Mariane Ibrahim is proud to participate in Independent 20th Century with a two-person presentation bringing together José Gamarra (b. 1934, Uruguay) and Lorraine O'Grady (1934–2024, United States). Born in the same year, Gamarra and O'Grady belong to a generation of artists whose practices were shaped by decolonization, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the profound geopolitical shifts of the second half of the twentieth century. Across painting, photography, performance, and text, both artists challenge linear histories, demonstrating how the past continues to inhabit the landscapes, bodies, and cultural imaginaries of the present.
The presentation pairs a selection of Gamarra's paintings with works from O'Grady's conceptual practice. Across six decades, Gamarra has transformed the landscapes of the Americas into historical archives where conquistadors, Indigenous communities, military helicopters, and extractive industries occupy the same pictorial space. O'Grady's The Clearing: or Cortés and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me likewise approaches landscape as a site of memory and contradiction, where violence, intimacy, domination, and repair remain inseparable. Together, these works offer two distinct yet deeply resonant visions of the Americas, positioning landscape not as scenery, but as the material upon which history is written.
Presented concurrently with José Gamarra's solo exhibition Selva color del tiempo at Mariane Ibrahim Mexico City, this presentation also anticipates the inclusion of Lorraine O'Grady's Landscape (Western Hemisphere) in Hard Art, the forthcoming exhibition at MoMA PS1 organized by Connie Butler.
