Mariane Ibrahim proposes a duo presentation by two master's whose practices interrogate the construction of history: Lorraine O’Grady (1934 - 2024) and José Gamarra (b. 1934). Their works address the violence and seduction embedded in the formation of the Americas, offering critical reflections on power, representation, and subjectivity.
We will present Lorraine O’Grady’s seminal diptych The Clearing: or, Cortez and La Malinche, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, N. and Me (1991), part of her celebrated body of works Body Is the Ground of My Experience. In The Clearing, O’Grady stages both ecstasy and exploitation through entwined interracial couples and emblems of conquest, exposing the foundational duplicities of the Western Hemisphere.
In dialogue with O’Grady, we will show recent paintings by José Gamarra, the Uruguayan master based in Paris who depicts the rainforest as a stage where beauty and brutality are inseparable. His allegorical scenes where Indigenous figures, conquistadors, and even pop-cultural iconography coexist, transforming conquest into an eternal, cyclical drama.
Blending reality, and myth, Gamarra’s paintings evoke a tropical desnity charged with ancestral presence and geopolitical tension his works bring a rich historical and poetic depth to our dialogue.
