Conditions for recognising a living stone

Pina is a new exhibition space in the form of a magazine-in-print. To launch issue #1, its founder and editor Catalina Imizcoz will be in conversation with artist Gala Porras-Kim about her exhibition ‘Conditions for recognising a living stone’, commissioned and produced for the magazine’s pages.

‘Conditions for recognising a living stone’ presents a legal case defending the labour and immigration rights of the Ka (life force) of Nenkheftka, an ancient Egyptian official who dwells in a statue kept at the British Museum. Joined by a team that includes a lawyer and an egyptologist, Porras-Kim seeks to restore Nenkheftka’s agency in his afterlife plans. Her exhibition examines the parameters of respecting beliefs about law, biology and religion across cultural, geographic and temporal spectrums. Thinking about the relationship between objects and the institutions that house them, the conversation will explore the making-of this exhibition in-print.

Each issue of Pina houses two 60-page exhibitions, proposing to reimagine the exhibition as a world-building experience, accessible from multiple entry points within a flat, portable and collectible space. Launching in October 2024, Pina Issue 1 features exhibitions by Porras-Kim and Asad Raza. Porras-Kim’s exhibition comes with a conversation with Adam Kleinman and ‘Bedtime Story’ by Jessi Jezewska Stevens. Raza’s exhibition is titled ‘Array’ as is accompanied by a conversation with Karen Barad and a newly commissioned work of fiction by Akil Kumarasamy.

Gala Porras-Kim’s practice deals with the social and political contexts that influence how intangible things, such as sounds, language, and history, have been framed through the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation. She considers the way institutions shape inherited codes and forms and, conversely, how objects can shape the contexts in which they are placed. Porras-Kim has had solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2024); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2023); Fowler Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2023) and participated in numerous group shows, such as Liverpool Biennial (2023); 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021). She was in-residence at Delfina Foundation in 2021.

Catalina Imizcoz is founding editor of Pina magazine and director of Cthulhu Books. She just finished her PhD ‘The Exhibitionary Form: Tentacular notes on the exhibition, its design, and world-building in the ruins of representation’ (AHRC). She is associate lecturer in the Exhibition Studies MRes at Central Saint Martins, London.