Laura Anderson Barbata: Singing Leaf
Marlborough Gallery
525 West 25th Street
Opening Reception: September 9, 2023
6:00-8:00 PM
EFA Studios member Laura Anderson Barbata’s solo exhibition Singing Leaf will remain on view through October 28, 2023 at 545 West 25th Street. A fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Edward J. Sullivan and Madeline Murphy Turner will be available for purchase at the time of the exhibition. The gallery is deeply appreciative of both writers’ contributions to this ambitious project, as well as their unwavering support and scholarship.
Since the early-1990s, Laura Anderson Barbara has initiated art-centered projects in the United States, the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, and Norway which emphasize reciprocity, shared knowledge, and decolonial thinking. Through anchoring objects, Singing Leaf gathers many traditions, voices, and communities that are empowered by the artist’s expansive definitions of authorship and collaboration.
The story of this exhibition begins in 1992. That year, Anderson Barbata, already a practicing artist, traveled to the Venezuelan Amazon, where Indigenous Yanomami, Ye’Kuana, and Piaroa communities accepted her proposal to initiate various papermaking projects. One of such projects is featured in Singing Leaf. Produced with the Yanomami using paper made from indigenous fibers and dyes, Shapono (conceived in 1992 and completed in 2001) tells the story of the community’s first communal dwelling, called a shapono. It was among the first (if not the first) post-colonial accounts of Yanomami folklore made for and by the Yanomami and written in their native language. To this end, paper—particularly handmade paper—had been, and continues to be, central to Anderson Barbata’s practice—both as a preferred medium and a vehicle for storytelling and empowerment.
