Contemporary Art Practice Speakers Programme - Adrián Balseca

Overview

Join us to hear Adrián Balseca discuss his practice through the lens of his upcoming exhibition In the Forest Ruins. Balseca works across film, installation, sculpture and print to explore the legacy of extractivism, the large-scale removal of natural resources from Latin America and its lasting social and environmental consequences.

For this exhibition, he continues his research into the colonial exploitation of natural rubber, connecting this history to Dundee through the city’s now closed Michelin factory. By tracing this link, Balseca examines how systems of extraction shape environments, societies and histories at both ends of the global supply chain.

This lecture is a collaboration between Contemporary Art Practice, DJCAD, University of Dundee and Dundee Contemporary Arts.

Artist biography

Adrián Balseca was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1989 and lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

His work seeks to activate strategies of representation, narration, and/or interaction to highlight the ecosystemic specificities of particular territories. Through his artistic research, he examines various socio-environmental agendas within extractivist dynamics, exploring their relationship with the formation processes of modern nation-states in Latin America. Each project investigates how the colonial legacy continues to shape models of exploitation of nature and territory, addressing environmental issues within a global context.

Recent exhibitions include: Colección MACBA. Preludio. Intención poética (MACBA, Barcelona, 2024); Nyctalopia (Void Art Centre, Derry, 2024); 55th Visions du Réel International Film Festival (Nyon, 2024); Critical Landscapes: Selected Works from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection (MCA Denver, Denver, 2024); ROUTING RUBBER (New York, 2024); The Genetically Altered Seed Breaks the Rhythm of an Earthly Music – Encounters over Several Plants (TATE Modern, London, 2022); Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail: Latin America and Contemporary Art (Denver Art Museum, Denver, 2022); 34th São Paulo Biennial—Though it's dark, still I sing (Pavilion Ciccillo Matarazzo, São Paulo, 2021), among others.

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