Publications

Dias & Riedweg: Border zones and poetic encounters

By: Catherine Wilson

Catherine Wilson addresses three collaborative projects by Rio de Janeiro-based Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg who develop works with communities and social groups often on the edges of mainstream society.

Despite some of the discourse about contemporary globalisation, we still live in a world of borders. Not just lines of geographic demarcation, visible or invisible divisions between “a mythical ‘us’ and an equally mythical ‘them,’” but zones where “solid, reliable identity gets undone.” 1 For artists Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg, questioning constructed social and cultural dichotomies and allowing their own world-views to shift is a vital aspect of their art practice. Mauricio, from Brazil, and Walter, from Switzerland, are based in Rio de Janeiro, and have worked together since 1993, developing projects concerned with encounters, identity and inter-territoriality. They regularly exhibit in international exhibitions and biennales, but the core of their practice prioritises the realities of individual lives far from the meetings of the international art world.2 It was a dissatisfaction with the direction of their early work that motivated Dias, who has a background in visual art, and Riedweg, who has worked in theatre and music, to combine their creative skills and experiment with different forms of collaboration driven by a restless...

. . . to read the rest of this resource

and access all Knowledge Bank and Publication articles subscribe online - from only £6.

Go back »