WITNESS (www.witness.org) is an international nonprofit organization that has been using the power of video and storytelling for 20 years to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. WITNESS empowers people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.
Each image in the “Artists Support WITNESS” print portfolio is a collaboration between two artists born in different countries. This print is a collaboration between Guillermo Kuitca, born in Argentina, and Bill Woodrow, born in England.
Guillermo Kuitca was born in Argentina. He is a key figure in the history of Latin American art whose work finds inspiration in the realms of architecture, theater, and cartography. Kuitca has exhibited worldwide and his work is held in several major international collections, including the Met and MoMA, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Tate Gallery, London, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC. Kuitca represented Argentina at the 2007 Venice Biennale. He lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Bill Woodrow was born in England and has exhibited worldwide. He was one of three artists selected to make a sculpture for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square for the year 2000 and was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1996 – 2001. Woodrow is a sculptor whose early work was made from found materials scavenged from streets and dumps of the cities around the world to which he had travelled in order to make exhibitions. Initially these materials were partially embedded in plaster and concrete, appearing, fossil like, as if they had been excavated. He then went on to use the surface skin of consumer goods, such as washing machines and cars to create new three dimensional images that were left attached to the original object. Collecting all manner of things, altering them and giving them a new context, allowed Woodrow an element of narrative in his work. This approach to materials later gave way to a much broader attitude to sculptural processes and media but continued his interest in narrative and questioning the world we inhabit. He lives and works in London.
