The “Yugoeslavia” folder and other stories – discussion with artist Francisco Tomsich

A discussion and artistic presentation will take place on Friday, June 28th at CZKD at 18h, with the artist Francisco Tomsich from Uruguay.

The national University General Archive of Montevideo, Uruguay, hosts the personal archive of Clemente Padín (b.1939), an artist, author, pioneer of performance art, poet, founder of experimental poetry magazines and publications since the late 1960’s and, last but not least, one of the main exponents of Mail Art in South America. There’s a black plastic folder there entitled “Yugoeslavia”. It is full of drawings, invitations, postcards and memorabilia sent by Yugoslav artists (mainly from Serbia) to him along many years. Some of them are signed, some are unidentified, some of them are mysteries, all of them are stories.

In 2018, the Uruguayan-born artist Francisco Tomsich launched an artistic research project aimed to explore those stories in a quite personal way, avoiding internet-based social networks and focusing on walking, conversation and the very existence of postal addresses provided by the archive. These research, supported by the Ministry of Culture of Uruguay through its Fondo Concursable program, is one more stage of a bigger, long-term project aimed to deal with actual connections and interchanges between artists from Yugoslavia and the Southern Cone of South America (Uruguay, Argentina, Chile) which runs parallel, feeds and informs the artist’s practice. Its primary results will be displayed in the form of artworks (video, painting, drawing), a publication, exhibitions and related activities to be carried on in Montevideo at the end of this year.

In this conversation with Francisco Tomsich, we will take a look to funny and sad, paradoxical and passionate images, footage and narratives arising and evolving from his research, trying to find out, question and discuss what the red threads and black holes of an archive of that kind mean, and why the stories and images it offers have historical and political significance for us now.

Francisco Tomsich is an artist and author born in Uruguay in 1981. He produces exhibitions, publications, works for the stage, research models and pedagogical devices since 2003, operating with different media, languages and tongues. He has co-founded and integrates many non-disciplinary associations of artists in South America and Europe. His works have been exhibited and published internationally and awarded in many occasions.

This project is supported by the Fondo Concursable para la Cultura program of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay.

See more here.