Ahead of Asad Raza’s newest project Diversion at Portikus, opening on June 24th, the artist will be in conversation with curators Liberty Adrien and Carina Bukuts to speak about the series of projects he calls ‘metabolisms’, in which a process involving living beings and objects is set up and operates over the duration of an exhibition. What does it mean for a living system to operate as an artwork? The talk will explore this question and its philosophical and practical ramifications in relation to Raza’s latest projects, such as Absorption for which he created so-called neo soil out of waste material, as well as his new work for Portikus, for which he diverts River Main through the exhibition space.
Asad Raza is an artist, producer and writer based in Berlin. Using actions and processes such as soil-making, tennis, and horticulture, his projects create encounters within and beyond the exhibition setting. They have been realized by institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney; Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Serpentine Galleries, London; Metro Pictures, New York; Urbane Kunst Ruhr, Essen; the Lahore Biennale; and his one-bedroom apartment. He has written for Jan Mot Newspaper, Kaleidoscope, Frieze, modern matter, n+1, NERO, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Spike, and Tennis magazine.