Exhibitions
Simonette Quamina | I Left A Piece of My Story In A Green Glass Bottle Of Hope
Date and place
Place: Praxis NY
Start Date: March 09 2023
End Date: April 08 2023
Description
Praxis is pleased to present I Left A Piece of My Story In A Green Glass Bottle Of Hope, a solo exhibition by the artist Simonette Quamina.
I Left A Piece of My Story In A Green Glass Bottle Of Hope by Simonette Quamina (b.1982), is a love letter written in a Caribbean visual language. Composed of diverse collage and printmaking techniques, including woodcut, chine-collé, collagraph, and embossment layered over one another, Simonette Quamina’s large-scale collage prints speak to the artist’s intersectionality and multicultural background. Growing up within the borders of Canada, Guyana, Saint Vincent, and the United States, the artist examines themes of migration patterns, displacement, and labor within the framework of Afro-Caribbean spirituality and esthetics. The monochromatic dark gray tones simultaneously obscure and reveal intimate narratives by compelling viewers to actively see and thus engage with the work more profoundly.
Simonette Quamina’s collage prints are free from the borders of the paper. Layered printing techniques’ arrangements extend beyond each work’s margins, creating a landscape-like form. In Confirmation In Victoria’s Regia (2018), the abstract horizontal silhouette directly converses with the Caribbean islands. Together the results resemble an archipelagic state connected by the medium and Caribbean symbolisms that repeat across, like the jumbie beads in Sing A Song My Little Kiskadee (2018) and Night Gardener (2020). Or the delicately positioned white plumeria flower set in these predominantly dark environments as a slight gesture of hope, rebirth, and new beginnings.
Together these large-scale collage prints address issues brought about by the global north political assertiveness that compels people within the global south to relocate and construct new homes and memories. The compositions are autobiographical imagery in dialogue with the artist’s ancestral memory examining notions of belonging through complex scenes of hybrid domestic and exterior places the artists may have inhabited throughout their migration journey. Within Quamina’s evocative imagery, the faces of the subjects are often obscured or non-existing. These disembodied figures could be open for interpretation as abstracted reconfigured memories Quamina aspires to piece together. Simonette Quamina’s approach to their artistic practice pulls from history, community, and the personal. It draws inspiration from social and political factors directly influencing their family story. Yet, it’s open-ended enough to perform as transparent reflections for others with similar backstories.
Yelaine Rodriguez, NY 2023
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More Information
Simonette Quamina was born in Ontario, Canada in 1982, and spent her early childhood living between South America, the Caribbean and New York City. Her diverse upbringing is constantly woven into the narratives of her large-scale drawings, prints, and collages. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from the City College of New York, and a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design.
She is the recipient of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program in New York City, the recipient of the 2017-2018 Provincetown Fine Arts Works Center Residency, the 2017 Salem Art Works Fellowship, and was a nominee for the prestigious 2020 Queen Sonja Print Award. She is currently one of the artists in residence at the Dieu Donné Workspace residency. Her work has shown both nationally and internationally. It has been acquired for private and public collections, including the Fleet Library and the North Dakota Museum of Art.
Her recent group exhibitions include Estamos Bien – LA TRIENAL 20/21 at El Museo del Barrio in New York City, Mirror Inflection at the Shanghai Hongqiao Contemporary Art Museum in China, Artist I steal from at Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London and solo exhibitions Canboulay at Smack Mellon in New York City and The Night Gardener at Pace University Gallery.
In 2023, her first solo exhibition I Left A Piece of My Story In A Green Glass Bottle Of Hope, opened in Praxis New York. That same year, Alvaro Barrington nominated her for the Artist-to-Artist section at Frieze London.
Other exhibitions include the group show The Noise of Us at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, featuring her and fellow artists Felipe Baeza, Ori Gersht, and Maika’i Tubbs.
She maintains active studios in New York City and Providence, and is an Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.