OVERVIEW

Karen Paulina Biswell

Liste Year

Year of Birth

Country of Birth

Presented by

2020

1983

Colombia

Instituto de Visión

Defining Latin American art in a single term is an impossible task that has occupied thousands of lines of the history of art in the region. However, trying to understand Latin America as a multiple and polyphonic territory has thrown light on the different ways in which the centers of power understand the contemporaneity of colonized countries.

Producing from the periphery generates special challenges for artistic practices: the precariousness became one of the formal characteristics of Latin American art, and at the same time, one of its richness in terms of the strength of its contents.

Karen Paulina Biswell was born to Colombian parents who emigrated to Paris escaping the extreme political violence of the early 90’s. Based on her amphibious experience between the western European world and a visual attraction to the reality underlying the romantic rhetoric of indigenous peoples, she constructs a visual universe that generates intense tensions between the historical past, mythical time and contemporary present. The images that Biswell reveals are moments that manifest as a ritual essence, at the same time they evoke the classic editorials of fashion publications.

Her varied oeuvre – which is consistently defying definition – is drawn to subjects of vulnerability morality and human fate. She is committed to capturing the lesser known aspects of contemporary life, the invisible and defiant elements of society, taking a deep interest in extreme states and the depths of the human mind and experience.

  • 2015 – ‘Nama Bu’, at Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, Bogota, Colombia
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She has recently been part of exhibitions at Espacio 23 Miami, ‘Art and social unrest in the Jorge M. Perez Collection’, Momenta Biennale de L’image in Montreal, and the A4 Art Museum of Chengdu, China.

In 2018 her work was exhibited at The 60 Wall Gallery - Deutsche Bank, New York, The Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence and the Museum of Modern Art of Medellin as well at La Cité International des Arts in Paris (2017) and Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles (2016 & 2017 ).

Biswell was nominated for the 8th edition of the Pictet Price,the Higashikawa Award in Japan, the ...

  • Karen Paulina Biswell. NAMA BU series, 2013-2014
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  • Karen Paulina Biswell. Chère Pipi series, 2019
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  • Karen Paulina Biswell. Ellas series, 2018
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