September 9 – 13, 2020
2020년 9월 9일 – 13일
Flexspace-C, CICA Museum
“Artists working with postcards from the 1960s onwards have largely been concealed and overlooked in the history of contemporary art.”
Jeremy Cooper
My current work addresses the migrant crisis in Italy, my adopted country of residence. Migrants live in Italian cities, yet they remain marginal, panhandling for spare change and not being allowed to mix as proper citizens. These young, enthusiastic, able-bodied people are forbidden to hold jobs, finding themselves in limbo. In my recent paintings, the imagery of home and its comforting surroundings is my point of departure, where stability is destroyed and ideals are questioned and put to the test.
For the CICA Museum I want to create an installation of three hundred postcards titled Tanti Saluti ! – Italian for Greetings! Home is the subject of this work, a home that has been upended deconstructed, and obliterated. The postcard is an ideal way to explore concepts of travel, wandering and dislocation. I envision these small works being attached to the wall with nails in each top corner in single rows, as a way of evoking for the viewer travel and the different paths we take in our lives.
Since the show will be up for two weeks, I plan to stay in Gimpo for the duration. If possible, I would like to set up a table with my supplies–a small watercolor set, a paint brush, glue stick, some paper, pens, scissors and crayons– in the gallery space and create more postcards as a sort of performance, possibly once a day at a certain time during opening times of the museum.
My work transformed, moving from figuration to abstraction, after observing the engaging results of my children when they playfully splashed paint onto paper. Traveling with my work compelled me to abandon stretchers; painting on paper and unstretched canvas has freed me from being too attached to initial outcomes. Applying for Italian citizenship and encounters with displaced people panhandling on Milan’s street corners has focused my attention on the European migrant crisis.
I have exhibited my work in Europe and the United States, and participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson Vermont, USA, Centre D’Art Marnay, Marnay-Sur-Seine, France, The Art Students League at Vyt, Sparkill, New York, and in August 2019 the PassagiAtina Residency, held in Atina, Italy, curated by Chris Simpson and Jude Cowan Montague. An exhibition of the Atina residents’ work will be held at hArtslane gallery in January 2020.
In 2018 I completed the Professional Doctorate Programme in Visual Art at University of East London and later had my first solo exhibition in London at Poplar Union Arts Centre. A solo exhibition of my work is set for March, 2020, at the CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea.
Mary Crenshaw, “Tanti Saluti!/ Greetings!” (2019)