Karina El Azem: Termosensitive Paint, a Venice Residency, and a 30-Year Retrospective Book

Key facts

• Karina El Azem's series Buenos Aires del color del tiempo uses a humidity-sensitive thermosensitive paint combined with acrylic that shifts from blues and turquoises to pinks, greys and purples.
• The paint was not commercially available and had to be custom manufactured; the supplier labelled the pink jar 'Pintura del Tiempo'.
• The method references souvenir plaster or resin weather figurines sold in Mar del Plata that changed colour to predict rain.
• Weather figurines appear as a rooster in Italy and Brazil, and as seahorses, seals or the Virgin of Luján in Argentina.
• El Azem was invited by (Re)Create Art Projects, founded by Gale Elston, to a residency at Casa Bianca in the Asti region of Italy.
• The residency includes a Venice exhibition opening 3 November, curated by Elga Wimmer, with four artists from China, Korea, England and Argentina.
• She received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2001 and again in 2023.
• The second grant funded a bilingual Spanish-English book on thirty years of her work, with texts by Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, Florencia Qualina and Florencia Battiti, design by Fabián Muggieri and printing by Fundación Tres Pinos.