Ines Pais (Lisbon) Go to Ines Pais Homepage 1. Chixuania 2. The IP Foundation
1. Ines Pais Hitch-Hike
Project (Funzine Special Issue)
2. Chixuania Series
3. I-P zines
1. Ines Pais Hitch-Hike
Project (Funzine Special Issue)
"When I started to travel I felt pushed to the limits of my abilities and encouraged to expand my horizons, not only my own but also those of culture and of society. This is the ultimate goal of travelling: expanding yourself, enriching your mind, projecting yourself into a new place. Travelling encouraged me to reflect upon my condition as a foreigner and on the many ways that "foreignness" is manifested in our world.
“As you walk and walk in new lands you are often asked for your name, a name that no one can pronounce correctly and therefore a name that everyone forgets rather quickly. Surprised by a foreign name they always ask you where you come from. As soon as you answer it starts: their minds associate words and meanings in a rather free and inconsequential manner. They start associating you with other memories and they frame you with what they associate with your country. What they frame you with you will never know...
“They look at you and see a culture that they know or that they have heard of, or that they almost don't know... They tend to forget your name, but they tend to remember the name of your country. Your country of origin becomes a kind of ‘surname’ in first contacts. What interested me was to know if your nationality is or is not an essential question. And why did this question become as banal as the one of your name?
“Taking the artworld as my frame of reference I noticed that your country is more relevant than your age, sex, studies, exhibitions or even your prizes. Your nationality normally appears right after your name in CVs, exhibitions and press-releases. They assume that your art-work represents a sample of what happens in the art-scene of your country. Some artists even use their nationality in business cards. Nationality is still used as a way to reinforce some kind of communal illusion.
“As an artist you need to express yourself in your own ways instead of fitting into an existing model within society. Of course in the end you have to adjust and that is the real challenge. How to find your own models of existence and how to cope with the existent ones. Ultimately you have to find a balance and defend your own beliefs. If you work on an international level and if your influences come from the world instead of from one place only, you must defend that.
“So how can we detach ourselves from this old idea that you represent the culture of your country? How to protect ourselves from other people's ignorance and prejudices? How to preserve an identity when people tend to categorize you? How to be oneself simply?
“To approach this problem one should not forget his or her nationality as much as one should not exhibit ‘national pride.’ One should definitely accept it as part of oneself. But don't we have the possibility to resist to the other's need to categorise you? Can't we affirm an autonomy towards our nationality?
“Chixuania is a fictive nation created by The IP Foundation. It symbolises everyone's uniqueness and to a certain extends everyone's privacy. Chixuania has no form. It is a free place. It is neutral and should continue to be neutral. It is located in every country and the language spoken is your native language. It belongs to everyone who knows about its existence. Everyone can relate to Chixuania through individual experiences, preferences, fears and through their own personal visions. Chixuania is also a means of psychological, ethnographic research about how someone is free to inhabit an independent identity, yet is linked to the histories, habits, attitudes of a family, of a clan, of a culture.
“Chixuania is about the
ideal place, about the idea that imagining is part of every real existence.
About the ‘anything can happen.’ It is a process of learning which leads back
finally to ourselves.
Welcome to this brand new land."
Ines Pais
Director of The IP Foundation
2. Chixuania Series
In the Chixuania Series, Ines Pais distributes posters of her hitch-hiking project in Japan. These posters will be distributed freely, and will change the perceptions of the recipients to the different phases of notion. This process deconstructs the basic connection of G-W, and will create a new system of giving, such as that of Kula Exchange in the Trobriand Islands. Yes, Chixuania is also the Country of “not for sale.”
3. I-P zines
Cover Star: Ines Pais
The I.P. Foundation recycled
the cover of I-D and transformed it into I-P. In each "zine" an artist
was invited to pose as a cover-star. Each artist chooses a theme and selects
the next artist to be invited. I-P is a never-ending art/fashion project.
(C) Copyright Shinya Watanabe