By exposing the underlying systems that govern our society, the artist uncovers what is hiding in plain sight in a new work on view during the show

Agustina Woodgate goes straight to ‘The Source’ ahead of Miami Beach

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Miami's terrain is made up of a porous mix of oolite and keystone coral. These materials soak up moisture like a sponge, and in a city that sits just six feet above sea level, flooding is always imminent.&nbsp;Because they destabilize foundations,&nbsp;these chalky stones must be excavated from the ground to make way for swimming pools and condo buildings. Their matter ends up in graveyards of fossilized coral boulders, like the one in Homestead I visit with the artist Agustina Woodgate on an unseasonably warm November day.&nbsp;Woodgate is on the hunt for materials for The Source, a site-specific installation that will make its debut in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/cities/catalog/disruptions">‘Disruptions’</a>, an Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires&nbsp;exhibition in Collins Park of large-scale works by Argentine artists that runs concurrently with the Art Basel Miami Beach show. As a massive, diamond-tipped saw tears into the stone, the quarry's plant manager explains that these rocks aren't mined, but rather, reclaimed, and Woodgate is delighted: the process unexpectedly mirrors her concept for The Source.&nbsp;A reflection on human intervention on natural resources, this functional sculpture will siphon water from the Biscayne Aquifer into a nine-foot-tall fountain that beckons the public to enjoy a drink, while the excess is filtered back into the city's water system, highlighting precarious supply.&nbsp;‘So you’re recycling what people are taking out of the ground like it’s trash?’ Woodgate asks. ‘What a different perspective!’&nbsp;

This type of circular resonance recurs in Woodgate’s practice, which sits somewhere between art and activism. Over the last 20 years, she has manipulated cartographies, currencies, clocks, and grids to challenge political and social systems. Drawing in a number of participants, both as collaborators and viewers, Woodgate makes objects that begin to dismantle dysfunctional structures by providing alternative routes. Playful yet profound, Woodgate’s work uncovers what’s hiding in plain sight.Back at her studio in downtown Miami – she splits her time between Miami and Amsterdam, where she’s completing a masters in design – Woodgate brews coffee in a rusted percolator and lights a thin cigarette. Her studio-slash-laboratory reflects an obsessive collecting habit: books and trinkets are held within grid-like shelves or strewn across countertops; maps and globes, sanded down to a pale beige, surround numerous jars of desert-hued dust and carved marble headstones. In a corner, a grouping of keystone rocks sit in front of digital renderings of the components that will make up The Source.

Settling into a multicolored vintage couch, Woodgate recounts how growing up in gritty, chaotic Buenos Aires fueled the underlying thread within her work. The city’s history as a pirate port informs its present-day culture, which exists at the intersection of order and anarchy. Rules and systems are circumvented in favor of function and practicality. ‘I am very attracted to this moment in which the formal and informal must meet,’ she says, pointing to the lawlessness of the city's slums, where an unwritten code maps a playbook for daily survival. ‘In Buenos Aires, there are the rules, and then there’s this periphery that becomes part of the infrastructure. There is always a parallel route.’After completing a visual arts degree at the Universidad de las Artes, Woodgate left her native city in 2005 to follow a former lover to Miami. Though the relationship eventually ended, she wound up staying after a Craigslist ad calling for artists led her to gallerist Anthony Spinello. He gave Woodgate her first show, and has represented her ever since (Woodgate is also represented in Buenos Aires by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/3457/Barro-Arte-Contempor%C3%A1neo">Barro</a> gallery). ‘I had been collecting my hair in a jar in the shower for years, and took the residue and glued it onto self-portraits,’ she tells me, as we both recall&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8008/Ana-Mendieta">Ana Mendieta</a>'s incisive self-portraiture. ‘Back then, I was looking at works with the body and its residue.’&nbsp;

