Molto bella la mostra di Amalia Pica al Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, un sapiente uso di mezzi semplici rinterpretati in modo poetico e stimolante.
Born in Argentina
and based in London, artist Amalia Pica explores metaphor, communication, and
civic participation through drawings, sculptures, large-scale photographic
prints, slide projections, live performances, and installations. The MCA
exhibition Amalia Pica is the artist’s first major solo museum show
in the United States and includes approximately fifteen of her most significant
works from the last seven years, in addition to new commissions. Using simple
materials such as photocopies, lightbulbs, drinking glasses, beer bottles,
bunting, cardboard, and other found materials, Pica creates work that is
formally beautiful and conceptually rigorous while addressing fundamental
issues of communication—such as the acts of delivering and receiving messages
(verbal or nonverbal) and the various forms these exchanges may take. She is
particularly interested in the role of the artist in conveying messages to
audiences and the translation of thought to action, idea to object. Her work is
optimistic in its reflection of moments of shared experience, often
incorporating signifiers of celebration and communal gatherings such as fiesta
lights, flags and banners, confetti, and rainbows.
Having grown up
in Argentina, Pica is attracted to the limits and failures of language and
concerned with what it means to have a platform to speak out from. Her work
raises questions about individual versus collective speech in the context of
extreme political situations, such as those in 1970s Argentina or present-day
Afghanistan, and demonstrates how open communication is a right in some regions
of the world and a privilege in others.
In addition to
new work, the exhibition will include Strangers, an in-gallery performance
in which two people who have never met before hold a bunting between them for a
specific duration.
This exhibition
is co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and MIT List Visual
Arts Center. It is co-curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Pamela Alper
Associate Curator at MCA Chicago, and João Ribas, Curator at MIT List Visual
Arts Center.
