Exhibition Details

Nilufar Gallery presents Origines - Maggie Cardelús, an exhibition dedicated to the recent work of the Paris based, American/Spanish artist and designer. For the exhibition, opening from January 25 until March 19th, Cardelús brings together her Origine NeckPieces and five Anatomies that she has created especially for the Nilufar25 exhibition space.
The Origine NeckPieces are highly crafted, leather and cast bronze pendants whose presence feel like contemporary and abstracted versions of ancient fertility figurines, sacred objects, or ritualistic artifacts. These knotted pieces interact with her Anatomies, themselves large and sensuously knotted forms. Crafted from vegetable-tanned leather and industrial wax, the Anatomies wall sculptures provide the NeckPieces with a home that is native to them, mediating between them and the surrounding space. When describing the Anatomies, Cardelús writes “I wanted my NeckPieces to be situated in a place of belonging, a place that supplants the human body while suggesting, at the same time, a place of origin. By the time I finished the Anatomies, I was thinking of them as many things…dissected or deconstructed bodies, vessels, flowers, frames, nests, caves, altars, jars, emanations, books, blankets…and more…”
The Anatomies are, thus, complex vessels that give form to an auratic framework for the NeckPieces within the space. The NeckPieces, with their long, tasselled straps, drape on or hide within the Anatomies, suggesting a relational narrative that invites ritualistic and decelerated behaviour into the lives of contemporary bodies. This is, possibly, the first time a piece of art jewellery has been integrated by its maker into a larger sculpture with the intention of activating a performative action on the part of who wants to wear it. In a ritualistic manner, the wearer must lift the NeckPiece off the Anatomie - which has assumed the meaning of a body double or reflection of the wearer - to wear it and then return it afterwards. Similarly, ritual and performativity are present with Cardelús portable body-like leather cases, which the wearer opens up in order to carefully remove the organ-like NeckPiece, lifting it from one body to put on another.
Nina Yashar, founder of Nilufar and eclectic curator, instantly enjoyed the dual quality of the pieces: functional objects and collectible sculptural artworks. Yashar and Cardelús also share a long-time friendship and have already collaborated on other projects in the past. Origines seemed another perfect occasion for Nilufar to expand its offering and give further visibility to artists whose work astounds the public and whom Yashar personally admires. The location of the exhibition, Nilufar 25, offers a direct window to Via della Spiga, allowing all passers-by to admire the works.