EUGENIA PERPETUA BUTLER: BOOK OF LIES

EUGENIA PERPETUA BUTLER: BOOK OF LIES
From Thursday to Saturday, 29 June-27 July, 2024. 

From 5.00 to 8.00 pm.

Exhibition curated by Valerio del Baglivo and Corazón del Sol.

EUGENIA PERPETUA BUTLER: BOOK OF LIES
Eugenia Perpetua Butler (1947-2008) was a conceptual artist. From the 1960s onward she used text, drawing, and processes of live conversation to consider our perception of our interior and exterior selves. At Bulegoa z/b it is presented her three-volume project Book of Lies, created in collaboration with artists from around the world. 

Eugenia P. Butler’s Book of Lies project began in 1991 and examined how other artists use “the lie to explore our relationship with the truth.” Known for her collaborations and interactions with other artists, Butler held three artist dinners where she asked her guests to consider the questions, “What is the lie with which I am most complicit” and “What is the truth that most feeds my life?”

Book of Lies examines the lie as a human strategy using examples drawn from life situations including childhood, love, and war. Seventy-eight artists responded to these questions in unique and provocative ways, resulting in a body of work curated by Butler and Corazon del Sol titled Book of Lies.

At Bulegoa z/b, the audience can see the three volumes exhibited, read their content and touch the works one by one.  

Valerio Del Baglivo is a freelance curator based in Italy. His research focuses on research-based artistic practices that analyze the relation between knowledge production, institutional infrastructures and audience engagement, to discuss the social and political role of art. Recently, Del Baglivo was Guest Curator at IASPIS, Stockholm (2022); Associate External Curator at MAXXI – Museum of XXI Century for the Arts in Rome (2019); and Visiting Curator of UNIDEE at Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella (2018-19).

Corazón del Sol is a third-generation Los Angeles-based artist. Informally taught by her early access to the arts and subsequent questioning of the arts’ organizing systems, she has a practice rooted in collective sense-making through conversation, movement, video, sculpture, and other experimental modes. Her work has been shown at international institutions such as Salón Nacional 44 Colombia (Colombian National Salon of Artists) and Tabakalera, International Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia-San Sebastián. Del Sol has curated shows including Dysfuctional Formulas of Love with co-curator Víctor Albarracín Llanos and Let Power Take a Female Form. Through her community activism and formation of the low-cost housing prototype, Jardín de Estrellas, she brings form to her belief that beautiful housing is a fundamental human right. The prototype of the Jardín de Estrellas is installed in The Box parking lot for viewers to see. Lately, her main interest is in connectivity’s ability to dislodge addiction to power that traumas engender.

Book of Lies is presented as part of through a vanishing point is the seventh session of Material Voices: Feminist genealogies of the work of making exhibitions.

Valerio Del Baglivo’s research on Eugenia Perpetua Butler is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (12th edition, 2023), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.