{"id":4633,"date":"2021-01-13T20:03:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T01:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=4633"},"modified":"2021-01-19T14:05:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T19:05:43","slug":"at-home-by-alice-quaresma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2021\/01\/13\/at-home-by-alice-quaresma\/","title":{"rendered":"at HOME by Alice Quaresma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York<\/strong><\/p>\n

September 17\u2013October 25, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

by J. English Cook<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Figure 1. Installation view of Alice Quaresma\u2019s solo exhibition at HOME,<\/em> September 17\u2013October 25, 2020. Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York. Photo by Leandro Viana, \u00a9 Alice Quaresma, courtesy of Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his elegiac ruminations in The Poetics of Space<\/em> (1958), Gaston Bachelard describes the intimate, sensuous associations that we often apply to the notion of home. Unexpectedly, his prose foreshadowed the confrontations between emotional and architectural interiority in our contemporary pandemic times. \u201cMemories of the outside world,\u201d he writes, \u201cwill never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams. . . .\u201d1<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/span> Bachelard\u2019s slippage between factual recollections and poetry, physical space and dreams is at the forefront of at HOME<\/em>, a solo exhibition of photography-based, mixed media works by Alice Quaresma at the New York City gallery Pablo\u2019s Birthday.2<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 2. Alice Quaresma (b. 1985, Rio de Janeiro). Clash<\/em> (2020). Gouache paint and tape over photographic print. 24 x 36 in. Image courtesy of Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown, the show revealed Quaresma\u2019s own ruminations on the state of physically isolated living. \u201cAs a good traveler,\u201d she writes, \u201cwhenever I cannot physically be somewhere, I travel in my mind, I use my imagination.\u201d3<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/span> Drawing upon her memories of living in both New York and Rio de Janeiro, her hometown, the exhibition conveyed the emotional connections that accrue from fluid experiences of \u201chome.\u201d In light of travel restrictions and confined to her home-cum-studio in Brooklyn, Quaresma mined her photographic collection from both cities, colorfully collaging, transposing, or collating her images into an effervescent curatorial and artistic statement (fig. 1). Through experimental combinations of texture, shape, and figuration; pigments and photography; and the play between individual works and holistic environments, Quaresma creates a convivial atmosphere in which two-dimensional gallery objects evoke the experience of three-dimensional exterior spaces.<\/p>\n

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Figure 3. Alice Quaresma (b. 1985, Rio de Janeiro). Introspective<\/em> (2020). Color pencil, acrylic paint, and sticker over photographic print. 40 x 50 in. Image courtesy of Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In order to create works from<\/em> home that speak to a deeper sense of feeling<\/em> at home\u2014or the loss thereof\u2014Quaresma applies a wide range of strategies. The titles of individual works like Faraway, Disconnected,<\/em> and Adrenaline,<\/em>for example, convey different affective associations with the aerial and landscape views of her respective cities, while works like Dreaming with Eyes Open<\/em> and Somewhere in My Mind<\/em> gesture to a more introspective take on the intersections between material and emotive space. Clash,<\/em> in particular, visualizes the dialectics at the heart of at HOME:<\/em> a photographic print of New York City\u2019s coastline, faded in shades of grey, has been doused in painterly pink and white gouache (fig. 2). Taped onto a vivid reproduction of Rio\u2019s Two Brothers peaks (Morro Dois Irm\u00e3os), the subdued, mottled tones of New York\u2019s coast\u2014under lockdown at the time of Quaresma\u2019s making\u2014renders the city faded and hazily distant.4<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/span> Despite being this work\u2019s place of origin, the Big Apple pales in comparison to the flushed saturation of Brazil\u2019s luscious landscape, geographically distant but imaginatively close. New York\u2019s waterfront, for example, is pictured at a remove from above, in contrast to the more proximate, eye-level view of Rio\u2019s shores. Additionally, Quaresma\u2019s use of broad, messy strokes and visible adhesive contrasts with the balance of clean geometric shapes, juxtaposing her artistic process against formal composition. Her indexical marks, however, slip slightly over the black-and-white photograph\u2019s right-hand edge, briefly submerging both figurative realms within the translucent windowpane of painterly marks. Quaresma\u2019s embodied memories, in this sense, become syntactically intertwined.<\/p>\n

Introspective<\/em> applies a similar approach, pairing a close-up of vibrant, lime-green fruit with a distant, black-and-white view of The Eldorado residence overlooking Central Park (fig. 3). A combination of acrylic paint, color pencil, and stickered-over photographic print, this work frames, accents, and punctuates its subjects, establishing an emotive syntax within a visual, visceral grammar.<\/p>\n

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Figure 4. Alice Quaresma (b. 1985, Rio de Janeiro). Summer Days<\/em> (2020). Acrylic paint over photographic print. 24 x 36 in. Image courtesy of Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This method of using contrasting representational styles to convey embodied experience belongs to a longstanding, international tradition of twentieth-century abstraction.5<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/span> Like many of these artists, Quaresma contrasts distinctive brushwork with structured geometries to communicate a sensual engagement with her canvas. Her gestural color gradients, punctuation-like shapes, and cut-out stylings connect the viewer, indexically, to her emotive associations at the time of making, as seen in the interplay of brush strokes and bold lines in Summer Days<\/em> (fig. 4). Part of what distinguishes Quaresma\u2019s work in the twenty-first century, however, is the application of these earlier practices to photography, creating a poetic vocabulary that playfully and incisively reveals the medium\u2019s oneiric attachment to the material world. As Bachelard would conclude, in describing the home: \u201cwe are never real historians, but always near poets.\u201d6<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/span> By reflecting on themes of personal attachment, displacement, and imaginary travel while inside, Quaresma\u2019s exhibition followed suit, functioning as a lively form of critique that pointed to an important stake of art and criticism in the time of COVID-19: opening up avenues for poetic catharsis within the interior spaces of our makeshift quarantine homes, wherever and whenever in the world they may be.<\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/p>\n

J. English Cook<\/span><\/h4>\n

J. English Cook is a writer, curator, and PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her research focuses on historical intersections between cinema, architecture, and philosophy, particularly as expressed in material adaptations of postwar phenomenology between France and Italy.<\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/p>\n

Footnotes<\/a><\/h4>\n

1. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space<\/em>, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994), 6.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Alice Quaresma, \u201cPress Release: at HOME,<\/em>\u201d (New York: Pablo\u2019s Birthday, 2020).<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Ibid.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a>4. In the exhibition\u2019s press release, Quaresma explains that during lockdown, she \u201cstopped traveling, and the only place [she] could explore was within [her] imagination,\u201d Ibid.<\/p>\n

5. In an interview conducted by the gallery, Quaresma referenced Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, and H\u00e9lio Oiticica\u2014members of Brazil\u2019s Neo-Concrete Movement\u2014as explicit references. Alice Quaresma, \u201cInterview with Alice Quaresma,\u201d interview by Clara Andrade Pereira, Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York, 2020.<\/p>\n

6. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space<\/em>, 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pablo\u2019s Birthday, New York September 17\u2013October 25, 2020 by J. English Cook In his elegiac ruminations in The Poetics of Space (1958), Gaston Bachelard describes the intimate, sensuous associations that we often apply to the notion of home. Unexpectedly, his prose foreshadowed the confrontations between emotional and architectural interiority in our contemporary pandemic times. \u201cMemories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14368,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14368"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4633"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5227,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4633\/revisions\/5227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}