LaMaMa presents Jessica Mitrani's Decolonial Landscape

Jessica Mitrani prints, installed at LaMaMa, 'I Dreamt the Landscape was Looking at me', 'Save Our Souls', 'Blind Spot Mansion'

'I Dreamt the Landscape was Looking at me', showing an illustration of an all-seeing eye framed by palm tree motifs and backed by 16th century alchemic text

'Save Our Souls', showing a pictorial illustration of symmetrical palm trees, a staircase, and all-seeing watching eye, with a diamond shaped red orb in the center

'Blind Spot Mansion', showing a flower with petals opening to an eyeball where a mansion house protrudes from its pupil, framed by indigenous patterns and alchemic text

Installation view of 'Cultivating Regards' and 'May We Walk Softly' by Jessica Mitrani, at LaMaMa

'Cultivating Regards', showing a two-headed figure walking on top of a patterned sea with all-seeing eyeballs, framed by indigenous patterns

'May We Walk Softly', showing an illustrated cosmic landscape framed in an ornate hand-drawn frame, accompanied by alchemic text, ores, and precious stones

Jessica Mitrani at the Brooklyn Editions studio, standing over prints for the exhibition

Sorting prints, 'Save Our Souls', and 'I Dreamt the Landscape was Looking at Me', on a table at the Brooklyn Editions studio

Jessica Mitrani signing her prints on a table at the Brooklyn Editions studio

Jessica Mitrani talking about her prints at the Brooklyn Editions studio

Close-up detail of handling the print 'Blind Spot Mansion' at the Brooklyn Editions studio

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May

2022

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June

2022

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La MaMa Galleria

‍47 Great Jones St

New York, NY 10012

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We worked with New York-based, Colombian-born artist Jessica Mitrani on a unique print suite that was exhibited as part of her solo show, I Dreamt the Landscape was Looking at me at LaMaMa Galleria. Mitrani, who works through and between various kinds of visual material, presented an enrapturing body of work from print, to video, to mural.

Jessica Mitrani is an artist whose creative practice and ideology is always entrenched in feminist decolonial thought. Her exhibition and video project I Dreamt the Landscape was Looking at me was one of the winning proposals of the Museum of Modern Art Bogota (MAMBO)'s open call and was on view at the museum in 2021. Both the work among new pieces returned to the public eye at LaMama Galleria in New York to present a narrative of human alienation from its environment, told through Mitrani's lens of anti-colonialism.

We worked on a suite of 5 unique prints with Jessica at our studio, printed on Tesuki-Washi Echizen, one of our favourite rice papers for inkjet archival printing. Since her images were prepared digitally, with specific natural and organic colors, we enhanced and boosted certain tones of blues and greens to ensure they translated well to the natural texture and color of the handmade washi.

These 5 prints all represent imagery and themes that are apparent all throughout the exhibition — primarily the struggle between colonial civilization and nature, the transformation of Indigenous land into marked territory, and the forced mastery of space by Western enlightenment thought. Mitrani utilizes iconographic Indigenous patterns and symbols, illustrations of plant life, and 16th century alchemical texts as a combative form of resistance against all that she opposes. Also in her compositions is a repetitive all-seeing watching eye that returns the gaze of encroachment. The prints as a complete set all work in tandem to visualize these battles in styles that are reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts or traditional scrolls.

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Exhibition photos and work are a courtesy of the artist, Jessica Mitrani. Studio shots were photographed by Brooklyn Editions Inc.