Municipal Bonds is delighted to announce their summer presentation by Chilean-French artist Cécilia Andrews. On view July 8 through August 19, Cécilia Andrews: Invisible Language is the Paris-based artist’s second solo show with the gallery. Featuring new work on Braille paper, Andrews’ exhibition delves into themes of humanity, language and perception.

Aligned closely with Arte Povera—the Italian art movement from the late 1960s, using a range of unconventional processes and non-traditional materials—Andrews’ collages, drawings and installations are distinguished by the interplay between her materials and message. Her work has historically explored portraiture—not representational of specific people or realistic faces, but rather as expressions of the human condition. Through varied and contrasting papers, her abstract portraits have investigated emotional, mental and physical states; where the individual and universal meet. As a continuation of her 2021 exhibition with the gallery titled Indivisible Particles, Andrews’ new exhibition extends from the head to the body, arms, hands, legs and feet. Her whole human comprises gestural parts on Braille paper, color washed in earthly tones.

Using pages from an old Grand Larousse encyclopédia, a French book covering all branches of knowledge, Andrews chose the Braille version as her primary material likening its tactile nature to the texture of skin. The paper is characterized by patterns of raised dots representing letters and numbers; inherently tied to sight and communication, yet Andrews’ work is not meant to be read nor touched by the viewer. Instead, this oeuvre highlights her experimentation with the essence of materials, the contrast/juxtaposition of ideas and their haptic transformation. With flattened perspective and ambiguous features, Andrews’ compositions interweave appendages and create scenes with open-ended narratives—constructing and challenging how we “beings” can fit together.

In Andrews’ words, “With its grain, Braille paper reminds me of skin, like pores that hold a tactile message of humanity. The coded paper evokes a mysterious presence that reveals itself through both material and touch. I approach this skin with washes of color—elements appear and disappear with sharp contours and blurs. My core fascination is the gaze, the infinite variety and individuality of each portrait, each face. In this work I looked to represent the human being from an overall point of view, as the global identity that is this body. I am expanding upon the conceptual representation of the universal oval shape that I've been working on for many years. We are a whole, not just head/mind, we also have a body—sometimes invigorated, sometimes tired, sometimes wounded—which represents us, and which is often forgotten, because we look at the world mainly through our ideas and with our intellect. Looking at our own body is like going back to its origins, back to our own map of the world.”

Municipal Bonds