"Walk the Authors, 2018, is an installation made up of a variable number of wooden folding chairs. These chairs belong to a larger family of chairs all covered with text inscribed into them with fire. They are economic mass produced chairs have formed a fundamental part of my work as an artist and I have used them numerous times.
Those that you find in your hands today are related to another group named Walk the Bastards, 2017 that were shown for the first time last December in Madrid. These Bastards are, in themselves, the natural children of another much bigger group: Walk the Chair first seen in London in 2010 in the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery MOVE- Choreographing You.
In the extended chair family there are some important differences: those from London were conceived as a closed group and invite action; those from Madrid were inscribed with inclusivity in mind; this third group, the Mexicans, are independent, they have a voice, they are authors whose stories can only be understood by reading them.
I invite you to take up a chair and patiently try to read what is written. To do this you need to use your body and work with the chair, opening and closing both, turning, and lowering. You have to involve yourself with the chair: touch it, squat by it, kneel and lean. You can start reading the stories of Geneviève, María José, Tamara, Señora Caetano, Carles and Henry from the point marked with a small section of blue tape or piece of wire.
These chairs are part of my life. It is with them that I have understood the world, where I have sat to watch it and it is with them that I want to be cremated. I love the whole family of chairs equally, Brothers and Sisters, Mothers and Children, Spanish and English Bastards, its all the same."
La Ribot, July 2018, Tex written on the wall, Exibihtion Take a Seat (2018 07.25-10.14 ), CCEMx-Centro Cultural de España en México
Installation of 6 Chairs, Wood and Metal
Created by La Ribot
Thanks to Tamara Alegre, Thami Manekehla and the CCEMx, (Centro Cultural de España en México) and its team.
La Ribot Cie is supported by Pro Helvetia, République et Canton de Genève, Ville de Genève - Département de la culture– Geneva (Switzerland).