'Luís probably preferred the literary life to politics and public affairs.

He did however delight in having drinks in the convivium, the maps for him were mere abstract codes of journeys that they implied.

Journeys much like those of the his tragic hero, enter Hamlet (another monarch), weighing up truth against beauty.'

(Excerpt from 'Prologue to Livro de Todo o Universo', Bianca Baldi , 2015)

As a means to foreground insatiable quests for knowledge Bianca Baldi will present recent works which take as their protagonists historical players who become characters in narratives written through an image making practice, of moving images, photography and printmaking.

Coinciding with Baldi’s performance at Museum Plantin-Moretus she will discuss this new work introducing the character Livro - a personification of a book that contains the whole universe.

Bianca Baldi (b.1985, Johannesburg) is an artist based between South Africa and the EU.

Recent and upcoming exhibitions include 'Livro de Todo o Universo', Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp (BE), 'Open House', Kunstverein Braunschweig (DE),

'19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC Videobrasil', Sao Paolo (BR), 'Sightings', KZNSA, Durban (ZA), 'The 8th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art', KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (DE), 'Zero Latitude', Goethe Institut, Johannesburg (ZA).

She studied at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice and The Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town.

About Extra Academy:

‘Extra Academy’ is the spontaneous alliance of Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen and the two art schools of the city, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Sint-Lucas Antwerpen. It involves close collaboration with a network of guests and students.

‘Extra Academy’ is a structural service ‘in progress’, offering different tools and trajectories as a supplement to – or disturbance of – academic models and reflexes. Its open program of lectures, performances, workshops, exhibitions and screenings is designed to trigger alternative questions about modes of knowledge production, of research and practice. It probes gaps and unexpected solutions, teasing out the point where ideas materialise, where they are confronted with their palpable consequences. It believes that theory is not an allegory of practice.

‘Extra Academy’ listens, looks, asks and wonders. It collects and distributes conversations, it inquires about the educational turn in the arts and about the turn that will dislodge it, while providing time and space for a plasticity of ideas to manifest themselves.

Language English