Phyllis Galembo at 2013 Venice Biennale
June 1, 2013 - November 24, 2013
Steven Kasher Gallery is pleased to announce the participation of Phyllis Galembo in the 55th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Considered the most important contemporary art exhibition in the world, there are few higher honors for an artist than to be selected by for the Venice Biennale. Included in the Biennale are eight large-scale color prints from Galembo’s Ghana series. Galembo’s photographs, with their extraordinary subjects portrayed in a complex anthhropological/aesthetic approach, perfectly encompass the themes of this year’s Biennale. In fact her images have been used as header images in much of the press coverage of the Biennale, including the recent Arts and Leisure cover story in the New York Times.
This year’s Biennale director is Massimiliano Gioni, and the theme he has chosen is The Encyclopedic Palace. The exhibition will place at its heart “a reflection on the ways in which images have been used to organize knowledge and shape our experience of the world. What room is left for internal images - for dreams, hallucinations and visions - in an era besieged by external ones? And what is the point of creating an image of the world when the world itself has become increasingly like an image?”
In her recurring travels throughout Africa and its Diaspora over the past thirty years, Galembo has taken portraits of revelers during local rituals, ceremonies, and festivals. Her profound portraits serve as documentation of these societies.
Galembo’s photographs are included in numerous public and private collections, including:
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Houston Museum of Art
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Polaroid Corporation
The Rockefeller Foundation
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Galembo has appeared on CNN, NPR Radio and NBC Today. She has had two shows at Steven Kasher Gallery Masquerade, a Decade in 2008 and Maske in 2011. Galembo has produced five books, with her most recent monograph Maske (Boot, 2010).
