Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum

video , installatie , Geschiedenis , Conceptueel , Artistiek onderzoek

Jaio and van Gorkum have been working as an artist's duo since 2001. In their practice they analyze and question commonplace notions of authorship, cultural identity and labor relations. They look at the world as through the glasses of an anthropologist, and frequently point that gaze back onto our own performance: What are the circumstances under which cultural products come into being? And what is their fate once they leave the hands of their makers? An important guideline in projects which depend on the complicity of others, or which are based on shared authorship, is to explore and redefine the relationship between artist and society. That is how we assess not only the contribution we might make to reflections on current societal developments, but also the influence of those developments on the meaning and value of art itself.

**The Book of Plagiarism** - 2016. A series of charcoal drawings, based on the images from the 'Libro de los Plagios' (The Book of Plagiarism). This book was published in 1991 by the Basque sculptor Oteiza, as an indictment of what he perceived to be a flagrant plagiarism of his work. The author illustrated his texts with black and white photography of abstract modernist sculptures, juxtaposing the work of other artists with his own. A booklet mimicking the style of the original has been produced alongside the drawings, in which Oteiza's poetic and polemical treatise on different ways to lean on other people's work has been manipulated and updated with our own reflections on the topic.

**Nire ama Roman hil da (My mother died in Rome)** - 2017, installation. Handmade reproductions of the engraved inscriptions discovered on ancient Roman pottery shards from a controversial archaeological find in the Basque Country. In a video, various scholars decipher the Basque and Latin texts and drawings, half of them convinced that they are forgeries, while the other half regard them as authentic.

**Alemanen kanposantue** - 2019, sculpture and drawings. The reconstruction of a forgotten Nazi monument from the Spanish Civil War, whose original inscription has become illegible after years of neglect, vandalism, and multiple layers of political graffiti. The sculpture hangs alongside detailed drawings of the “guilty landscape” surrounding the monument. These drawings are inspired by sketches in the military archive made by soldiers who mapped the enemy lines during the Spanish Civil War.

**Onder de Vleugel (Under de Wing)** - 2020, HD video, 11 minutes. An ode to Rotterdam under lockdown, created in collaboration with our eleven-year-old son Iñaki, who was unable to attend school for weeks due to the pandemic. The film is inspired by 'Wings of Desire' by Wim Wenders. A mysterious boy climbs across the rooftops of the city to listen to the thoughts of the people below him, transcribing them onto countless sheets of paper. These thoughts were whispered by more than 200 people in response to a call on social media.

**Naturaleza Muerta con Recipientes** - 2016, 276 porcelain objects and video. From the ruins of an abandoned porcelain factory, plaster molds have been excavated, cleaned, and put back into operation. From these weathered molds, a porcelain tableware set has been cast, in an edition of six. The objects are exhibited alongside a video documenting our excavations in the factory.

**False Flag** - 2021, video-installation with sound and objects. Three-dimensional models of the airplanes from “Le Drapeau Noir”, a painting René Magritte created in 1937 in response to the bombing of Guernica. The objects hang in front of a screen showing images of the mountainous landscape around the city. On an audio track, the mountains are used as a sounding board: voices call out to each other, naming various details from Pablo Picasso’s painting “Guernica.” 'False Flag' has been made thanks to ANTespacio, with the support of Eremuak, Bilbao Aurrera and Mondriaan Fund.

**Atlas of a Paper Empire** - 2022, multimedia installation. 'Atlas of a Paper Empire' maps the San Telmo Museum in Donostia / San Sebastián using the antique maps from its collection. For a year, a computer selects a random route through the digitized documents and projects it onto a hand-bound atlas with blank pages. Like a satellite, the image glides across the paper: a journey through a virtual world, limited only by the boundaries of the collection itself.

**Schimmenspel** - 2025, three-channel video installation. Shadow Play is the artistic result of two years of research into the copies of the famous painting 'The Surrender of Breda' by Diego Velázquez, and the semi-public spaces in which these can be found in Breda. A video installation presents the various versions of the painting side by side, with particular attention given to the situations occurring around or in front of them. Artist Roel Meelkop composed a soundscape for the videos that accentuates or distorts the acoustics of the various filming locations, thereby emphasizing the distance between audience and the image. 'Shadow Play' has been made thanks to Witte Rook, Breda.

**Honderd bruiloften bij de overgave van Breda** - 2024, photos. During our research on the copies of the painting 'The Surrender of Breda', we invited the residents of Breda to submit their wedding photos for a collective exhibition. More than one hundred photos were submitted, dating from the 1960s to the present, always with one constant: the painting in the town hall serving as a silent witness in the background.

**Das Russendenkmal** - 2023, Watercolors. In a guest studio at Kunstdepot Göschenen in the Swiss Alps, we created a series of watercolors about 'Das Russendenkmal': an imposing monument carved from bare rock in the Schöllenen Gorge. In the 18th century, Russian troops clashed there with Napoleon’s forces over the narrow passage between Northern and Southern Europe. Our focus, however, was not on this history, but on how recent geopolitical events, such as the war in Ukraine, leave their traces on the large stone cross and give it a new meaning.

**Reverse Archaeology** - 2021 – 2023, black polypropylene cubes, various sizes, containing contributions provided by art students. Between 2021 and 2023, we worked with students at various art schools in Arnhem, Groningen, and Bilbao to create and bury a time capsule. The capsules consist of large black cubes that are not to be opened for a thousand years. Each participant worked for six weeks on a contribution addressing the question: How do you communicate with the distant future? A catalog of the contents was handed over each time to the local city archaeologist or to the curators of the archive or museum.

Groepstentoonstelling Lend me your Ears

Datum: 06-03-2026 t/m 07-06-2026

Locatie: Tent Rotterdam

Lend Me Your Ears is een tentoonstelling over hoe herinneringen en verhalen mensen met elkaar verbinden, over generaties heen, en dwars door de tijd. Zes kunstenaars reflecteren op de tijdelijkheid van ons bestaan en op de kwetsbare, maar krachtige rol van herinnering. Wat geven we door? En van welke continuïteit willen we deel uitmaken? Met nieuw werk van Iratxe Jaio (Lexicon of vanishing words).

Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum

Groepstentoonstelling Lend me your Ears

Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum Ars Ex Industria