EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art opens it’s main autumn exhibition of the year 2015 on 14 October 2015. The exhibition, The Passion According to Carol Rama, is the first touring exhibition of work by Carol Rama (1918-2015), the pioneer of avantgarde art who passed away on the 25th of September, only three weeks before the exhibition.
Carol Rama was a female artist of the modernist era who created art outside accepted canons. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions alongside such names as Louise Bourgeois, and in 2003 Rama received the Golden Lion award as lifetime achievement at Venice Biennale. Until this century, Rama has remained relatively unknown to the wider public, but in her day she was famous in avantgarde art circles and society. The contemporary perspective enables us to see Rama’s sensitive and psychologically charged work at its own merits as pioneering and independently avantgarde art.
Exhibition conceived by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAMVP), organised by MACBA and co-produced with PARIS MUSÉES / MAMVP, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (IMMA) and GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino.
This is the first time the work by Rama is exhibited in Europe as extensively as this. The show comprising some 200 works from 1936–2005, highlights the work of this pioneer artist from eight decades. Rama, who never adapted any modernistic or formal principles, rather explored new materials and created works with autobiographical method. The exhibition is created around four themes following Rama’s individual periods (rather than giving a traditional retrospective insight): Political anatomy – people and their taboos, Organic abstraction, Queer arte povera – well-defined and vulnerable organisms and The ecology of the human and the animal.
The media used by Rama range from traditional water colours and oil to mixed media, with works incorporating glass eyes, fingernails, cannulae, syringes and rubber tyres. From the 1930s onwards, Carol Rama explored the body and its representations in her art, which has had a great influence on major contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Sue Williams, Ida Applebroog, Kiki Smith and Elly Strik.
The exhibition touring to MACBA and EMMA is curated by Teresa Grandas (MACBA) and Paul B. Preciado (curator of documenta 14) An extensive publication about the exhibition was released at the beginning of 2015.
The Passion According to Carol Rama
MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona 31 Oct 2014 – 22 Feb 2015
MAMVP – Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris 3 Apr – 12 Jul 2015
EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art 14 Oct 2015 – 10 Jan 2016
From EMMA the exhibition tours to the Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA in Dublin and to GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Carol Rama’s home town.
Further information:
Pilvi Kalhama, Museum Director, EMMA
[email protected] p. +358 40 533 4070
Press material: http://kuvat.emma.museum/kuvat/Lehdistokuvat-Press/Carol+Rama/
Password: emmamuseum
EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art is one of the most important art museums in Finland. EMMA’s exhibition rooms are divided between a presentation of the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection and changing exhibitions. Through its collection and exhibition activities, EMMA profiles itself as a museum of domestic and international modernism, contemporary art, and design. EMMA is located in the WeeGee Exhibition Centre in Tapiola, Espoo.
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