OPEN/CLOSE: February 2, 2018 –March 26th, 2018

Pushdot Studio is honored to be working in conjunction with Angelica Dass to bring her internationally acclaimed project, Humanae- Work in Progress to the West Coast of the United States for the first time. We believe the artist’s vision presents a unique reflection on race, it’s definition and it’s impact on our social dialogue. We invite you to view this powerful exhibit and participate in the conversation surrounding this highly charged topic.

Humanæ is a “work in progress” by the Brazilian Angélica Dass, who intends to deploy a chromatic range of the different human skin colors. Those who pose are volunteers who have known the project and decide to participate. There is no previous selection of participants and there are no classifications relating to nationality, gender, age, race, social class or religion. Nor is there an explicit intention to finish it on a specific date. It is open in all senses and it will include all those who want to be part of this colossal global mosaic. The only limit would be reached by completing all of the world’s population.

However, this taxonomy close to Borges´ world, adopts the format of the PANTONE ® guides, which gives the collection a degree of hierarchical horizontality that dilutes the false preeminence of some races over others based on skin color or social condition.

These guidelines have become one of the main systems of color classification, which are represented by means of an alphanumeric code, allowing to recreate them accurately in any medium: is a technical-industrial standard. The process followed in Humanæ also is rigorous and systematic: the background for each portrait is tinted with a color tone identical to a sample of 11 x 11 pixels taken from the face of the photographed. Aligned as in the famous samples, its horizontality is not only formal also is ethical.

Thus, without fuss, with the extraordinary simplicity of this semantic metaphor, the artist makes an “innocent” displacement of the socio-political context of the racial problem to a safe medium, the guides, where the primary colors have exactly the same importance that the mixed ones. It even dilutes the figure of power that usually the photographer holds. The use of codes and visual materials belonging to the imagery that we all share, leaves in the background the self-referentiality of the artist, insistent and often tiresome.

Many of the ingredients that characterize the [best] spirit of this time appear to be part of this project: shared authorship, active solidarity and local proposals likely to operate globally, networking, communication expanded to alternative spaces of debate, awareness without political ideology, social horizontality… The spectator is invited to press the share button in his brain.

At present, more than 3700 images exist in the project. They have been taken to 28
cities, in 18 different countries: Madrid, Barcelona, Getxo, Bilbao, and Valencia, Paris, Bergen, Winterthur, Chaisso (Switzerland), Groningen, The Hague (Netherlands), Dublin, London, Tyumen (Russia), Gibellina, and Vita (Italy), Vancouver (Canada), Pittsburgh, and Chicago (USA), Quito (Ecuador), Calparaiso (Chile), Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Cordoba (Argentina), New Delhi (India), Daegu (South Korea), Addis Abeba (Ethiopia), Chiasso (Switzerland).

Angélica Dass is a Spanish-Brazilian artist based in Madrid. She has received international acclaim through her pivotal project, Humanæ, which is a collection of photography portraits of people revealing the true beauty of human skin color. This project has been shown in numerous exhibitions and talks across the continents, and through her TED Global talk in Vancouver in 2016, her main concerns and the philosophies of the project have reached a great numbers of audiences around the world. Dass holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil) and a MA in Photography from EFTI (Spain). In 2014 she was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the “Nine Brazilian Photographers You Need to Follow”.