Amar Gallery is proud to present Eve, an upcoming exhibition of contemporary art that celebrates the female form and the fateful origins of womanhood. Incorporating mythical themes from the Genesis story - with particular focus on The Fall, heavenly wrath, nature and rebellion - Eve brings together a collection of drawings, installations and photographs inspired by nature’s first heroine, as well as showcasing female empowerment within the context of modern society. The exhibition will be on display from January 23rd 2018, at 48 Penton Street, London.
Each artist included within Eve carefully reimagines the Creation story through the prism of their own unique craft. Renée Cox, known for her provocative photography that positions historic subjects in tension with her African-American heritage, assumes the title role of Eve in her Adam & Eve series, using her naked body as a symbol of strength in a culture constantly in conflict with gender and race. Cox delves further into this socio-political dialogue with Girl in Da Bush, placing Eve within a jungle that exudes not only a preternatural state of innocence, but also an undertone of impending struggle. This theme is mirrored in the equally-controversial contributions of the Guerrilla Girls, a collective of feminist activists famed for their unashamedly outrageous visuals that seek to address equality for women in politics, commerce and culture. Interpreting Eve as a rebel with a cause, works such as Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into The Met. Museum? and Women In America Earn Only 2/3 Of What Men Do challenge the viewer to assess whether the fight against institutional male favouritism has yet been won.
Sonja Braas, whose otherworldly photographs are investigations of tempestuous landscapes and the romantic sublime, channels Eve as an agent of powerful change - both in resistance and embrace to the forces of nature that followed The Fall. Charged with a thunderous sense of biblical grandeur, the gaze of the disembodied camera in Eclipse, Lava Flow and Wave capture the wondrous violence of Eve’s banishment, cast off into a world of flood, smoke and flame. This fearless interplay between nature and technology also manifests in the connective art of Jenna Burchell, whose tortoise skeleton from her Cradle of Humankind collection is reactive to the human touch - in this piece, both a performative songsmith and a timely relic of the natural world, Burchell is the creator of harmony and music within our own personal Eden.
Indian artist Mekhala Bahl views the theme of Eve through the prism of abstract colour and design. Known as an interdisciplinary artist whose creations defy label or fixed reason, Bahl weaves together tapestries of light, dream and meditative self-inquiry. These evocations of luminosity and intangible memory take us back to the dawn of womankind - before the world was seen through the restrictive lens of structure and form. This break from the predictable is echoed in the work of Antony Gormley, the only male artist on display in Eve. Known for his defining imagery in the public realm, Gormley fittingly contributes The Fall of Man, a powerful drawing that repositions Adam as the harbinger of original sin and mankind’s ill-fated fall from grace. It is this level of forensic investigation into the human condition that defines all the pieces in Eve - experienced through the female body, mind and soul.