Amalia Pica

Amalia Pica studied at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. The recorded working language is Spanish. Places of work recorded in the authority are Buenos Aires, Amsterdam and London. Work by Amalia Pica is recorded in the collections of Tate, Museum of Modern Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and MACBA Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art.

• Birthplace — Neuquén, Argentina • Born — 1978 • Name — Amalia Pica • Education — Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes P.P Clínica de Obra con Tulio de Sagastizabal • Illustration — Now speak! by Pica, Krimpertplein, Amsterdam-Zuidoost (2021)

Pica was born in Neuquén, Argentina, in 1978. She earned a BA from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires in 2003. From 2004 to 2005, she held an artist residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kusten.

Pica's performance piece, Strangers, first performed in 2008, was featured in the updated Tate Modern and focuses on the complex communication between strangers. The work requires two strangers to hold each end of a string of colorful bunting without letting it touch the ground in the limited space. The resulting distance creates a barrier that prevents the linked participants from having an intimate communication. Julie Rodrigues Widholm, director at the DePaul Art Museum, states that, “The bunting suggests a party or communal gathering, and Pica plays with the idea of distance and proximity as it relates to communication.”

In 2016 Amalia Pica participated in the group exhibition “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand” shown in the Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). Amalia Pica was one of nine artists who were commissioned to create art that alters continually in contact with visitors; viewers were invited to mount and change the exhibition, resulting in an unlimited number of possible arrangements. The exhibition aimed to question the dominant role of the curator in structuring the exhibition. According to the Kunsthalle Wien, “the main actor of the exhibition will be the spectator who will not act as a consumer but as a co-producer of the artists and the curator.” Pica exhibited her series, Joy in paperwork (2016).

In A ∩ B ∩ C (read as A intersection B intersection C), Amalia Pica uses translucent colored Perspex shapes, with which performers will produce different compositions in front of the audience. The notion of intersection links to the idea of collaboration and community. This artwork is a performative manifestation of Venn diagrams, which were forbidden from being taught in elementary schools during the 1970s, as the concept of intersection and collaboration were seen as potentially subversive by the Argentine dictatorship. The inspiration for Pica's exhibition, A ∩ B ∩ C, stems from the dictatorship in her home country of Argentina (1976–1981). A ∩ B ∩ C critically comments on the banning by the dictatorship of Venn Diagrams in elementary schools. In the Guggenheim Museum’s Soundcloud excerpt, Pica discusses her “Art Under the Same Sun” exhibition, housed at the Guggenheim in 2013, sharing her interest in the overlapping and intersecting of individual objects.

Previously shown at the Chisenhale Gallery in London and at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the exhibition Amalia Pica uses everyday objects as signifiers of celebration: fiesta lights, flags and banners, confetti, rainbows, photocopies, lightbulbs, drinking glass, beer bottles and cardboard. According to the publishing house, & Pens Press, “Pica’s work is directly dealing with the translation of symbolic language and motivated by how meaning is created and deciphered between the artist and the viewer.”

Metaphors are also part of Pica's work, as she uses figures of speech to describe things that have no name. "An object that has no name—that, in a way, escapes language—by invoking something entirely unrelated. Hence, we get phrases like ‘leg of the chair’ or ‘neck of the bottle’ which attach human qualities to inanimate things. Objects have a space and a weight, a physical presence that eludes language. You can't speak an object: you have to speak around it. Metaphors are a way of doing that. In a sense, when we talk about the world, it's always in metaphors." Pica's Catachresis merges distinct and contrasting found materials, such as the leg of a table or the elbow of a pipe, to construct sculptural forms that become new tools of communication and take on identities of their own.

Pica's interest in the relationship between text and image is evident in Venn Diagrams (under the Spotlight), which consists of two colored circles of light cast from theater spotlights to form a Venn diagram. The Argentine government banned this diagram from being taught in classrooms in the 1970s, as it was thought to be an incendiary model of social collaboration. "The two circles of light are nothing but forms until the caption situates them historically, cluing you to their perception as subversive in the context of Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s. I’m interested in the ideas that we project onto images and objects: how they resist as much as accommodate them."

