Efrat Hakimi: Flora & Nereida Patricia: Body Party

Flora / Efrat Hakimi

Flora is an installation of faux pressed flowers, representing the wildflowers of Palestine. The cutout specimen in the exhibition are handmade adaptations from photographs and analytical guides. Juxtaposing the replicas with the specimens’ etymologies, Hakimi exposes the demarcation of land by means of language.

Efrat Hakimi (b. 1982, Tel Aviv) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago and working with photography, video, installation, and printmaking. Forging original and critical views of political issues in various cultural contexts, she employs inventive methods to erode cultural foundations such as faith, radical religiousness, gender, geographical tension, and the forces that shape them. Hakimi is the recipient of the Lauren and Mitchell Presser Photography Award for a Young Israeli Artist from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2020), and the Katz International Photography Award (2018). Among her exhibitions are Zion , Hayarkon 19, Tel Aviv 2020, Tools 062, Chicago 2018, and Paper Works , Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2018. Hakimi holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019), a BSc. in Mechanical Engineering from Ben Gurion University, Be’er Sheva (2010), and studied Fine Art at the Midrasha Faculty of the Arts, Beit Berl (2016).

Body Party / Nereida Patricia

Body Party is a presentation of new sculpture and painting works dealing with trans politics of visibility and abstraction. ‘Birthday Cake (Fetish Series)’ and ‘Black Narcissus’ work through themes of subjecthood and trans death spectacle, while referencing mythology and Ana Mendieta’s “earth-body” works. Paintings on latex and beaded reliefs mirror these issues using narrative device and physical material to explore body politics, sisterhood, and contemporary mysticism.

Nereida Patricia (b. 1996, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Chicago, IL. Nereida’s practice spans sculpture, text, and performance, and explores themes of history, trans poetics, and identity. Her work draws from postcolonial and feminist theory, Peruvian symbolism, as well as autobiographical fragments, to build new mythologies around the transformation of the human body. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute Chicago and has also studied at The New School. Her work has been exhibited and spoken at venues including Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Prairie Gallery, Chicago; Annka Kultys Gallery, London; the Museum of the Moving Image, Queens; The Knockdown Center, Queens; and POWERPLNT, Brooklyn, among others.