Julia Mensch’s practice is an intersection of text, drawing, installation, public events, photography, video, and lecture performance. It engages with the history of Socialism and Communism, as well as environmental sociopolitical conflicts in Latin America.
My work is based on extensive research, including reading fiction and theory, conducting interviews, and visiting archives and territories. My practice involves a combination of text, drawing, installation, public events, photography, video, and lecture performance to initiate collective discussions on political and social contexts as well as future scenarios. I explore the history of socialism and communism and environmental sociopolitical conflicts in Latin America and focus on the continent's role as an exporter of Nature since the Spanish Conquest.
Julia Mensch (Buenos Aires, 1980. AR/CH) is a visual artist based in Berlin. She studied at the National Art University in Buenos Aires and at the Hito Steyerl’s class at the UdK, Berlin. Currently she is a PhD Candidate at Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar and part of the research project “Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature, Academy of Art and Design Basel FHNW.
She has taken part in several international residency programs and exhibitions, including Savvy Contemporary and NGBK (Berlin), Museo Nacional de Grabado (Buenos Aires), Shedhalle (Zürich), Kunsthalle Appenzell, Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil (São Paulo), BienalSur (Buenos Aires), among others.
Balada Tropica
HD Video / 27:13 min / 2024
03:22 min excerpt
Balada Tropical re-narrates and re-conceptualises my grandmother Isabel’s 1961 journey to Cuba. The starting point is a letter she wrote, my personal research on the island combined with passages from Cuban literature, and interviews with Cuban women of the generation called “the grandchildren of the revolution.”
What is left today of this socialist paradise that my grandmother once visited? Was it a paradise back then? Why aren’t female leaders such as Haydée Santamaría and Celia Sánchez included in the central representation of the revolution? Would Cuban history have taken a different course if these revolutionary women had not passed away in the 1980ties?
The video essay is an invitation to imagine a history beyond patriarchal narratives and revolutionary politics of diverse relations and affections.