A scent of tobacco lingers in the air. Yellow spot lights highlight the scene. A black circular table spins a book round. The windows are blocked while ambient sounds slowly expands in the two spaces.
UNSEEN by Miami-based artist Jessica Gispert is an exhibition exploring the artist’s relationship to spirituality as a silent part of her Cuban identity. Gispert creates an environment centered around her first artist book of the same title, which honors divine women in the Afro-Atlantic Lucumí religion, also known as Santeria.The book presents new photographic work exploring the intimate spaces used to honor ancestors and deities in Latin-American households and manifests echoing materials and vibrations found in the Carribean religion Gispert grew up with.
She uses the exhibition space to catapult these images into existence with an ethereal quality, hanging as kaleidoscopic fabric prints in rooms infused with sound, scent and metallic sculptures reminiscent of ritual. The two luscious fabric prints depicting altars for the deities Yemaya, Goddess of the Water and Oshun, Goddess of Fertility, resist being focused, evading the gaze. Ancient tools and casts of Royal Poinciana seeds which are used for offerings further delve into this other realm that Gispert lays bare. Along with New York and Miami based musician, Joseph Chesson, Gispert composed a sound scape which melds subtropical atmospheres with a narration of her short science fiction tale featured in the book. The story is about a foreign explorer that appears washed up on a tropical alien land only to discover that this place holds a piece of her mysterious past.
To support the artist you can purchase a special Edition including a signed book and photo print on chiffon for 180,00 € (2021, 106 x 71, Edition of 10 + APs). The numbered Artist book can be purchased for 30,00 €.
Jessica Gispert is a Miami-based artist. She received a Bachelors in Fine Arts from Florida International University and a Masters in Fine Arts from New York University Steinhardt in 2012, and recently completed a Post-Graduate Degree at the the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in Germany. Gispert’s work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions globally including the Dortmunder Kunstverein, Noguchi Breton in Miami, the Bonner Kunstverien, The Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach, Komplot Gallery, Brussels, and Mélange, Cologne. Her collaborative group, GisMo, was featured in MoMA PS1’s exhibition, “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” She was recently awarded the “Oolite Art’s 2021 Ellies Creator Award”.