More recently, her interests have turned to the public realm. While the foundations of her practice remain intact – she continues to work extensively with detritus and cast-off objects – Woodgate today is interested in manipulating those materials to expose the hidden geometries of our social order. After an extensive research process, she often taps a network of collaborators to help her realize her concepts. Generally, they are given free rein: she might select the materials and visualize the system in renderings and drawings, but ‘I actually never know how something will look until I see it done,’ says Woodgate. ‘It’s about trusting in the end result.’ Her trust in the process is evident in works like The A.R.C. (The Animal Rug Collection) (2011–18), which enlists seamstresses to sew deconstructed stuffed animals into ornate, large-scale rugs, questioning the broad constellation of global manufacturing in the East to satisfy the demands of the West. Also tackling themes of consumption, The Source required close collaboration with city planners, stone and metal fabricators, and plumbers to realize it.&nbsp;

‘We’re in a moment where we have to renegotiate real ways we’ve been distributing resources - things like water, like wealth,’ says Stephanie Sherman, a curator and long-time collaborator of Woodgate’s. ‘We need new models for systems, and she manages to make things that work, so they function and aren’t just symbolic.’ While Woodgate’s work is political, it rarely speaks on behalf of any individual or group. Rather than an activist, she considers herself a visual journalist, tasked with unmasking ‘a political hierarchy.’ Notably, however, the artist played a role in the contentious resignation of Warren Kanders from the Whitney Museum of Art Board of Trustees.Selected by curators Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta for inclusion in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Woodgate’s National Times (2016) consists of a system of master and slave clocks (the type found in schools, jails, and factories) with minute hands fitted with sandpaper that scraped away the numbers as they turned. The work drew critical praise, but in July 2019, months after the Biennial debuted, Woodgate – along with Eddie Arroyo,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/16053/Korakrit-Arunanondchai">Korakrit Arunanondchai</a>, Meriem Bennani,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8868/Nicole-Eisenman">Nicole Eisenman</a>, Nicholas Galanin,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15763/Christine-Sun-Kim">Christine Sun Kim</a>, and the research agency Forensic Architecture – requested their work be removed in solidarity with Whitney museum staff, who were calling for Kanders’s ouster after it was discovered his company, Safariland Group, manufactured military supplies used against migrants crossing into the United States.

Because the Kanders controversy was ongoing before the biennial opened, the artists’ resignation was met with a mixture of suspicion and praise. Cynics suggested that the artists were motivated by an unsavory desire for fame; others argued that these emerging artists were hardly in a position to refuse as coveted a platform as the Whitney Biennial. Woodgate dismisses both stances. ‘I was in a position of leverage, and I was also understanding my context. Since I am a context-specific artist, I decided to withdraw,’ she says. Of the countless articles and think pieces published in the wake of their withdrawal, Woodgate notes that none picked up on the fact that the artists demanding their work be withdrawn were all non U.S.-born immigrants.Though the move was unquestionably a personal statement, Woodgate believes that it was the collective reckoning that drove a favorable result (and the artists’ work ultimately remained on view). It reflects the overarching ethos of her practice - that her role as an artist isn’t simply to showcase a broken system, but to work collaboratively to modify it. ‘My work is not about me and what I think,’ she says. ‘It has a group of people behind it, thinking about tools, thinking about processes, telling their stories, and all of us are coming together and making up how a system might work better.’&nbsp;

For more information on Woodgate and ‘Disruptions’, on view in Miami Beach’s Collins Park, December 3–8, 2019, please click&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/cities/buenos-aires/activation-2019">here</a>. Woodgate will be in conversation with artist Marcela Sinclair and curators Florencia Battiti and Diana Wechsler on December 5; see&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/events/detail/10054/Art-Basel-Cities-Buenos-Aires-Artist-Talk/6754">here</a> for more information.&nbsp;The artist is represented by Spinello, Miami, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/3457/Barro-Arte-Contempor%C3%A1neo">Barro</a>, Buenos Aires. Nicole Martinez is a Miami-based writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in ARTnews, Cultured, Hyperallergic, Wallpaper*, and more. Follow her on Instagram @niki_frsh.&nbsp;Top Image: Agustina Woodgate in her studio in Downtown Miami. Photo by Diana Larrea.

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