In response to Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, Valerie Brathwaite’s current exhibition in the main gallery, Henrique Faria New York draws from its significant inventory of Latin American art and simultaneously presents The Secret Garden, a group show of Latin American women artists with a focus on female sexuality and identity with the iconography of the body fully exposed without social and cultural repression. Celebrating fertility, this exhibition goes to the roots of creation and creativity reweaving the thread of life after a long period of forced hibernation.
The presentation brings together a selection of works from the early 1970s to 1990 by Zulema Damianovich (Argentina), Mercedes Elena González (Venezuela), Nan González (Venezuela), Ana Mercedes Hoyos (Colombia), Marta Minujín, (Argentina) Margarita Paksa (Argentina), Susana Rodríguez (Argentina) and Margot Römer (Venezuela).
Zulema Damianovich (Buenos Aires, 1920-2014) moved to New York in 1961, where she began working as a print maker and tapestry designer. She helped connect other Argentine emigres to one another and collaborated with her peers in artistic and political initiatives. The drawings exhibited here were executed during her stay in Morocco. Their sensual, organic and voluptuous forms are timeless and reminiscent of the Paleolithic fertility mother goddess of Willendorf.
Mercedes Elena González (Caracas, b.1952) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work relates to the flesh using her own body as the main subject creating a unique visual language addressing the iconography of the female body connecting art, nature and science.
Nan González (Caracas, b.1956) is a performance and video artist who collaborated with Jennifer Hackshaw from 1977 to 1986. Known as "Yeni and Nan,” they were important proponents of conceptual art in Venezuela. The photograph shown here is part of a significant body of work done in the salt mines of Araya (Venezuela) where González used her own body as a canvas depicting the role and transformative actions humankind plays with natural resources.
Ana Mercedes Hoyos (Bogotá, 1942-2014) became interested in investigating both the conceptual and phenomenological origins of color, looking both to Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square and her own experience of the natural world. The tondo painting "Sol" (Sun, 1980) balances flatness with saturated color. Layered variations of yellow tones across the canvas’ surface create sensations of depth and endlessness. The painting hangs highest in the exhibition radiating its primordial energy over all.
Marta Minujín (Buenos Aires, b. 1943) is a conceptual and performance artist who conducted an ethnographical survey of sexual pleasure before producing the series of works titled "Frozen Sex" in 1973. The critic Julián Cairol’s impression of the works recalled advertising for frozen food. He wrote, “Through this process, the artist reveals the empirical instrument on which eroticism has been built, and she represents it as so many anonymous objects of consumption. Sex no longer belongs to the individual, but to the culture.”
Margarita Paksa (Buenos Aires, 1936-2020) gained recognition as an early exponent of emerging new technologies such as video and digital media. Breaking from her radical political activism, she often circled back to the more traditional arts as seen with this 1990 acrylic on canvas of a red amaryllis from her Flower series, inspired by the works of Georgia O’Keefe, the death of her mother and the rebirth of democracy in Argentina after the military dictatorship.
Susana Rodríguez (Buenos Aires) graduated with a Masters degree in printmaking from the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires. The works on display are graphite on paper, some in the format of hanging scrolls. They were executed between 1978 and 1981 during a brutal period of violence and military dictatorship. Her explicit, often erotic symbols and scripts, are drawn either in lines or grids empowering female sexuality in the face of the mental and physical abuse that many women experienced during the repressive regime in Argentina.
Margot Römer (Caracas, 1983-2005) was a painter and conceptual artist who used everyday or found objects in order to evoke a relationship with the human body. As seen here with "Pentimento Horizontal" from 1978, the Duchampian urinal, depicted in horizontal rainbow colored lines, symbolizes the female sexual organ and was executed the very same year the pride flag was adopted.
