Issue # 24 Debora Hirsch
Firmamento
Firmamento (excerpt)
Binary Fresco (excerpt)
Primarily elaborated in painting and video, Firmamento ties together several themes in Hirsch’s practice via intricate configurations of her amassed archive. It is an ongoing project, which she describes as a culmination of her previous work’s conceptual underpinnings.
Themes related to power and control are persistent in Debora Hirsch’s most expansive series to date, Firmamento. The chosen title refers to a biblical conception of the Earth’s makeup: in the Old Testament, it was believed that when God created the Earth, He created a solid dome (the “firmament”) which made up the sky and held the entirety of the visible cosmos. Hirsch’s title is not necessarily religious. Rather, her poetic cosmological reference aims to uncover questions and ideas surrounding human perception, exploring the way the structures of power can be subtle, insidious and imperceptible, as well as brutal and invasive, ranging from historic colonizing dynamics and its legacy as well as technological control to dynamics acting at a personal level.
In trying to restore the complexity of the real, [the] Firmamento artworks exploit multiple references resulting in images that find their meaning at the end of an engineered construction, unfolding in a selection of decontextualized evocative architectural details, decoded artifacts related to the digital language, the apparent ‘natural condition' of symbolic decorative elements, scientific representations, nature, traces from handmade automatic patterns unwillingly quoting the microscopic life, historic colonialist imagery of the Americas. It is, in a sense, a meditation on the complex (and unequal) harmony of human life across varying temporalities, simultaneously replete with beauty and ugliness.
More here: https://hutchinsonmodern.com/usr/library/documents/main/artists/43/hm-c_debora_hirsch_pdf_dp.pdf
Videos and text courtesy of: Hutchinson Modern and Contemporary
Debora Hirsch
Debora Hirsch (born in São Paulo and lives in Milan) is a visual artist and university professor. Some key themes recur throughout her artworks, such as contemporary anthropology, concealed realities, the influence of media and technology on culture and society, defining the multidisciplinary nature of her practice. She is mainly interested in exploring structures of power. Her visual language often deliberately invites viewers to investigate and reconsider their actions. Progressing by associations and deductions is her favored method in the production of drawings, paintings, videos, websites and installations.
Artist-in-residence at RU Residency Unlimited, New York and AnnexB, New York. Nominated for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation's (CIFO) Grants and Commissions Program 2019-2020. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including: Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary, New York, NY (2021); Bound up Together, Smack Mellon, New York (2020); CURRENTS: An Overwhelming Response, A.I.R. Gallery, New York (2020); La Cittá Ideale (public art), Mirandola (2020); Scivias, Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz, Austria (2019); Libere Tutte, Casa Testori, Novate Milanese, Italy (2019); Contemporanei/Contemporanee, Polo Santa Marta, AGI Verona Collection, Verona, Italy (2019); Eco Shifters, Fondazione La Fabbrica Del Cioccolato, Torre, Switzerland (2019) and Carriage Trade, New York (2019); Il Crepaccio by Caroline Corbetta (2019); WunderMoRE, MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome (2018); BelVedere, MIART @MARS, Milan, Italy (2018); Panorama Punjab, Qila Mubarak, Patiala, India (2018); Dreams & drama. Law as literature, nGbK, Berlin, Germany (2017); Art in Art, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow, Poland (2017); Donotclickthru, Galleria Pack, Milan, Italy (2016); Before Nightfall, Anthology Film Archives, New York (2016); Gender in Art, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow, Poland (2015); Framed, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Palazzo Forti, Verona (2014); Ida e Volta, MuBE Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia, São Paulo, Brazil (2014); Crime in Art, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow, Poland (2014); Limite, MuBE Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia, São Paulo, Brazil (2012); MAP project, MAGA Museum, Gallarate, Italy (2012).