“Infinite Folds” is an exhibition of artist Barbara Chase-Riboud‘s seventy-year evolution of her sculptural method, exploring memory, history, and power through fantastical models and works in paper.
The first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom open through January 29, 2023, author and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud‘s “Infinite Folds” offers a selection of far-reaching sculptures, accompanied by some works on paper dating from the 1960s to the present.
This is the first exhibition in the UK of some of the previously unseen pieces, as well as some of the most celebrated works by this considerable artist.
The exhibition “Infinite Folds” highlights Barbara Chase-Riboud‘s sculptural method and materiality which is exemplified by the transaction between cast bronze or aluminum folds and loops of fleece and silk that are tied, twisted, encircled and woven.
By consolidating these materials with diverse characteristics, such as hardness and delicacy, lightness and airiness, or even inflexibility, Barbara Chase-Riboud‘s works lend an elegant thought to the use of fiber skirts in her creation of structures that bind contradictory powers.
Alongside her sculptural practice, Barbara Chase-Riboud is an established artist and fictional essayist. She gained accomplishment for her most memorable novel, Sally Hemings. Since then, she has distributed more than ten books and collections of verse and focuses on highlighting transnational histories and societies as she draws motivation from her experience living, working, and traversing Western and Eastern Europe, West Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Asia.
In her major series, The Monument Drawings, and through a selection dating from the latter part of the 1960s, she envisions buildings and memories of various figures. These include, among others, Sarah Baartman, Malcolm X, Peter Paul Rubens’ mother, Josephine Baker, the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, Cleopatra, Anna Akhmatova and Lady Macbeth. These works address themes of memory, legacy, and power, and prompt the question of which individuals and occasions are remembered, and for whom.
Visible at the Serpentine in London‘s Kensington, where public sculptures line the stage, Barbara Chase-Riboud through her exhibition continues to shape our impressions.