Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo)

Working under the pseudonym Puppies Puppies, Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo's practice is a constant negotiation between visibility and opacity. In her installations and performances, she questions the ableist frameworks of artistic and capitalist production, primarily by expanding on ideas around the readymade. She imbues ubiquitous, everyday objects, signifiers and actions with a personal and political charge. Over time, the artist has developed a vocabulary of self-expression that is both sardonic about contemporary lifestyles and highly personal. While Kuriki-Olivo's early works regularly featured proxies, avatars and other figures from children's entertainment - a refusal to be seen - her more recent works foreground notions of cultural consumption or the political nature of privacy, as well as issues of representation, and revel in the playfulness of readymades. In addition, many of the artist's exhibitions have included elements of action: campaigns to support friends' transition funds, free HIV testing and counselling, a shower open to the public,… In this way, Kuriki-Olivo asserts that life can be seen as its own form of endurance practice, or the ultimate readymade. ...

Galerie Francesca Pia was founded 1990 in Bern and from their first exhibitions forward has consistently fostered contemporary artists including Betty Woodman (1990), Peter Fischli & David Weiss (1992), Hans-Peter Feldmann (1993), Thomas Bayrle (1998), Mai-Thu Perret (2000), Wade Guyton (2004), Jutta Koether (2008) and Rochelle Feinstein (2016) et al. Today the gallery is known for the discovery and promotion of emerging artists. After 16 years in Bern, the gallery moved to a larger space in Zurich in 2007. In 2012 the gallery extended and relocated to a more generous space in the historic Löwenbrau building, where it continues to engage in an ambitious program, representing over thirty artists of different generations. ...