On the occasion of Carmen Neely’s exhibition a trace beyond the life of the body, please join us on Saturday, February 7 at 1 p.m. for a conversation and book signing with the artist.
Taking the exhibition as a point of departure, the conversation will explore the evolution of Neely’s artistic practice and the experiences that have shaped it. Now dividing her time between Chicago and Mexico City, she presents a body of work that unfolds at a pivotal moment in her career, offering insight into both continuity and transformation.
Intimately connected to writing, Neely’s painting functions as a form of inscription, unfolding on canvases prepared with a transparent primer or, for the first time in this exhibition, a light beige ground that recalls the raw canvas she has long favored. This subtle chromatic shift acts as a conceptual threshold—neither blank nor neutral—where change is carefully negotiated. Attentive to the political realities of the present, Neely understands history as something actively rewritten through erasure, concealment, and distortion, an awareness that profoundly shapes her way of seeing and working.
January 27, 2026
