An exhibition by Ana Alenso on the lethal effects and resource course of Gold Mining globally. Existing Otherwise also means reevaluating what is a resource and how we detach from the toxic and exploitative systems connected with e.g. Gold Mining and create other sustainable value circuits.

“In order to reflect on the environmental destruction associated with mining,
it is necessary to understand it not only on a geographical level, but also on an
existential level. In e.g. the Amazon region,destruction means more than the pollution of rivers, the extermination of endemic plants and the murder of animals and Indigenous peoples. Can art counter this process of destruction by engendering a fruitful dialogue with the future? Or does it rather aim at a dialogue with death?
Ana Alenso, 2020

In Nkrumah Volini, a former silo, a global map of grand scale gold mining sites is presented, establishing connections between the architecture of the symbolic exhibition building (originally built as a means of food storage and thus means of independence in Ghana), and industrial objects collected around Tamale, at Gold Mines in Ghana. Using motors, led lights and industrial objects, the installation presents signs of the local Gold Mining imaginary and expands our perspective of gold mining as an issue that affects not only certain countries and localities, but the entire planet. The exhibition raises questions such as: How can we decode and rethink the deadly cycles that drive gold mining? What can we learn from it and what role does a globalized world and economy play in this cycle?
With this installation Ana Alenso creates a sculpture and electric circuit of the artifacts - like barrels, lights, courds, tubes and motors - from the gold mining industry. Removed from the Gold Mining industry themselves, they exhibit a toxic yet empty nature, where the gain is glisical. As the mining pollutes our water and earth, forrests, national reserves, it is time humanity stopped digging our own graves.

Ana Alenso was born in Venezuela in 1982. Working across sculpture, photography, installation, sound and video, her work aims to expose the global ecological, social and economic risks and consequences of extractivist practices. Through the use of industrial materials, her work identifies critical states – situations of precariousness and tension – in a poetic register. She holds an MFA in Art in Context from the Berlin University of Arts (2015), an MFA in Media Art & Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar (2012) and a Diploma from Armando Reveron Arts University in Venezuela (2004). In 2019 she was awarded an artistic research residency by Goethe Institut and Proyecto Sacó in Antofagasta, Chile. In 2018 she received an honorable mention in the Berlin Art Prize and in 2017 she was awarded an artistic research scholarship by the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa. Her work has been shown internationally in group and solo presentations, among others at: Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien (2018, DE), Galerie am Körnerpark (2018, DE), Savvy Contemporary (2016, DE), Kinderhook & Caracas (2015, DE) in Berlin, Neues Museum Weimar and Nietzsche-Gedächtnishalle in Weimar (2012, DE), Sixty Eighth Art Institute (2017, DK), Museo de Porreres (2018, ES), Centro de arte Matucana 100 in Santiago (2007,CHL); Ex-teresa Arte actual (2008, MEX); Museo de arte contemporáneo de Bogotá (2007, COL); Galerie Abra and Galerie Espacio Monitor (2018, VE), Sala Mendoza (2016,VE), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas (2006,VE), Museo Alejandro Otero (2005, VE), Centro Cultural Chacao en Caracas (2008, VE), Centro Lia Bermúdez en Maracaibo (2008, VE), Ateneo de Valencia (2004, VE). She lives and works in Berlin.

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