Pica is also fascinated with childhood. Possibly her best-known early work, Hora Catedra, explores the lessons and themes of childhood and how they irrevocably stay with us through adult life. In Hora Catedra, Pica proves how what we internalize during our childhood will accompany us through adult life: most Argentines believe The House of Tucuman, the site of Argentina's Declaration of Independence, to be yellow, as it is shown in children's books. However, it is actually white. The 2002 site-specific installation bathed the building in a bright yellow light, in reference to the misconception.

Amalia Pica's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Venice Bienniale, and the Tate Modern in London. In 2014, her work was included in the group exhibition, Under the Same Sun, presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her artwork is part of MACBA, and the Guggenheim's collection.

• Date — Exhibition — Place • 2023 — ¡Qué viva el papeleo! — Museo Jumex, Mexico City • 2022 — rock comb — Brighton CCA, Brighton, UK • 2020 — Round table (and other forms) — Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland • 2016 — Strangers — TATE Modern, London • 2014 — A ∩ B ∩ C — Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven • 2014 — One thing after another — La Criée, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Rennes, France • 2014 — Dessauerstrasse — König Galerie, Berlin • 2014 — Switchboard — Mostyn, Wales • 2013 — Memorial for Intersections — Kunsthalle, Lisbon • 2013 — Low Visibility — König Galerie, Berlin • 2013 — A ∩ B ∩ C — Museo Tamayo, Mexico City • 2013 — Ascendant Artists: Amalia Pica — Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago • 2013 — Amalia Pica — MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge • 2012 — Amalia Pica — Chisenhale Gallery, London • 2012 — On Paper — Basis, Frankfurt • 2012 — For Shower Singers — Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom • 2011 — Amalia Pica: UMMA Projects — University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan • 2011 — Endymion's Journey — Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles • 2010 — Amalia Pica: babble, blabber, chatter, gibber, jabber, patter, prattle, rattle, yammer, yada yada yada — Malmö Konsthall, Malmö

• Date — Exhibition — Place • 2026 — Between Tides — Public Art Fund, New York, NY • 2019 — Fly me to the Moon. The Moon landing: 50 years on — Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, CH • 2019 — Iteraciones sobre lo no mismo — Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina • 2019 — Concrete Contemporary — Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, Switzerland • 2019 — Is This Tomorrow? — Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK • 2019 — After Leaving / Before Arriving — 12th Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania • 2018 — 12th Shanghai Biennale — Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China • 2018 — Darbyshire, Gander, Pica, Starling — Hayward Gallery, London, UK • 2017 — Double Edge — Folkestone Triennial, Folkestone Triennial, Folkestone, UK • 2017 — Soundtracks — San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, US • 2017 — Curators’ series #10: Greater than the sum, curated by Kunsthalle Lissabon — David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK • 2017 — Monumentos, anti-monumentos y nueva escultura pública — Museo de Arte Zapopan, Zapopan, Mexico • 2016 — One, No One and One Hundred Thousand — Kunsthalle Wien, Zürich, Switzerland • 2016 — Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today — Museo Jumex, Mexico City (Guggenheim touring) • 2015 — Material — König Galerie, Berlin • 2015 — Display Show — Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK, touring to Stroom den Haag, The Hague, NL • 2015 — Beauty Codes — Fondazione Giuliani, Rome • 2015 — Repetition and Difference — The Jewish Museum, New York • 2015 — Group Exhibition — Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles • 2014 — Histories II: Works from the Serralves Collection — Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal • 2014 — The Reluctant Narrator — Museu Berardo, Lisbon • 2014 — Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today — Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York • 2013 — Audible Forces — F-320, New Delhi, India • 2013 — The Printed Room: Emmy Moore's Journal — Salts, Birsfelden, Switzerland • 2013 — When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes — MOCAD Detroit, Michigan • 2013 — Version Control — Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom • 2013 — Project Space: Ruins in Reverse — TATE Modern, London • 2012 — Chronic Listeners — Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland • 2012 — Common Ground — Public Art Fund, New York • 2012 — The Ungovernables — New Museum, New York • 2012 — Silence — Menil Collection, Houston • 2010 — Map Marathon — Serpentine Gallery, London • 2008 — World Event — Kunsthalle Basel, Basel • 2007 — Drawing Typologies — Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam