As the Mangoes Roll is the first book-length publication on Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker’s long standing collaboration as video artists. Weaving together Conlon’s background in biology and keen attention to everyday objects with Harker’s background in film and acerbic social commentary, their videos address pressing cultural, sociopolitical, and ecological issues with humor and a trenchant poetic sensibility. While their videos originate from the particular conditions of life in Panama City, Panama, they find broad applicability in the attention they draw to the connections between tropical ecologies, urban transformation, global consumption, and cycles of use and refuse.

The richly illustrated book will offer a complete overview of their videos to date; an extended interview with the artists and curator Sandino Scheidegger; and a contextual essay by art historian Paula Kupfer that considers their videos through the prism of the historical, cultural, and ecological laboratory that is Panama City, and the Panamanian isthmus broadly speaking. While the conversation with Scheidegger addresses the artists’ process and collaboration, Kupfer’s text weaves together art historical analysis, cultural history, and interviews with anthropologists, biologists, and historians commenting on the ways that Conlon and Harker’s poetic and playful works speak to a particular contemporary sensibility and place. The publication accompanies an exhibition of Conlon and Harker’s work planned for the spring of 2023 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá.

BIO

Donna Conlon (USA, 1966) and Jonathan Harker (Ecuador, 1975) have collaborated since 2006. In their videos, they play with the intrinsic properties of everyday objects to generate incisive, poetic, and playful social critique, combining a painterly treatment of color and composition with a meticulous handling of rhythm, texture, and spatiality of sound.

Their works are part of prestigious collections such as Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco y el Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Compostela. Their works have been shown in numerous spaces in the artistic circuit such as MCA Chicago, Detroit Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum, Miami and have been included in events such as Prospect 4 (New Orleans, 2017), Bienal de Mercosur (Porto Alegre, 2011) y Bienal de la Habana (2009).