MAGDA SKUPINSKA

EUR 10,100 + VAT

Nabata (Width in Isthmus Zapotec), 2019

Mixed media, white and red corn on petates

108 x 142 cm

About this work

The main everyday use of the woven palm – ‘petates’ – is as a bedroll. These two forms – which court ambiguity – could be read as another aspect of everyday life: a church. They also evoke the Suprematist Compositions of Kazimir Malevich, reinforcing the dialogue between traditional and Avant-garde in Skupinska’s work.

MAGDA SKUPINSKA BIOGRAPHY

Magda Skupinska (born Warsaw, 1991) has lived in London and Mexico since completing her MA at the Royal College of Art in 2017. Her 2019 show Layú (meaning ‘land’ in Isthmus Zapotec, a language native to parts of Oaxaca) combined motifs abstracted in a contemporary manner with indigenous cultural traditions: the ground of her paintings is formed by palm leaves, meticulously woven in a technique passed down across generations of women, by five members of the Zapotec community in Santo Domingo Albarradas, Mexico. Where the established canon of 20th-century painting is often presented as individualistic, male, and urban, Skupinska’s work is collective, female, and closely tied to nature.