Exhibitions
ICA Miami presents Olga de Amaral retrospective: six decades of textile art
A monumental retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami featuring Olga de Amaral, bringing together fifty works spanning six decades of the Colombian artist's work. Created through a collaboration between the ICA Miami and the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, the exhibition, following its success in Paris, is an immersive experience into the universe of the prominent Bogotá-based textile artist.
Amaral's artistic practice reveals itself through complex creations replete with materiality, scale, color, and grids. She has transformed weaving into a profound and expansive form of contemporary art, combining fiber, painting, sculpture, and architecture in monumental works. Amaral's work merges with space and is a pioneer in elevating textile art to an international scale, experimenting with materials such as linen, cotton, horsehair, and plaster.
Exhibition view, "Olga de Amaral" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Cenit, 2019 © Olga de Amaral. Photo © Juan Daniel Caro.
One of his key and most recognized series, Estelas (1996–2018), can be seen at the ICA Miami, where it is created from gold leaf to evoke celestial maps and sacred architecture; also on view are Brumas (2013–2017), suspended installations that feel like luminous fog that the audience can walk through.
Among the 50 works on display by Olga de Amaral are pieces never before seen in the United States. The exhibition is organized not chronologically but thematically, by color and emotional tone, creating a dialogue of views between the works and the ICA's architectural space. An aesthetic and symbolic experience: her works transform light and materials into sensitive landscapes that call for contemplation; the handmade and the transcendent intertwine in a unique language, charged with lyricism.
View from Casa Amaral, Bogotá, Colombia. Photo © Juan Daniel Caro.
In a context where Latin American art occupies an increasingly prominent place on the global scene, this exhibition reaffirms de Amaral's position as a key figure, deeply representative of the continent's artistic spirit. The temporary exhibition will be on view until October 12 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the Florida city, in parallel with Mildred Thompson: Frequencies.
The exhibition design presented in Paris and Miami bears the signature of renowned architect Lina Ghotmeh, founder of the international studio Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture, based in Paris. For this exhibition, Ghotmeh conceived an environment reminiscent of a vertical forest, where Amaral's pieces emerge as if sprouting from the architecture itself, in harmony with the nature that inspires her work. The architect, recently selected to lead the renovation of the British Museum's West Wing galleries, brings her sensitivity to bear here, creating spaces that engage in a profound dialogue with art.
