UMMA Projects: Amalia Pica August 19, 2011

UMMA is pleased to present an exhibition of works by London-based Argentinian artist Amalia Pica. Investigations into perception, time, and memory, as well as a desire to explore how particular gestures read in different cultural contexts, are pursued across a diverse body of work in sculpture, photography, film, and installation, as well as temporary interventions on buildings, monuments, and objects. With wit and a sense of play, Pica highlights moments of connection and disjunction, quietly undermining cultural myths and cliches and poetically exploiting the resulting gap between reality and its representation. The promise---as well as the uncertainty---of communication is a persistent concern in Pica's oeuvre. Megaphones, antennae, podiums, and signal flags are recurring motifs, though rarely are these devices shown in a moment of use. Depicted at rest or disconnected from their functionality, they become figures for potential communication, carriers of a message that remains hypothetical. Other works subtly question the ongoing political and intellectual repercussions of European imperialism in South America, and in particular the willful distortion of history and the active suppression of civic participation, a powerful legacy of colonialism and military control, even in the post-colonial present. Pica's work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions. She is the winner of the 2011 Illy Prize at Art Rotterdam, and her work will be included in the upcoming 54th Venice Biennale ILLUMInations. Organized by UMMA Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art Jacob Proctor, this is Pica's first exhibition in a North American museum.