Exhibiting mixed-media paintings, Álava constructs complex narratives of “the hive mind”. Using what seems at first to be a disarmingly simple iconography, Álava is exploring an allegorical landscape between bees and humans.
Álava won second place in the Spain’s National Drawing Competition, Premio Penagos, Fundacion Maphre, when she was 21 years old, being the youngest artist and first woman to achieve such recognition.
To see the evolution of Álava’s Paintings & Drawings chronologically, go to WORKS.
REFLEX
La serie de dibujos Reflex (2010) de Álava es una respuesta a las performances tituladas Trust Me (2010) que orquestó en dos museos de la ciudad de Nueva York, donde la artista guió a 11 compañeros participantes por las galerías y describió verbalmente obras de arte que los invitados no podían ver, por estar vendados con gafas de sol opacas mientras paseaban al lado de guardias de seguridad y otros visitantes. Álava creó los dibujos en su estudio a través de una combinación de fotografías de las cámaras de vigilancia de los museos y sus recuerdos de las conversaciones con durante las performances de Trust Me.
Álava’s drawing series entitled Reflex is a response to two performances titled Trust Me (2010) that she orchestrated in two separate major museums in New York City. In those performances she guided 11 fellow participants on tours of the museum and verbally described the artwork they encountered to her guests, who were blindfolded with opaque sunglasses, as they passed through the museum surrounded by other non-participant patrons, guards, etc. Álava created the drawings in pen and ink back in her studio through a combination of photographs of the museums surveillance cameras and her memories of the performance’s conversations.
“Necesitamos ser conscientes del modo en el que observamos; el modo en el que hemos sido entrenados para observar; el modo en el que nos están observando, y por qué”.
“We need to be aware of the way we observe; the way we have been trained to observe; how and who is observing us, and why.” –Gema Alava
SILENCES
La serie de dibujos titulada Silences (2008-2013) de Álava es una reacción a la naturaleza clandestina de las actuaciones tipo Fluxus que constituyen su proyecto TELL ME que tuvo lugar durante varios meses en el MoMA cuando el museo estaba cerrado al público. Álava mantuvo una serie de conversaciones privadas con otros artistas sobre la colección mientras caminaban por las galerías del museo. Las únicas grabaciones de estos diálogos fueron las cámaras de vigilancia del museo, grabaciones perdidas hace tiempo.
Las oscuras y sombrías atmósferas de los dibujos atravesados por haces de luz direccional, creadas a tinta sobre papel en el metro de Nueva York en ruta a las conversaciones secretas en el MoMA, intiman la naturaleza subrepticia y subterránea de las actuaciones.
Álava’s Silences series of drawings (2008-2013) began as a reaction to the clandestine nature of Fluxus-like performances of her artproject TELL ME that took place over a several month period at MoMA, Museum of Modern Art of new York, when the museum was closed to the public. Álava engaged fellow artists in a series of one-on-one private conversations about the collection as they toured the museum. The only recordings of these dialogs were the surveillance cameras of the museum, recordings long since lost.
The dark, moody atmospheres of the drawings pierced by shafts of directional light, created in ink on paper on the NYC subway, en route to the secret conversations at MoMA intimate the surreptitious, underground nature of the performances.
In 2007 artist Gema Alava visited her native town of Madrid and sketched Duelo a garrotazos (1820-1823), the painting by Francisco Goya on permanent display at the Prado Museum. “Men fighting with sticks” depicts two men anchored to the floor with sticks in their hands, their legs buried in dirt up to their knees, awaiting a cruel death.
In 2008, Alava created drawings depicting the struggle between a nail and a thread, both anchored to the ground. This body of work, exhibited in New York City and London in 2008, explored the potential of what Alava calls “contradictory truths.” “Viewers identified themselves with the thread or the nail in peculiar ways, convinced of their own versions. I like the relationship between strength and vulnerability, and the diversity that exists between what is seen and what is understood.” –Gema Alava
