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What You Need to Know: Presented by Galeria Duque Arango at Casa Más in Bogotá, “Olga de Amaral: The Contemporaneity of the Ancestral” features a glittering array of the artist’s distinctive textile and fiber works dating from the 1980s through the 2010s. Presented earlier this year at the gallery’s Medellín location, the shows are a proverbial homecoming for the Colombian artist’s work, as she stands as one of the country’s most significant contemporary artists. The works on view—which range in scale from small, human-scale pieces to wall-spanning installations—offer visitors invaluable insight into Amaral’s techniques, materials, and singular creative lexicon. On view through July 9, 2024, the show further highlights Amaral’s ongoing engagement with themes such as introspection, cultural identity, and collective memory.

Casa Más, Bogotá, featuring “Olga de Amaral: The Contemporaneity of the Ancestral” (2024). Courtesy of Galeria Duque Arango.

About the Artist: Originally from Bogotá, Olga de Amaral (b. 1932) studied architecture at the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca before focusing on fiber arts at the Cranbook Academy of Art, Michigan, where she graduated in 1955. Recognized for her meticulous and often opulent textile works, which are frequently three dimensional and incorporate materials such as gold leaf alongside more conventional fiber materials, Amaral’s practice draws inspiration from the craft traditions of pre-Colombian, such as tapestries and baskets, geometric abstraction, and the aesthetics of Catholicism. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973, and her work has subsequently been exhibited worldwide. Along with the present exhibition, her work has been featured within the past year in two major institutional exhibitions in New York City, “Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and “Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America” at the Museum of Modern Art.

Installation view of “Olga de Amaral: The Contemporaneity of the Ancestral” (2024). Courtesy of Galeria Duque Arango.

Why We Like It: Comprised of some 20 individual works selected from across multiple decades of the artist’s career, Amaral’s solo exhibition at Galeria Duque Arango presents a deep dive into her artistic evolution, as well as scope of her material exploration. Two works in particular both dated to 1982, illustrate the artist’s distinctive use of medium for both symbolic and compositional ends, Tapiz 342 and Alchemy 81. Tapiz 342 is made from dyed animal fibers, which loosely hang within the piece evoking a natural landscape or, up close, pre-Columbian Quipus, a form of knotted string record keeping found in pre-Columbian America. Alchemy 81, however, materially explores inverse formal elements. Made with gold foil and acrylic on linen, the naturalistic elements are removed, and it is instead reminiscent of the opulent gold leafed art and objects from religious orders or architecture. These types of juxtapositions throughout the show underscore Amaral’s technical skill and breadth of creative exploration.

Installation view of “Olga de Amaral: The Contemporaneity of the Ancestral” (2024). Courtesy of Galeria Duque Arango.

“Olga de Amaral: The Contemporaneity of the Ancestral” is on view at Casa Más, Bogotá, through August 26, 2024.