GUATEMALA CITY.- Proyectos Ultravioleta announced the representation of Amalia Pica as an artist in it’s program.

Amalia Pica was born in Neuquén, Argentina, in 1978 and currently lives and works in London. She received a BA from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes P.P. in Buenos Aires in 2003 and attended graduate school at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 2005.

Central to Pica’s work is the notion of communication, which she explores by setting everyday objects alongside obsolete technologies such as shutter telegraphs, slide projectors, and 16 mm film. Yet while her interest is in language, and in the mechanisms by which communication is attempted, most of her projects are silent. She compensates for this apparent lack by adding texts that elucidate the missing parts. Venn Diagram (under the spotlight) (2011), for example, consists of two overlapping circles of colored light projected from theatrical spotlights. In accompanying captions, the artist explains how the dictators of the 1970s banned Venn diagrams and the set theory they illustrate from Argentina’s schools, viewing them as potentially subversive at a time when citizens were being prosecuted for gathering in public.

Yet while her work can seem reticent at first, hinging as it does on the impossibility of perfect rapport, it is never without humor. Aware that her ideas can never survive the process of realization entirely intact, Pica revels in their inevitable mutation and creates new systems of discourse that brim with fractured syntax, encrypted semantics, and gleeful semiotics.

Pica has had solo exhibitions at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2020); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain (2019); The New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK (2019); Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, Australia (2018); The Power Plant, Toronto (2017); NC Arte, Bogotá (2017); Kunstverein Freiburg (2016); NuMu, Guatemala City (2015); Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands (2014); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2013); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2013); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Neuquén, Argentina (2013); Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2012); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012); Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland (2012); University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2011); and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2010).




She has participated in group exhibitions at FRAC Lorraine, Metz, France (2020); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2019); Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria (2019); Royal Academy of Art, London (2019); Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich (2019); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Buenos Aires, Argentina (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019), Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK (2019); Hayward Gallery, London (2018); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017); Tate Modern, London (2016); in addition to many others.

Her work was included in the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2016); The Ungovernables: New Museum Triennial, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2015); and ILLUMInations, curated by Bice Curiger, 54th Venice Biennale (2011).

Public commissions include University of North Carolina, North Carolina; Semaphores, King’s Cross, London; and Sipping colors, De Pijp Station, Amsterdam.

Pica received the Zürich Art Prize (2020); Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2011); Illy Prize, Art Rotterdam (2011); and participated in the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation’s Grants and Commissions Program (2011). She has had residencies at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado (2017); Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (2012); Uqbar Foundation at Casa Vecina, Mexico City (2011); Markus Lennikus, Baeurmarkt 9, Vienna (2010); and BijlmAIR, Centrum Beeldende Kunst Zuidoost, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2007); among others.

Amalia Pica’s work can be found in the permanent collections of Tate Collection, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museo Nacional de Bellas Arte Neuquén, Neuquén, Argentina; KADIST Art Foundation, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Frac-Collection Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France; Fundação De Serralves, Porto, Portugal; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Pisapapeles (Paperweights), her first exhibition at Proyectos Ultravioleta, took place in Guatemala City in 2021.