letting these materials and processes develop organically, she creates spaces where speculative futures can take shape, questioning the static notions of life and technology to propose more fluid, adaptive systems.

During the two-weeks of the residency program, the artist will concentrate on ‘Stillness in Motion’, a multimedia installation consisting of four experimental films that work as a case study on the effects of time, permanence, slow violence and the transformations that the Isar River in Munich has undergone over time. The piece is inspired by Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence; it looks at the river’s imperceptible yet profound changes, both through environmental degradation and human-led restoration. By capturing the river’s micro-temporalities, the film makes the slow rhythms of ecological change visible, challenging the idea of nature as a stable backdrop within a city and instead acknowledging it as an active and dynamic force.

Azucena Sanchez, Protection, 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.

They will present the results of their project at HABIBI Kiosk, Saturday 28th of March, from 4 till 6 pm.

We will be delighted to have you with us.

This project, produced by The Artist and the Others, is made possible thanks to the financial support of the Department of Arts and culture of the City of Munich, Kreativ München, and HABIBI Kiosk.