Chile + France
live and work together between New York and Rio de Janeiro
Courtney Smith (Paris 1966) and Ivan Navarro (Santiago de Chile 1972), live and work together between New York and Rio de Janeiro. Both artists have their roots in Sculpture, work fuses their plastic languages n experimental actions. After years of sporadic collaborations, in 2014 both artists formed the Konantü project as another category within their artistic practices. Konantü’s works are participatory and timed, in the form of social interactions guided and designed from a restrictive structure. Within a demarcated field, the participants negotiate the given terms, both physical and conceptual, perform rituals of exchange and reciprocity to create a constructive collectivity.
Since 2014, the works of Konantü take place in different spaces, some improvised as in workshops and vacant buildings, galleries and institutions. Among his recent projects are: The Ring produced by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Devision), Los Angeles, USA; Patria Ley Dios during the HAWAPI residence in Tacna, Peru; Cuadrilla de Yungay produced by the Fundación Siemens in Santiago, Chile; The Music Room I, Book Fair, PS1-MOMA, New York, USA; Standing Room y Nadie sabe para quien trabaja in Brooklyn, USA. They were co-authors of the Uirapuru exhibitions at the Goethe-Institut in Nairobi and The Construction of Volumetric Interrelationships at Baró Galeria in São Paulo.
They are currently working on a new project that will be presented at the Chicago Manuel Style space in September of this year. In 2016 Ediciones Popolet published the book Konantü: Courtney Smith & Iván Navarro that compiles a selection of their projects carried out between 2006 and 2016.