Signifying the Self: 10/20 - 12/05, 2022
ONLINE EXHIBITION
with artwork by members Adina Andrus, Lauren Carly Shaw, Maria Yolanda Liebana, and Madeleine Rhondeau-Rhodes,
Curated by PP member Chloe Hyman, Signifying the Self unites the work of four artists to explore the interactive nature of self-identification. Hyman locates in each artist’s work a dynamic relationship between societal and individual representations of selfhood. We do not exist in a vacuum of our own minds; nor are we entirely devoid of agency. To exist is to constantly absorb external forces— powerful visual signs found in media, throughout history— and to alchemize these inputs. The goal of this alchemy is not harmony, but comprehension. The works in this show demonstrate how four artists navigate the web of visual signs bombarding their field of vision— from celebrity figures to spiritual icons and cave paintings, death masks to fashion magazines— and experience their own understanding of selfhood in the context of this potent, symbolic imagery. Their path through produces powerful results.
Full press release
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Meet the curator
Chloe Hyman is a curator, writer, and lecturer from New York City. Chloe holds an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where she received Distinction for her dissertation exploring Weimar cinema. She received numerous awards for her undergraduate research at Tufts University, including the Madeline Caviness Thesis Prize and the Award for Excellence in Art History. Her reviews and essays have been published in The Femme Art Review and HowlRound Theatre Commons, and she is the founder of the arts and culture publication, Canvas and Crumpets. Chloe has also led art history round tables for Women of Culture and ArtsClub, and she recently co-curated an exhibition at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2022 with Deep Space Gallery. This is Chloe’s first year as a member of PP.
Meet the artists
Maria Yolanda Liebana is a first-generation Latinx artist based in New York City. Her artistic practice is shaped by her liminal ethnic status, underground cultures, and conventional sexist attitudes toward kitsch. Maria Yolanda holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Maine College of Art. Solo shows of the artist include Awakening at Kravets Wehby Gallery (2022) Devour at Departures Studios (2020) and ¿Tres Marias Donde Esta Mi Felicidad? at Local Project Art space (2018). Liebana has participated in numerous group shows including Party of One at My Pet Ram, A Diasporic State of Mind/El Estado Mental Diaspórico at Praxis Gallery, Femme at FLXST Gallery in Chicago, and Vernacular Glamour at The Cambridge Art Center in Boston. Her work has been written about in Create! magazine Issue 30, Women’s Issue. She has been a resident with Vermont Studio Center, Kates-Ferri Projects Residency and Pickwick Independent Press. Liebana’s work is held in private collections in New York City. She has been a PP member since 2018.
Adina Andrusworks across various media, creating mixed media pieces, sculptures, drawings and installations that confront questions of memory, belonging, and visual culture across time and space. Her works, while rooted in the ancient and folk art of her native country, Romania, allude to a universal pool of images and symbols that we inherit, consume and are guided by, while simultaneously interpreting them and contributing new, contemporary meanings. Andrus has exhibited work in New York City and in numerous galleries across the United States, including the St. Louis Artists Guild, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and Ely Contemporary Art Center, as well as in Bucharest, Romania. She studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA and the Art Students’ League in New York City. She is a recipient of the Queens Council for the Arts New Work Grant and the NY State Arts Alive Artist Grant. She has been a PP member since 2021.
Lauren Carly Shaw is an artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She received an MFA from the San Fransisco Art Institute in 2016 and a BFA in sculpture from the School of Visual Arts 2009. From 2009-2010 she participated in an international immersive contemporary studio program, Metafora, in Barcelona, Spain. Her work has been exhibited internationally and at her first solo show in the fall of 2013, she highlighted the juxtaposition of traditional sculpture and drawing with the use of augmented reality technology at The Active Space, in Brooklyn, NY. Shaw was also a 2014 Sunroom Project Space Artist at Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY with a solo show during the summer of 2014. She has participated in residency programs across the country most recently at the Vermont Studio Center and Starry Night AIR program in NM. She has been a PP member since 2022.
Madeleine Rhondeau-Rhodes is a painter based in Charlottesville, VA. Her work is deeply rooted in her own life experience, and heavily influenced by her memory, observations, and imagination. Her fantastical worlds, rich in symbolism, offer an alternative narrative to the image of women through explorations of self and identity and the mythology of fairies. In doing so, she pushes back against the pictorial and historical tradition of Surrealism and dismantles the perception of women as objects and muses opting instead to explore confessional themes infused with magic and folklore and the alchemization of experience and emotions into dark, thematic undertones. She received Dual Degrees in Historic Preservation and Studio Art, with a minor in Urban Studies, from the University of Mary Washington. She has been a PP member since 2021.