MoMA Library Council — The Valise / La Valija: Multimedia Artist’s Portfolio by Seven South American Artists (2017)

AIRA, CÉSAR; JOHANNA CALLE; MATÍAS DUVILLE; MARIA LAET; MATEO LÓPEZ; NICOLÁS PARIS; ROSÂNGELA RENNÓ; and CHRISTIAN VINCK HENRIQUEZ.
The Valise / La Valija.
New York: Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art, 2017.

An ambitious multimedia artist’s portfolio created by the MoMA Library Council, bringing Argentine novelist César Aira together with seven contemporary South American artists. The project takes Aira’s novel An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter—a surreal account of the German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas’s journey across South America—as its geographical and conceptual point of departure.

More than fifty individual works are housed within Nicolás Paris’s printed suitcase-form portfolio, including original prints, artist’s books, photographic material, maps, posters, sculptural objects, a sound recording, and a unique monoprint:

• Johanna Calle: Morphine Landscape, letterpress print; and Páramo, hand-bound accordion photographic album.
• Matías Duville: Immersion, suite of ten prints; System Night, screenprint; Spirit Shoes, poster; and Cabomba, vinyl LP recorded with Pablo Duville as Centolla Society.
• Maria Laet: Walk, a unique scroll-form monoprint approximately 2.8 meters long, produced by the artist walking across Japanese paper laid over an inked wooden surface.
• Mateo López: Sun City (The Conquest of Darién), a suite of 24 stitched screenprints and woodcuts.
• Nicolás Paris: Letterpress prints, a paper book-object, a hand-blown double-ended glass bulb containing a seed, and a printed artist’s book.
• Rosângela Rennó: Everything on Wheels, a large hand-bound photographic map accompanied by a Fresnel lens.
• Christian Vinck Henriquez: Hand-bound artist’s book and poster.

The fitted portfolio measures approximately 37.5 × 61 × 11.5 cm (14¾ × 24 × 4½ inches). An interior sleeve is numbered 28/113.

Published in a signed standard edition of 100 copies for members of the MoMA Library Council, with additional artist copies; a separate deluxe edition of 25 was also produced. All proceeds from the original publication benefited the Archives and Library of The Museum of Modern Art.

Edition: Standard signed edition; interior component numbered 28/113.
Publisher: Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
Format: More than fifty prints, books, maps, objects, and sound elements in a suitcase-form portfolio.
Condition: Contents in good condition; minor damage to an interior fitted support.