Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Bioaesthetics Of The Ontical Human

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Mexican-Canadian artist, creates platforms for public participation by using robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, and telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival, and animatronics, his interactive works are “anti-monuments for people to self-represent.” He was the first artist to represent Mexico at the 2007 Venice Biennale. His works are in collections around the world such as MoMA, Guggenheim, TATE, Reina Sofía, and Hirshhorn. Recent exhibitions include “Unstable Presence,” a mid-career retrospective co-produced by the MAC de Montreal and SFMOMA; “Common Measures,” his first solo exhibition at PACE Gallery; “Translation Island,” a 2-km parcours in Abu Dhabi, and “Unfinished Garden”, major monographic exhibition at the Museo De Arte Moderno, Mexico City.

The background of a scientist for an artist makes up a vibrant nexus which gave rise to the unmistakable disposition of artworks by Lozano-Hemmer. With his circle of friends consisting of musicians, choreographers, and writers, he eventually joined them in creating performance art and theater. “I noticed that I was not a very good actor or musician; I have no real talent on stage. So I kind of became the director, staying outside and just sort of help people make something interesting.” With his introduction to the arts being through performance arts, he remarks that its legacy persists later on in his career. “Today, I think of my work as still [being] very performative. I still think of myself as a director, if you will, of a group of people with specializations that I work with to create some kind of art experience.” Starting out in science, engaging with the performing arts, he arrived at making artwork which remains interactive and participatory. He recaps: “It’s still every event-based, very theatrical — only it’s the public that is the actor.”

An aesthetic of biopolitics

Creating them as event-based and interactive, the artist describes his work as being incomplete until someone activates it. He terms it as “a humbling affair.” In contrast to the works of his sister, a painter, the question of completion remains destabilizing because artwork as a platform is oftentimes crowdsourced. “A lot of the work I do with heartbeats, for example, [would] not exist if no one came to actually detect their heartbeat.” In other pieces where Lozano-Hemmer and his team collect people’s voices or messages, participation through speaking, talking, or singing gives the work its divergent character, “if it’s mournful; if it’s sorrowful; if it’s happy; if it’s flirty.” Thereon, meaning oscillates. “In art history, there is a minimalist maxim that says what you see is what you get. With my work, what we say is: what you give is what you get.”