Aquel amplex

The Instituto Cervantes in New York presents Aquel Amplex, the first institutional exhibition of work by Venezuelan artist Cassandra Mayela Allen, curated by Fabiola R. Delgado and Carlos Núñez.   

In Aquel Amplex, Cassandra Mayela Allen steps back to examine her process-driven textile practice within the legacies of Venezuelan and Latin American modernism and informalism. Amassing two years of communally woven braids, the exhibition is a spatial and personal exploration that casts, in its collective materiality, an infinite outward net. Aquel Amplex stretches across the Instituto Cervantes with a central braided structure, investigatory wall pieces, a garden installation, and a collaborative work commissioned by the Instituto Cervantes, which will be woven in situ over the course of the exhibition and will remain in the center’s permanent collection thereafter.  

Aquel Amplex—“that embrace”—derives from a 1969 letter written by Hélio Oiticica to Lygia Clark, when both Brazilian artists lived in exile. The phrase bears a protest longing to create from the distance of forced migration. For Mayela Allen, it becomes a means to activate her collaborative work to deconstruct her national and artistic heritage. Paintings and drawings explore the lasting impact of mid-century Venezuelan modernism. Braided sculptures respond from a Latin American lineage of disruptive, corporeal experimentation, expanding Mayela Allen’s textile practice from the artisanal to the architectural. Braiding gatherings transform a set of flags from the Instituto Cervantes into a new work of union, welcoming participants into the artist’s way of existing: in the constant political acts of conversation, memory, community, and reinvention.  

With Aquel Amplex, the Instituto Cervantes inaugurates its initiative Spring at Amster Yard, an annual exhibition dedicated to an emerging New York-based artist.