BOOTH C30
For its presentation at Untitled Miami Beach, the woman-owned gallery ALMA PEARL will present work of five artists who re-imagine and rethink the concept of the feminine through their artistic practices and lives.
In 1996, Griselda Pollock writes in the now foundational essay of feminist theory, ‘Inscriptions in The Feminine’: “Through a strategy of “excavation and decipherment”, we ought to find the traces “of a subjectivity formed in the feminine within and in conflict with a phallocentric system” and to explore what can be produced within this system, albeit still on an unconscious level, “unarticulated, unrepresented, unsignified, unrecognised” in order to dismantle traditional axes of hierarchy and power. (Griselda Pollock, ‘Inscriptions in the Feminine’, from Catherine de Zegher (ed), Inside the Visible, MIT Press, 1996, p. 74).”
The work of VICTORIA CANTONS (b. 1969, UK) is autobiographical as well as confessional with political undercurrents. Cantons presents a record of trauma and healing, alongside a rigorous inquiry into the social constraints surrounding gender politics. Deeply informed by her own experience of limitation and stigma, her work reverberates with notions of freedom, selfhood, representation, power and aspects of the human condition which she writes, despite our divergent identities and experiences, “connect us all.” The only child of a Catholic Spanish mother from Madrid and a Jewish Russian/Basque father (who was born and raised in French Algeria and the south of France), Victoria Cantons has had a multicultural upbringing. As an artist who happens to be a woman and transgender, Cantons feels that having been perceived to be a man and now recognised as a woman has given her a rare perspective.
Born in 1968 in the former Soviet Union but raised since childhood in London, the work of MARGARITA GLUZBERG is deeply influenced by her culturally hybrid upbringing–her family, belonging to the Soviet-Jewish intelligentsia, she also was raised from childhood in the multicultural context of London. Her practice, strongly grounded in drawing, is expanded in her most recent body of work, which references Gluzberg’s past utilising vintage collections of pastels from the 60s and 70s from both the US and Eastern Europe while including those from her own childhood collection. Gluzberg’s abstract and meditative body of works strives towards a conceptual zone which has been freed of any cultural associations. Their meaning is fully contained within the iridescent vintage materials deployed. She studied at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and the Royal College of Art in London. Solo exhibitions include Proper Time, Karsten Schubert, London (2022); In Paradise, Pushkin House, London (2019); For Children Not For Children, Filet Space, London (2018); Avenue des Gobelins, Paradise Row, London (2012). A solo exhibition of Gluzberg’s work is running concurrently in our London gallery.
Born in London in 1983 to Jamaican parents, the work of EMILY MOORE (b. 1983, UK) examines the status of postcolonial Black-British identity through a feminine lens engaged with crafts, domesticity and motherhood. Emily has defined her own term ‘wildness’ in contemporary painting, which she says speaks both to her approach within her practice but also suggests the state of contemporary painting through the lens of novel interventions into art history. Recent exhibitions include Between Being and Becoming, Lisson Gallery, Shanghai; Positions, Alma Pearl, London (curated by John Slyce); Rites of Passage, Gagosian, London, 2023 (curated by Péjú Oshin) and her solo Black Roses, Ordovas Gallery, London.
The duo CULLINAN RICHARDS (founded in 1998, UK) often make large-scale interventions positioning painting as part of a wider mise-en-scène in which the feminine is inscribed through numerous means: evocations of witchcraft, erecting support structures to support the work and practices of others, and presenting a thoroughly social and dialogical approach are some examples. Consummate exhibition makers, the inevitable doubling that occurs between two develops into a highly personal visual language borrowing from film, fairytale, expressionist painting among other cultural resources. Exhibitions include 6th Sharjah International Biennial, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2003); Independence, South London Gallery, London (2003); Edge of the Real–A Painting Show, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004); British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, Nottingham Castle Museum, Nottingham; Hayward Gallery, London; Tramway, Glasgow; Royal William Yard, Plymouth (2010); Recent British Painting, GRIMM, Amsterdam (2012); Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, London (2012).
In addition to the physical presentation in Miami, Alma Pearl’s online presentation on Vortic aims to spotlight the Latin American artists the gallery has collaborated with since its inception. Room 2 showcases work by Armando Andrade Tudela, Adrián Gouet, Victor Payares and Jhonatan Pulido, who is now represented by the gallery.