Tracing Emotion and History: Doorway and ruins and blueprints at ara contemporary
Ara contemporary proudly presents its first dual-exhibition for public viewing. The show activates both its spaces, Main Gallery and Focus Gallery, with each site enlivening a different (visual) story: Doorway, a solo exhibition by Singapore-based Spanish artist Carmen Ceniga Prado, will be on view at ara’s Main Gallery while Focus Gallery will showcase “ruins and blueprints”, a group exhibition that features work by seven Southeast Asian artists.
Enter Doorway and dive into the world of Carmen Ceniga Prado, who explores her body as a medium and its spectrums through abstraction. She answers to the in-between in her practice, finding signals in the liminal feelings and internal sensations that arise before its processing in the body and the mind– that ultimately determines their experience as either an emotional or physical one. Here, abstraction is used to depict the formless and visceral, offering an entry point into the existence of an embodied space (within).
Ceniga Prado’s past engagement with wood carvings reflect her interest in the materialities and its processes of creation, as the tactile, labour-intensive nature of the medium demands a rootedness. But, there is a paradox in its physical form that constricts her intent to capture an experience of flux and indeterminacy of her biology. Nonetheless, she continues the journey into herself (read: physically) upon a diagnosis of chronic pain, and finds the answers in painting or mark-making. They open a way for Ceniga Prado to express bodily presence and movements and ultimately confronts her with questions such as: What shape does a sigh have?
Doorway makes space to the sensitive nuances of the body, and the meditative processes of attuning to its shifts and sensations. These notions and reflections about the body emerged more fully in Ceniga Prado’s practices since her relocation to Southeast Asia. In her paintings, she used a limited palette, relying upon a play with transparency to evoke a focus on the composition of its tones. The interplay between opacity and translucence suggests shadow and light more than colour itself, ultimately creating space and depth that is signature to her work.
The gradual shifts in tone evokes a sense of change and emphasize the subtle movements between its shades. In this form, the rhythm and vitality of her marks are most apparent– to the viewer’s eye. However, in her new body of work, Ceniga Prado also stitches together pieces of the canvas fragments, resembling the act of assembling (fragments) to evoke a sense of wholeness. This practice mirrors the constant journey of learning about our ever-changing bodies and upon tracing its quiet rhythms, her paintings become a language beyond words; one that unfolds by looking into the spaces in-between.
On the other side, ruins and blueprints explore the notion of history, conceptualising it as a continuous conversation between the past and the present through a reinterpretation or re-contextualisation of its events. The works in the exhibition examine the enduring relevance of a historical narrative, using the metaphor of ruins as a starting point to evoke its lingering influence. The seven artists delve into the legacies of the past that have or continue to shape present-day life, and establish the importance of revision to illuminate the tension between ‘historical accuracy’ and its contemporary reinterpretation. While remaining firmly rooted in the present, they reflect on the constancy of the past and the traces history leaves behind.
Together, the metaphors of ‘ruins’ and ‘blueprints’ suggest a cyclical relationship in which the past continuously shapes the present, and the present– in turn– lays the foundation for the future— establishing our presence in a continuous loop of remembering and reimagining. This exhibition features works from Agan Harahap, Dita Gambiro, Enka Komariah, Ipeh Nur, Irfan Hendrian, Lai Yu Tong, and Natalie Sasi Organ.
ara contemporary’s dual exhibition is open to the public until August 3, 2025.
