Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler:
Flora
Opening September 20, 2019 to April 5, 2020
Opening September 20, 2019 to April 5, 2020
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler’s Flora is based on the artists’ discoveries about an unknown American artist, Flora Mayo, with whom the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti had a love affair in Paris in the 1920s. While Giacometti is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, Mayo’s oeuvre was destroyed when she left Paris in the 1930s and her biography reduced to a footnote in Giacometti scholarship.
With this work, Hubbard and Birchler combine their historical research with memories of Flora Mayo’s son, David (now in his eighties), whose understanding of his mother’s past wistfully came to life for him only through their discoveries and conversations. Utilizing her letters and diaries to create a re-enactment of her life and art in the 1920s-30s, the artists’ filmmaking unearths an important story of the personal sacrifices and sometimes insurmountable bias and financial deprivation female creatives faced in that era.
Touted as one of the most emotionally engaging exhibitions at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Flora will travel to MCA Denver, where the original exhibition will be complemented by additional material providing insight into Flora Mayo’s childhood and early adult years in Denver. It will include a double-sided film, a recreation of Mayo’s lost bust of Giacometti (captured in the one photograph that launched the artists’ research), a photograph to accompany this sculpture, as well as additional photographs and letters that piece together her early life in Denver, thus connecting her story to the place of the exhibition. The work succeeds as a poignant conversation between Flora Mayo and her son, while also generating a multifaceted dialogue between Mayo and Giacometti, Paris and Los Angeles, and past and present.
The exhibition is curated by
Nora Burnett Abrams, Mark G. Falcone Director
On view from
to
Hubbard / Birchler: Flora was made possible by the generosity of Presenting Sponsor First Western Trust Bank and by generous support from Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council. MCA Denver thanks the citizens of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.