Tami Izko

︎Commute (2023-ongoing)

I see a face in the tube that I think I recognize. People avoid staring at each other and that’s how the commute goes.
But I think I see a face I know and I stare. The eyes on it look away.

︎Inventory

Site-specific permanent installation at Fondazione La Raia for its 10th anniversary. 32 porcelain sculptures embedded in a man-made grotto and three floating sculptures.

For a video of the WIP and the soundscape created for the work click here.

︎30 future sculptures, 3 missing sculptures (2022)

︎Via Spaventa (2021-2022)

For two years, photographer Federico Clavarino and I walked down the same street several times a day to get to our studio. It was the fastest route, but not the prettiest. The section of it that we traversed had been turned into a dump, where people from the area left their broken furniture, clothes and garbage to accumulate until the wind and those passing by reshuffled it. The walls of the street were full of colorful graffiti. The sun hit the concrete so hard that on hot days it was a true torture to walk past there, without any trees to give some shade.

Its name, translated in English, would be something along the lines of The Scary Road. We made it a goal to find a way to enjoy our daily walks on that street. I built my own porcelain palaces resembling those on the street and glazed them with the same colors and shapes of the graffiti on the wall. I also used the images that Federico took there, with its people, its light and its forms, to construct my pieces. The result of this work, Via Spaventa, brings together his images and my sculptures.

This project is part of a larger research we started in 2022 called The Crab’s House, in which we explore our migrations and the ways we have of inhabiting the space as we look into alternative models of dwelling.

︎Bezoar (2020-ongoing)

from French bezoard, based on Arabic bāzahr, bādizahr, from Persian pādzahr or “antidote”. Magic stones and their pedestals, made with black clay, porcelain, stoneware, glass, resin and gold.
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︎Are people flowers? (2021)

We set off to celebrate Spring and those who came took off their masks.
A collaboration with Caterina Gabelli, Alessandro Calabrese and Federico Clavarino staged in April 2021 in Viasaterna’s courtyard in Milan.

︎Wounds (2020-2022)

Wound 4, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 2, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 5, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wounds, porcelain, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 3, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 7, porcelain, 24x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 6, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Porcelain is a material with memory. This means that no matter how many changes it undergoes, the initial transformations or interventions it is subjected to keep coming back. The holes seen in these works follow the cracks that showed up when the pieces were dry, further exposing the “error” instead of trying to conceal it.

︎Eel Soup (2018-2020)

Cosset, stoneware 30x10x6, 2018 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Egg, stoneware, 12x26x20, 2018 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Coral, special porcelain, 10x8x9, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Fold, stoneware, 16x24x24, 2018 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Twine, special porcelain, 30x5x4, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Torso, special porcelain, 25x13x12, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Melt, special porcelain, 16x12x12, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Wiggle, 25x10x10, special porcelain, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Imagine an eel soup: a wriggling mass of creatures whose ends and beginnings can be swapped in the human eye, trapped in a limited space, their bodies entangled below the surface or floating on top of it, half submerged in the liquid that now holds them. Like the visible bits of the viscous animals you have just pictured, the objects I present here are fragments of an ephemeral reality. In a collaboration with photographer Federico Clavarino, by carefully observing spaces and body parts as they twist, press, open, close, bend and touch, photography and ceramic have become our means to reinterpret a series of meaningful connections. The resulting series of reconfigurations ultimately tells a story of coexistence, one that is largely built around the lingering images left behind by otherwise vanishing intersections.

Black Twine, stoneware, 30x10x10cm, 2021 / ph. Mattia Greghi

︎Shows

Eel Soup @ Volvo Studios Milano, September 2023 (edible sculptures edition)

The Crab’s House Installation pt 3, with Federico Clavarino (SIC Space with the support of Art Futures Amsterdam, June 2023)

The Crab’s House Installation pt 2, with Federico Clavarino (Ville Empain, March 2023)

The Crab’s House Installation pt 1, with Federico Clavarino (Stiftung Kunstlerdorf Schöppingen, November 2022)

Bezoar + Wounds @ Miart with Viasaterna, September 2021

Wounds @ Artissima, November 2020

Eel Soup @ Viasaterna, December 2019

Eel Soup @ Fotofestiwal, June 2019

︎Bio

Tami Izko (Cochabamba, 1984)

Tami is a Spanish-Bolivian artist. Her practice is rooted in her autobiography, with a long history of migrations where identity and belonging become the central themes of her work. Focusing on the epidermal nature of clay to make forms that are sometimes abstract and sometimes figurative, in her work she uses sculpture as a way of familiarizing with the unfamiliar (Commute, 2023-ongoing), connecting memory and transformation (Wounds, 2020) and dissecting the mechanisms behind magical thinking and binary systems (Bezoar, 2021-ongoing). She also collaborates with other artists - namely photographer Federico Clavarino - in joint projects, such as Eel Soup (2017, published as a book in 2022 by Witty Books), Via Spaventa (2021) and The Crab’s House (2022-ongoing). On May 2023, her site-specific intervention Inventory, commisioned by curator Ilaria Bonacossa, became the tenth permanent artwork at Fondazione La Raia, in Gavi.

Exhibitions

Solo

September 2023, Eel Soup (edible sculptures), Volvo Studio, Milan

June 2023, The Crab’s House (pt 3) with Federico Clavarino, SIC Athens

February 2023, The Crab’s House (pt 2) with Federico Clavarino, Ville Empain Residence

November 2022, The Crab’s House (pt 1) with Federico Clavarino, Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen

September 2022, Via Spaventa, Espace Brockmann and Fondation Bruckner, Gevena

December 2019, Eel Soup, Viasaterna Gallery, Milan (double solo show with Federico Clavarino)

November 2018, Eel Soup, Pinguin, Bruxelles (double solo show with Federico Clavarino)

Group

November 2022, The Harvest, Stiftung Künstlerdorf, Schöppingen

December 2020, Gradi di Vuoto, Viasaterna Gallery, Milan

October 2020, Artissima Unplugged with Viasaterna Gallery, Turin

September 2019, Auto Fiction, Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, London

September 2019, Kiraathane at Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul

2019, Grand Prix, Fotofestiwal Lódz

Workshops & Teaching

Visiting Lecturer, Academy of Fine Arts, Athens, 2023

Studio Orlando, Milan, 2019-2022

Visiting Lecturer, University of Roehampton, London, 2019

Member, Clay Garden, London 2019-2020

Member, Turning Earth, London 2018-2019

Member, Caulino Atelier, Lisbon, 2017-2019

Residencies / Fellowships

Art Futures Fellowship
May-June 2023, Athens

Boghossian Foundation artist in residence / February - April 2023, Brussels

Stiftung Künstlerdorf artist in residence / August - November 2022, Schöppingen

Press

Inventory:
Mousse Magazine
Lampoon Magazine
La Reppublica

Eel Soup:
Ignant Magazine
Nearest Truth podcast

Publications

Eel Soup, with Federico Clavarino.
Published by Witty Books in June, 2022.

30 future sculptures, 3 missing drawings. Self-Published in Leipzig in November, 2022.

TAMI IZKO

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