Curated by Natalia Valencia Arango
Artists: Maria Isabel Arango, Alicja Biala, Adam Moore, Aurora Pellizzi and Maria Camila Sanjinés
Performance After Lands by Adam Moore on the private view at 7 pm, October 15th
Private view: 15 October. 6-9 pm.
Exhibition Dates: October 16th – November 15th of 2025.
Somers Gallery is pleased to present Las Palabras. The exhibition’s title in Spanish translates as “the words” in English, pointing to the immaterial realm of conversation which is the social and affective channel that sustains the core of these works. Focusing on how contemporary artists engage with the specific, oftentimes non-hegemonic transmission of knowledge that takes place in spaces such as artisan workshops, craft clubs, community centres and similar environments, the show highlights the relation between material craft knowledge, oral tradition and intergenerational dialogue. Las Palabras brings together a wide range of cultural contexts and geographies, where artists and their collaborators approach themes of domesticity, femininity, intimacy, migration and community binding. A special interest is dedicated to the caring bonds that are developed through conversation, as a broad range of lived experiences are shared in the workshops, and this exchange punctuates the material co-creation of the pieces. These collective spaces are thus understood as fields of enquiry where knowledge is renewed and protected.
Maria Isabel Arango presents a series of stitchings on cotton cloths using a traditional technique called zurcido, that she was taught as a ch ild by nuns at Catholic school in Medellin in Colombia, in the 1980s. The works are created in a craft club in the Envigadoneighborhood in Medellín, along with Gabriela Pérez and Cristina Posada, two elderly women, and with Maria Cecilia Velásquez, the artist’s mother. The zurcido technique was originally used to mend broken garments –before serial mass production of cheap clothing–, yet the artist and her collaborators use it to create abstract forms, alluding to domesticity, leisure time and forms of care among women.
Alicja Biala works in collaboration with lace master Maria Voelkel-Brukwicka in Poznan–her hometown in Poland– creating delicate pieces with explicit sexual imagery, thus inciting a witty dialogue with the diverse historical uses of lace in European culture. Biala depicts her grandmothers, her mothers and her own breasts in the works, granting intimacy and some degree of humour to the dynamics around their creation.
Drawing from his queer British-Caribbean background and his relationship to his mother Yvonne, Adam Moore presents After Lands (the song), a one time only performance on opening night at the gallery. The artist delves into the feminine as a landscape of flesh, blood, bone, and feeling; a container of knowledge; a bedrock and a foundation.
Aurora Pellizzi has worked for many years with a cooperative of women embroiderers from the Otomi town of Temoaya in the State of Mexico. Her main collaborators are Ninot Olvera and Ibeth Melitón. Together, they have developed a unique technique that integrates weaving, natural dye pigments, and volumetric interventions on ayate fiber surfaces, synthesizing the formal frameworks of painting and sculpture with vernacular craft traditions. Within Pellizzi’s visual language, the female figure is articulated simultaneously as ground, agent, and signifier.
Maria Camila Sanjinés creates ceramic works in a workshop with immigrant women of Amazigh Moroccan heritage in the Escuela Municipal de Expresión in Olot, Catalonia, where she is based. Their conversations centre around identifying similar mountainous landscapes in their homelands of Morocco and Colombia, as well as in their adopted home of Spain. As clay is the material with which homes are built in Amazigh, Colombian and other cultures’ vernacular architecture, in this case they also view clay work as a metaphor for the notion of carrying one’s own landscape and one’s home when migrating. Her collaborators are Jéssica Mariana Vélez Moncada, Maria Dandy Romero Espinoza, Mayra Caicedo Rodríguez, Flor Chaverra, Jaqueline Chávez Rondán, Velia Liz Chávez Rondán, Iryna Volkova, María Angélica Rodríguez Santos and Lía Waleska Mera Maya.
Las Palabras is generously supported by Flavia Nespatti
BIOS
Natalia Valencia Arango (Bogotá, 1984) is a curator, writer and editor based in London. She has served as Associate Curator for Estancia Femsa Casa Barragán in Mexico City and has curated projects at Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellín, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, L’ appartement 22 in Rabat, CAPC in Bordeaux, AIT in Tokyo, among others. She has worked as editor of Terremoto Magazine in Mexico City, South as A State of Mind in Athens and as fellow researcher at Centre Pompidou in Paris. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Maria Isabel Arango (Medellín, Colombia 1979)’s work interrogates relationships between history, memory, evidence, and how narratives are constructed and manipulated through subjectivity. Her work has been shown at Fragmentos, Espacio de Arte y Memoria – Museo Nacional de Colombia (2025); Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Colombia (2024); Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico (2022); MAMU, Colombia, (2022); Aarea, Brazil (2021); MAMM, Colombia (2019); Centre d’art Contemporain Passerelle, France, (2017). She gained an MA (2008) and a PhD in Art Practice (2015), both from the University of the Arts London, UK. Arango lives and works in Medellín, Colombia.
Alicja Biala (Poznan, 1993) works across media and scales, ranging from architectural installations to large interior sculptural lighting, etchings, paintings, and more. Her work incorporates a mixture of folk and environmental themes that bring the political and personal spheres of contemporary life into close proximity. Biała graduated from The Royal Drawing School and holds an MFA from The Royal College in London. She is based between London and Amsterdam.
Adam Moore (London, 1986) is an artist, dancer, writer and teacher of Caribbean heritage creating performance, installation, design and public art with collaborative socially engaged forms. He has a BA in Dance Theatre from Coventry University and graduated a Leverhulme Performing Arts Scholar with an MFA in Dance Creative Practice from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance and Independent Dance, Siobhan Davies Studios in London. He lives and works in London.
Aurora Pellizzi (Mexico City, 1983) is an artist whose practice is informed by pre-industrial textile processes and materials, from natural dyeing to back-strap loom weaving. She has had shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, MARCO (2024), JeffMarfa Gallery at Salon Acme in Mexico City (2023), Italian Cultural Institute in Mexico City (2022), Instituto de Visón Gallery in Bogota (2022), Lisa Kandlhofer Gallery in Vienna (2022), Canada Gallery in New York (2021) and forthcoming at La Tallera Siqueiros in Cuernavaca (2025). She studied art at Cooper Union School (BFA, 2010) and art history at New York University (BA, 2005). Pellizzi lives and works in Mexico City.
Maria Camila Sanjinés (Bogotá 1979) focuses her artistic research on politics, gender, migration, and legality, often collaborating with communities across geographies.Her work has been featured in Museu de la Garrotxa (Olot), Viu Montjuic, Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Firatárrega (Tarrega), L`appartment 22 (Fez), Sismògraf (Olot), Salmon, Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona), Fundación Telefónica – ARCO (Madrid), Can Felipa (Barcelona), Santa Mónica art center (Barcelona), Casa Encendida (Madrid), among others. Sanjinés holds an MA in Art Therapy from Universidad de Barcelona. She is based on Olot in Catalonia.
For press and enquiries contact Javier Calderon at javier@somersgallery.com
