Gabriela Vainsencher

Gabriela Vainsencher’s porcelain sculptures and wall reliefs combine motifs that have appeared throughout her interdisciplinary practice of drawing, video, and photography. As an immigrant twice-over, she often experiments with materials and languages and uses images and objects as metaphors. Vainsencher draws inspiration from mythology, ancient Greek ceramic vessels and Roman frescoes, and archetypes of motherhood. Tropes such as the clock and the hourglass are conflated with the body’s biological time, and fertility symbols and reproductive organs coexist with less obviously maternal body parts such as hands and ears. The monumental multi-part installation “Mom” is both a literal snake-monster and a wielder of many manufactured tools that enable her maternal tasks. Vainsencher portrays motherhood as nuanced and multi-faceted, and both agelessly symbolic and specifically contemporary.

Vainsencher was born in Buenos Aires, raised in Tel Aviv, and currently lives and works in Montclair, NJ. She received her MFA from Hunter College in 2016. Past solo and two-person exhibitions include CRUSH Curatorial gallery, NY, NY, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Hanina Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, France; Parker’s Box Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; NurtureArt, NY; and La Chambre Blanche, Québec City, Canada. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Marisa Newman Projects, NY, NY, Bergamo Modern and Contemporary Art, Italy; Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway; Pierogi gallery, Brooklyn, NY, The Freies Museum, Berlin and The National Gallery of Saskatchewan, Canada. Residencies include Yaddo, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, Byrdcliffe Artist Residency, Woodstock (USA), Triangle Arts Association (France), and La Chambre Blanche (Canada).

Vainsencher is the founder of the Morning Drawing Residency, has written about art for Hyperallergic, Title Magazine and Tohu magazine. She also teaches art occasionally at Williams College, in Williamstown, MA and at the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, NY.