Ruby Rumié & Justine Graham “Common Place”

Nohra Haime Gallery

[Image: Rumié and Graham "Common Place" (2010)]

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The topic of this project by Rumié and Graham is the relationship between Latin American housekeepers and their employers, exploring issues of gender, power, class, and race. Made up of photographs, videos, and interviews with one hundred women between the ages of nineteen and ninety-five, this multidisciplinary project combines art and sociology, seeking to dismantle the hierarchical relationship between these women.

The artists examine the inherited colonial prejudices surrounding domestic work and propose new angles for comprehension and social communication. The visual treatment of the women is the same across the board-they are even dressed in the same clothes as an exercise in equality and for the purpose of undermining bigotry. These actions transcend the artistic plane and the piece becomes a symbolic act with real life repercussions.

Common Place has been exhibited at the Museo de Artes Visuales MAVI, Santiago, Chile; The Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C.; The Cartagena Biennial, Colombia; and Fair., Miami, FL.

Ruby Rumié develops projects with political content related to psychology and injustice, referencing particular collectives in questions of territorial inheritance and the role of the socially committed artist. Her works do not merely present critical arguments, but also propose solutions and pave a road of hope for issues that concern her.

Justine Graham is a French-American visual artist, photographer and editor working in Chile since 2005. Her artistic work explores photography as a tool for conceptual research through collecting, classifying, and creating community as forms of re-thinking identity.

Concurrent with this exhibition is Ruby Rumié’s Divine Breath NYC at La Mama Galleria, from October 4 - 26 at 47 Great Jones Street, New York.