The Unsaid
In these portraits of my aging mother, paint becomes the language that speech has long abandoned. The series invokes the power of silence and the waves of serenity, anger, and anxiety that persist even as my mother's senses fade.
Present Company
These paintings of women refuse the comfortable fictions of polite assembly, returning a fierce and unbearably lucid gaze. Drawing its name from Claudia Rankine's reckoning with proximity without accountability, each canvas is an act of implication that addresses the viewer directly.
Bio
| Originally from Colombia, Claudia Vargas began her career in Paris after completing an MFA at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts where she studied for six years. An interest in non-western studio practices led Vargas to complete two residencies in Asia shortly after her MFA: one at the studio of Master Tsering Wangchok in Tibet, and another at The Cholamandal Artist’s Colony in India. Her early exhibitions include solo shows at respected galleries throughout Europe and at renowned institutions like De Fabriek in The Netherlands, La Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris, and ART/MA in Budapest. Vargas relocated her family to New York City in 2001 and was represented by the pioneering curator and gallerist Willoughby Sharp. Sharp curated her 2003 exhbition at The Durst Organization, and commissioned a large work for Polarities, his final curatorial project before retirement. Claudia Vargas’ work has been written about in Cambio 16, New York Magazine, and The American Journal of Germany. An interview with Louise Bourgeois discussing Claudia’s work was included in “La Rivière Gentille,” a film by Brigitte Cornand. Private collections that include her works count W. Pincus, J. Peabody, and Fondation Salomon pour l’art contemporain. |