This group show, held in the back gallery, is part of an ongoing series presented concurrently with the main gallery exhibition to foster an open dialogue between both of them. Our main purpose is to shed light on artists, often under appreciated or overlooked, that deserve greater recognition. Henrique Faria with galleries in New York, Buenos Aires and formerly Caracas, has been working with museums, art consultants, private and institutional collections for over twenty years.
The presentation brings together a selection of works from the early 1970s to 1990 by Zulema Damianovich (Argentina), Mercedes Elena González (Venezuela), Nan González (Venezuela), Ana Mercedes Hoyos (Colombia), Marta Minujín, (Argentina) Margarita Paksa (Argentina), Susana Rodríguez (Argentina) and Margot Römer (Venezuela).Zulema Damianovich (Buenos Aires, 1920-2014) moved to New York in 1961, where she began working as a print maker and tapestry designer. She helped connect other Argentine emigres to one another and collaborated with her peers in artistic and political initiatives. The drawings exhibited here were executed during her stay in Morocco. Their sensual, organic and voluptuous forms are timeless and reminiscent of the Paleolithic fertility mother goddess of Willendorf.Mercedes Elena González (Caracas, b.1952) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work relates to the flesh using her own body as the main subject creating a unique visual language addressing the iconography of the female body connecting art, nature and science.Nan González (Caracas, b.1956) is a performance and video artist who collaborated with Jennifer Hackshaw from 1977 to 1986. Known as "Yeni and Nan,” they were important proponents of conceptual art in Venezuela. The photograph shown here is part of a significant body of work done in the salt mines of Araya (Venezuela) where González used her own body as a canvas depicting the role and transformative actions humankind plays with natural resources.Ana Mercedes Hoyos (Bogotá, 1942-2014) became interested in investigating both the conceptual and phenomenological origins of color, looking both to Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square and her own experience of the natural world. The tondo painting "Sol" (Sun, 1980) balances flatness with saturated color. Layered variations of yellow tones across the canvas’ surface create sensations of depth and endlessness. The painting hangs highest in the exhibition radiating its primordial energy over all. Marta Minujín (Buenos Aires, b. 1943) is a conceptual and performance artist who conducted an ethnographical survey of sexual pleasure before producing the series of works titled "Frozen Sex" in 1973. The critic Julián Cairol’s impression of the works recalled advertising for frozen food. He wrote, “Through this process, the artist reveals the empirical instrument on which eroticism has been built, and she represents it as so many anonymous objects of consumption. Sex no longer belongs to the individual, but to the culture.”Margarita Paksa (Buenos Aires, 1936-2020) gained recognition as an early exponent of emerging new technologies such as video and digital media. Breaking from her radical political activism, she often circled back to the more traditional arts as seen with this 1990 acrylic on canvas of a red amaryllis from her Flower series, inspired by the works of Georgia O’Keefe, the death of her mother and the rebirth of democracy in Argentina after the military dictatorship.Susana Rodríguez (Buenos Aires) graduated with a Masters degree in printmaking from the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires. The works on display are graphite on paper, some in the format of hanging scrolls. They were executed between 1978 and 1981 during a brutal period of violence and military dictatorship. Her explicit, often erotic symbols and scripts, are drawn either in lines or grids empowering female sexuality in the face of the mental and physical abuse that many women experienced during the repressive regime in Argentina.Margot Römer (Caracas, 1983-2005) was a painter and conceptual artist who used everyday or found objects in order to evoke a relationship with the human body. As seen here with "Pentimento Horizontal" from 1978, the Duchampian urinal, depicted in horizontal rainbow colored lines, symbolizes the female sexual organ and was executed the very same year the pride flag was adopted.This group show, held in the back gallery, is part of an ongoing series presented concurrently with the main gallery exhibition to foster an open dialogue between both of them. Our main purpose is to shed light on artists, often under appreciated or overlooked, that deserve greater recognition. Henrique Faria with galleries in New York, Buenos Aires and formerly Caracas, has been working with museums, art consultants, private and institutional collections for over twenty years.