Auto Italia presents 2023 commissions programme

Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi
January 19–March 19, 2023

Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi is an Afghan sculptor who now lives and works in Switzerland. Ghaznawi’s first solo exhibition in the UK will be presented by Auto Italia: a collection of site-specific sculptures that will continue her research against the classist and racialised foundations of Western taste and aesthetics. This newly commissioned body of sculpture will expand the artist’s work, which she utilizes to examine hegemonic hierarchies in taste-making utilizing recycled, readily available materials that are frequently considered lowbrow in the framework of Western aesthetics.

David Aruquipa Pérez
April 13–June 11, 2023

David Aruquipa Pérez is a Bolivian artist, archivist, and human rights activist who is the President of El Colectivo TLGB de Bolivia. Pérez’s rare collection of pictures documenting the role of Two Spirit performers in the fiestas populares, popular street carnivals that have taken place across the plurinational state of Bolivia for the past 75 years, will be presented in a major new survey exhibition at Auto Italia. The show will explore the history of La China Morena, a carnival figure created by trans people who, according to Pérez, has expanded the visibility of persons of varied genders and sexualities in Bolivia and beyond. Aitor González Valencia, a Quechua-Spanish artist, co-curated the exhibition.

Shaun Motsi
July 6–September 3, 2023

Shaun Motsi is a Zimbabwean visual artist who divides his time between Berlin and Amsterdam. Motsi’s first solo show in the UK will be presented by Auto Italia. This major new film commission employs edutainment as both a structure and a subject matter, allowing the film’s characters to traverse the evolving terrain of institutionalised learning while re-evaluating their reality constructs. Motsi’s investigation of abstract processes in world-making and knowledge generation is expanded in this research. He is concerned in how media and consumer cultures generate realities and identities, particularly Black identities, from and via language.

R M
September 28–December 3, 2023

R M is a Berlin-based artist collaboration that divides its time between Berlin and Geneva. Auto Italia will feature a significant new sculpture commission as well as the group’s first solo exhibition in the UK, which will investigate the social and political implications of behavioral rules used to control or prevent spread. The research will build on the group’s previous work studying the intersections of sexuality, pharmacology, consumerism, and identity, with an emphasis on the social contexts of viruses and bacteria, particularly stigmatized disorders like sexually transmitted diseases.