Iván Argote (b. 1983, Bogota, CO) was born in Bogotá, Colombia, but lives and works in Paris nowadays. Argote explores public visual language through his artistic practice. With site-specific installations, sculptures and video, he examines our relationship with the public space, its limits and the inclusion and exclusion of various voices. His works expose power relationships and add fresh layers of meaning to the existing patrimony. By affixing fictional elements to recognisable symbols, his installations appear to float between the past and the future. They shift the focus from the individual to the collective and contribute to a new history: the monument as a symbol of social transformation.
Iván Argote studied graphic design and film at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and visual arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Today, Argote’s work is included in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others. In 2022 he was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp (ADIAF).
