Jac Leirner Us Artists, 1985-2022

Us Artists has an unexpected narrative and poetic quality among Leirner's groupings of vintage plastic bags. Installed in two rows at eye-level, the ensemble assembles a group of artists to which Jac, as the title acknowledges, adds herself. The top row includes bags from exhibitions of works by Vincent van Gogh, Auguste Rodin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Isa Genzken and, in a witty act of self-referentiality, a bag from a car dealership named Jac Motors Inesperado (Engl. unexpectedly). The lower row consists of bags without any discernible information: one has a camouflage pattern, the others are monochrome.

The work has its starting point in 1985, when the artist began collecting the bags before first exhibiting them at the 1989 São Paulo Biennial and the following year at the 44. Biennale di Venezia. At the time the central works of the series were presented as vast quilted surfaces, bag on bag, covering walls and in some instances also the floors. In addition, the artist produced sculptures from groups of slightly padded bags sewn-together. Later works, some with an exclusive focus on bags from art institutions were exhibited on the wall as grids, most recently, Museum Bags (1985/2019) at the Museum Ludwig, on occasion of the artist's receiving the 2019 Wolfgang Hahn Award.