Selva Aparicio:
Límites

March 15 – April 12, 2020

Reception for the Artist
Sunday, March 15, 4:00 – 7:00 P.M.

 
Selva Aparicio is an interdisciplinary artist who works across installation, sculpture and performance. Her research-based practice centers around notions of intimacy, memory, and loss. Aparicio scavenges for nature’s most neglected flora and fauna—from human cadavers, to insect wings and body parts, to oyster shells, to fallen leaves, olive pits and more. She confronts us gently and solemnly with the neglect we have for ourselves, our dead (as demonstrated through burial practices that desecrate and disrespect the nature of our own bodies) and the materials in the world around us that we trample or walk past everyday. With poise and intense empathy, she reminds us of how beautiful it is to realize that as living beings, we are all deeply connected.

For her installation at 4WPS, Aparicio returns to the woods on the outskirts of her childhood home of Barcelona. In these woods, filled with long-endearing memories, Aparicio harvests and transports hundreds of Blackberry bush branches to Chicago. The thorny branches are woven together with wire to create a wall spanning the width of the exhibition space. A small opening provides egress through this immediate barrier where one finds a photographic image of sharp thorns and their shadows layered on two young children’s ebullient faces. There are menacing forces in our world, and there are moments of wonderment. In Límites, Aparicio mines her childhood past and asks us all to reflect upon the liminal space between trauma & salvation and enmity & intimacy.

Selva Aparicio is the current artist in residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science. She was born and raised in the woods of Barcelona, Spain. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. She is a recipient of the JUNCTURE Fellowship in Art and International Human Rights and the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.