Artist's Talk: Apestraction

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The Freud Museum comes together with the University College London´s Gashaka Primate Project to present Apestraction - a solo exhibition of works by Mexican artist Damian Ortega. This evening artist Damian Ortega will discuss Apestraction with exhibition curator, Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, Volker Sommer, founder of the Gashaka Primate Project and Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London, and Mark Godfrey, curator on international art, Tate Modern. The artist was invited to visit the Gashaka region in Nigeria: one of the last remaining wildernesses in West Africa, where the rarest subspecies of chimpanzees survives and where the Gashaka Primate Project has its base. By taking an artist to the wilderness, bridges and boundaries between art and science are instinctively created. This exhibition explores these divisions and their transgressions through the work of Ortega. Unlike a dissecting and objectifying scientist, an artist will be able to contextualize the sensitivities of our natural and cultural side in a more nuanced, private and subjectified way — thus honouring Freud's idea that our psyche is at the heart of our existence. Apestraction is on show at The Freud Museum 6 June — 1 September 2013.