NYAB Event - Inas Al-soqi and Patrice Aphrodite Helmar “The Invisible Cities”

Inas Al-soqi and Patrice Aphrodite Helmar “The Invisible Cities”

BOSI Contemporary

This event has ended.

BOSI Contemporary presents The Invisible Cities a two-person show curated by Giulia Trabaldo Togna featuring works by Inas Al-soqi and Patrice Aphrodite Helmar.

This exhibition, inspired by the homonymous book by Italo Calvino, presents a conversation between the works, aiming to visually interpret the essence of urban life as described by Calvino. Through the collection of tales about imaginary cities, the book creates a surreal world in which the people and the urban landscape merge together to create a concert of impossible skylines and lives whilst addressing issues related to the development of the contemporary city.

While Al-soqi’s collages and prints interpret the urban landscape in a surreal and metaphoric sense, Helmar’s photographs reflect the actual urban reality.

The juxtaposition of these two bodies of work creates a visual dichotomy between the idealized conceptualization of life in the city and the documentation of daily encounters with its inhabitants.

The exhibition reintroduces concerns about the urban environment once explored by Calvino’s work thirty years ago by bringing back issues of architectural development and generating a new dialogue between literature, art, and urbanism.

Inas Al- Soqi (b. 1987, Romania) is a Brooklyn based artist working in woodblock printmaking, oil painting, collage, and drawing. Having immigrated to America as a teenager, her experiences as a child living in Kuwait and Romania heavily influence her artistic practice. Since moving to New York, she has used collage as a narrative tool. In the exhibited works Al-Soqi uses the vibrant patterns of Eastern culture to investigate a new understanding of class and nobility.

Patrice Aphrodite Helmar (b. 1981, Juneau, Alaska) is a photographer and filmmaker who lives and works in New York City. Patrice’s sentimental and emotional approach to life drives the tone of her work. Class, sexuality, and addiction form the core of her films and photographs, which are most often concerned with the lives and stories of other people. Helmar’s most recent work is on display at the Anchorage Museum in the Alaska Biennial. In 2014, she was a finalist in the New York Photo Festival, and a finalist for the Gordon Parks Prize.

Media

• Photography
• Prints

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