Art Spiel
June 23, 2026 by Noa Charuvi
Basis: Gabriela Vainsencher at Asya Geisberg
At Basis, Gabriela Vainsencher’s second solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery, the artist continues to explore themes of motherhood, domestic life, the female body, and her relationship with art history as an artist-mother, a figure traditionally marginalized. Vainsencher’s work resonates within a broader context of artists who have embraced domesticity and motherhood as central creative subjects, such as Louise Bourgeois, who explored maternal forms and the body. Vainsencher explains that she chose the title thinking about how early childhood forms the foundation for all experiences going forward, as having children does to the parent, and also since she finds herself physically becoming a basis or pedestal when her kids climb on her, a familiar experience to all parents of small children.
In this exhibition, Vainsencher takes viewers into an interior world made of flattened vessels and plaques of irregular shapes that frame their contained inhabitants. Referencing ancient amphoras, ceramic jars used throughout the Mediterranean for storing and transporting goods, she slices them lengthwise to reveal what’s inside.
The exhibition focuses on the interiors of pots, of the body, and the home environment. Vainsencher takes you inside, into her belly, and into her head. The material is ceramic, but the pottery here is entirely symbolic and non-functional. The vessel is a metaphor for the body, specifically the female body that is holding another body. The clay is the flesh, the sides of the pots are the skin. In her free, linear drawing style, swirling, jiggly lines define the figures and the sides of the pots. Carved into the porcelain, they have a lightness that recalls a pencil drawing in a personal sketchbook. The skewed shapes of the pots, leaning sideways, with uneven handles and asymmetric sides, all different heights, create a movement that is reverberating throughout the room like a choreographed pot dance. The porcelain, freed from functionality, provides a sensuous surface, rich in texture and color when treated with different touches and glazes. It is a seductive, warm material. Vainsencher leaves her technique seemingly accessible to the viewer, with visible finger-digging marks and earthy colors. The presence of touch echoes throughout the imagery, with hands holding, lifting, and massaging.
In Hope, the largest piece in the exhibition, an entangled woman is trapped inside the pot, her body exposed and only her hand making its way out of the neck, holding a knife – the tool used for carving the porcelain and creating the drawn-out imagery. The title paired with this tortured woman is ironic, but her sole liberty is sincerely in artmaking. In The Lesson (White Rug), the only rectangular piece in the show, a girl is riding on her (pregnant?) mother’s back, holding her doll. They do not look particularly joyful, completely immersed each in her own thoughts. The child is busy pointing her finger and directing her mother. The tiles that make the surface bring to mind bathroom or kitchen tiles, referencing the domestic environment with formal means.
The natural world is visible only through a window or imagined, as in Looking Out, one of two standalone pieces. A series of portraits looks about with side-eyed scrutiny; they are the only visitors to the closed-off space of the mother and child, both part of the narrative and outside it, caricatures of pretentious guests. Vainsencher created them with their eyes flipped, put on the wrong way. The intentional error was meant to create an all-seeing figure who can see backward, like a mother who always watches over, but they are also looking away.
linear drawing but an almost abstract tonal stain painting. The artist explains that these were made by applying black glaze to the porcelain, then wiping it with a cloth to create the white areas that comprise the images. Unexpectedly, the images are not only of baby limbs or figures but also landscapes, fantastical shapes, and variations on the original ultrasound images she was looking at while making these pieces. The ultrasound image, made to reveal abnormalities in an accurate, scientific way, says Vainsencher, is actually very obscure, and not only do patients have trouble reading it, but the technician and the doctor also do not offer certainty. This ambiguity in reading the images mirrors a parent’s own doubts and hopes when facing the unknowns of a new life. The experience of getting an ultrasound, like any other medical imaging procedure, is associated with worry and stress, and so, for Vainsencher, it is a rich site for exploring the emotions of fragility and temporality associated with parenting.
When speaking of her art-making process, Vainsencher says her goal remains to present the most sincere expression of her internal world and vision. Here, specifically, she generously shares her experience as a woman raising small children while also trying to carve out her own space, quite literally. A bold move in humble means, which reminds us that indeed, as long as you stay true to yourself, you can create great things.