SUrface tension

Dates: 6 November 2021 - 13 March, 2022

Location: UB Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Solo show curated by Liz Park

New York-based artist Maria D. Rapicavoli looks to her native Sicily to frame her understanding of rootedness and migration as well as notions of domesticity and feminist politics. Surface Tension, the artist’s first career survey, showcases her practice as a photographer, media and installation artist, and sculptor. The works that comprise this exhibition explore a range of topics including military control of Sicilian airspace, layers of colonial relations that undergird Mediterranean crossings to and from Europe and Africa, and gender and sexual politics of domestic spaces during a pandemic.

Surface Tension, which refers to the tendency of liquid molecules to cohere and enable denser objects to float without becoming submerged, also suggests a general sense of disturbance and malaise. The title further points to Rapicavoli’s interest in what may be invisible yet palpable—the effects of state violence and society’s impunity for misogyny to name a couple of emerging themes from her oeuvres. Rapicavoli’s works turn our attention to abstracted images of the sky, the sea, and fractured glass—visual surfaces that stand in for the inner psyches of individuals navigating larger global political contexts.  Liz Park

Surface Tension is organized by Liz Park, former Curator of Exhibitions at UB Art Galleries. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Q-International grant of the Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma. Support for UB Art Galleries is provided by the UB College of Arts and Sciences, the Visual Arts Building Fund, the UB Anderson Gallery Fund, and the Seymour H. Knox Foundation Fine Art Fund.

Source: https://www.buffalo.edu/art-galleries/exhibitions/2021-22/Maria-D-Rapicavoli-Surface-Tension.html