AMY BRAVO

TransmogrificationNow!

Swivel Gallery is pleased to present, “TransmogrificationNOW!”, a dynamic solo exhibition
by Amy Bravo featuring a series of new sculptural works, paintings, and installation opening September 7th at 350 Hudson Street. Bravo’s latest works merges cabinets, curios, and furniture with eerie and nostalgic elements such as bones, relics, and a multitude of media offering a unique exploration of Cuban mythology and personal narrative. Central to the exhibition are Bravo’s “Animotron” sculpture series, where repurposed antique furniture is manipulated and collaged into totemic creatures. “Transmogrification NOW!” is a deep dive into a coming of age tale of a generation that seeks to find its place in our complex world, at once seeking individuality while navigating how to continue legacies left behind by their elders.

September 7th - October 7th 2024

350 Hudson St., New York

in the weaver’s room, the inheritance is kept behind glass. the weaver inventories with eight hands–her legs, her hair, her bones, the future, her teeth, her thread, the future, her gloves, the future, her sword, the future, her night and her net and her web and the future. the weaver counts and notates, counts again and preserves. the inheritance is tucked into drawers. locked in cabinets. caught wriggling, pin-pricked, wrapped in silk, placed back in its perfect cage where the weaver cannot taste it.

the weaver’s room has a locked blue door and no key. the weaver puts her face in a cabinet and is pleased when it learns how to speak.

the room has a locked blue door and no key so the bull gores
her window until it cracks, skull on the pane igniting spokes of
glass, spires branching away from the contact in a web of shards. bisected, clipped, stitched, divined, disfigured–pins protruding from her thorax. she is careful to move slowly. the weaver’s room is a sword box and she is unwilling to be gutted.

the weaver hangs her heart from a chain and is pleased when she begins to breathe like a machine.

the bull gores its way inside the weaver’s room and the cupboards tremble and the old rooster cries and crows and croons from his place on the sill. the weaver has eight legs and so she is tall enough, fast enough, nimble enough to ascend. she looks down upon her inheritance and works a new web.

the weaver says i won’t leave you and doesn’t feel bad for lying. the bull can only hear the outline of her words, flat and soundless as a pencil to the page. she’s carrying the rooster wrapped in silk, half-blind, demented by time, so shriveled that he’s light as a fly. they ride on the back of a snake. they slither over glass. she stakes the rooster’s bone-light body on her sword and lays him across her shoulder, where he’s safe from the wind.

she says i won’t leave you but she’s far away and hungry, and she can taste dust in the pads of her fingers, the world outside the room sepia and eternal, like a dream she had, she says like a dream i had, like i can’t let go, like i see you there in the mirror and i am there, there where i’m not.
the weaver is far away with a bull in her room.

she says

oh god! i’m turning out like you. what a nightmare. to trace my life inside your silhouette, to know exactly where the edges are. i am trying to get ahead
of the situation. there is nothing really wrong with you. nothing wrong with any one of us at all really. but i’m not supposed to live any other person’s life. but i am going to. of course. i’m going to live all of yours at once. together. i am the amalgamation of you all. i am the point at which we’ve arrived. i am your femur, her nose, his ear, your gut. i am rearranged and cobbled. i walk knock kneed and side-forward, i drag one arm on the ground. i smile with a few teeth from each of you. but still i’m smiling, still im walking. i’m braiding all of your paths. i am stepping where you stepped. i am jumping from one footprint to another, from his path to hers, from yours to theirs. i create desire lines between them. soon our paths are spokes of a web, and i pull bands of horizontal silk across. and soon it is a living thing itself, the things you lived. it is a country i move through. this is my land— i plant a flag. i make my home. i’m going to live here. right here, in your lives.

AWAKE
ALIVE!
THE AUTOMATON SPRINGS UP FULLY FORMED LIKE A DAUGHTER
LIKE A NIGHT MOVER R R RR
i am learning new tricks.

Text by Mallory Pearson

Amy Bravo (b.1997, New Jersey) is a New York visual artist of Italian-Cuban origin, combines symbolism – stylized palm trees, roosters, horses, slicked-back mustaches –, icons from Latin American popular and religious culture and hyper- personal family stories, to invent her own vision, intimate and fantastic, of an afterlife universe in the rough shape of the island of Cuba, a mixture of the known and the unknown, of beauty and confusion.

Bravo’s artistic vision resonates with the exploration of identity and myth found in the works of renowned Cuban visual artists such as Ana Mendieta and Belkis Ayón. Like these artists, Bravo’s pieces delve into the intersections of personal narrative and cultural heritage, using symbolism and materiality to evoke profound themes of existence and transformation. In the realm of contemporary female artists, Bravo’s evocative storytelling and surreal imagery align with the works of Louise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith. Both artists explore themes of the feminine, the body, and psychological states through their sculptures and drawings, resonating with Bravo’s exploration of liminal identities and existential journeys.

Amy Bravo currently lives and works in Queens, New York. After completing
a bachelor’s degree in Illustration at Pratt Institute, New York, she obtained
a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Hunter College, New York in 2022. Recent exhibitions include group shows with Rachel Uffner Gallery, Workplace, and The FLAG Foundation, as well as a solo show at Nada Miami with Swivel Gallery and a duo and solo show at the gallery in New York, in 2022. In 2023 she had two solo shows with Semiose in Paris, a solo show at Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Amy is a former resident at Fountainhead Residency in Miami and participated to the Malta Biennale in 2024. Amy Bravo is jointly represented by Swivel Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and Semiose Gallery (Paris).