Christina Quarles

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"Legibility teeters on the edge of lack and excess—when we lack information about a thing, it is vague. However, as information accumulates, the risk for contradiction increases and legibility tips into ambiguity. As a Queer, cis-woman, born to a black father and a white mother, I engage with the world from a position that is multiply situated. My project is informed by my daily experience with ambiguity and seeks to dismantle assumptions of our fixed subjectivity through images that challenge the viewer to contend with the disorganized body in a state of excess.

In this work, contour lines, and the emphasis on both the surface and the edge of the frame are analogous to the edge of the body. For example, in my installation “It’s Gunna Be All Right, Cause Baby There Ain’t Nuthin’ Left,” what appears to be pictures hanging on the wall are in fact two-dimensional, painted trompe l'oeil illusions. Just as the edge of the canvases in this installation are illusory, so too are the boundaries that demarcate the self.

The contradiction of my Black ancestry coupled with my fair skin, results in my place always being my displace. Throughout my paintings, there are perspectival planes that both situate and fragment the bodies they bisect—location becomes dislocation. Fixed categories of identity can be used to marginalize but, paradoxically, can be used by the marginalized to gain visibility and political power. This paradox is the central focus of my practice."

Christina Quarles (b. 1985, Chicago) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art in 2016 and holds a B.A. from Hampshire College. Quarles was a 2016 participant at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. She was the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Pérez Art Museum Miami Prize and in 2017 she received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. In 2021 Quarles joined the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

A COOKBOOK FOR IWAN: FROM STUDIO TO STOVE

HAUSER & WIRTH

REGULAR PRICE ¥16,500 (tax incl.)

COLLAPSED TIME by Christina Quarles

SILVANA EDITORIALE

REGULAR PRICE ¥3,740 (tax incl.)