Luisa Ungar

Human ear complaining to Nature from the Spiegel der Weisheit manuscript (Salzburg, 1430). British Library. BL, Egerton 1121, f. 38r. Courtesy the artist

Courtesy the artist

Mayan Object for the head with inscriptions. Americas Collection, World Museum, Liverpool. Courtesy the artist

String Bag, Tasmania. African Collection, World Museum, Liverpool. Courtesy the artist

Cotton Fiber piece. Colombia, Personal collection. Courtesy the artist

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Luisa Ungar lives in Bogotá, Colombia, and Antwerp, Belgium. Ungar´s multidisciplinary practice explores how social norms are constructed and institutionalized through language. She is interested in mechanisms that question ways in which local history is constructed, using didactic strategies that trace colonial structures implicit in our ways of learning, communicating and speaking. She looks for threads on animality and the non-human which shape our behavior, and her performances are often built on conversations from the local environment and interweave micro-stories with seemingly disjointed historical narratives and archaeological remains in order to build new layers of meaning. Recent exhibitions and performances include MKHA, Belgium (2018); Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands (2017); Ar/Ge Kunst, Italy (2017); and BienalSur, Argentina (2017). In 2019 she curated the performance and education program for Colombia´s Biennial 45SNA.

Project Description

Luisa Ungar presented a newly commissioned relational performance. A Regurgitation is a Song is a Spell (Consultations to recreate the colonial disease) (2021), offered members of the public a personal experience to engage directly with experts in clairvoyance through a series of weekly phone calls available by demand. Following the caller's inquiries, each conversation offered constellations that connect to Liverpool’s colonial history as a contact point for global trade, through the interpretation of various types of specific material located in the city. Based on reports of contagion, hygienisation and witch-hunting, the commission was inspired by official records, rumor and historical gossip. Ungar experiments with the conversational format as a way of reclaiming certain practices disqualified or marginalized by the modern-capitalist world, revising forms of deprivation of women's voices in connection to local history.

Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial. With support from the Estate of Fanchon Fröhlich.

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