Celia Hempton

Celia Hempton’s work explores concepts of voyeurism in the post-digital age. In her paintings, performances and installations, she investigates the blurred lines of comfort and consent; desire and subjugation, visibility and opacity; seeking to deconstruct the ways in which we engage with each other in a rapidly evolving age of hypermediation. Formally, Hempton’s paintings, which range in scale from intimate to lifesize, acknowledge the tropes of history painting and the often subj gated female body. Hempton’s richly layered paintings directly play with and confront this historical dynamism, producing tactile celebrations of the body, alongside multiple perspectives on how the bodily gaze is constructed. ...

Founded in São Paulo in 2011, Galeria Jaqueline Martins is a space for research, documentation and presentation of contemporary artistic production. It proposes collaborative curatorial strategies that foster dialogue between different generations and different cultural perspectives. One of its guiding principles is the encouragement of research-oriented conceptualist practices characterized by critical, even subversive, approaches. Since its inauguration, the gallery has developed a special program around the investigation of artistic productions carried out during the Brazilian military period – more specifically from the 1970s and 1980s. It promotes a historical revision of processes grounded on strong intellectual resistance, audacity and commitment to art and which transformed the artistic practice in the country, but nonetheless were neglected throughout the last decades. By integrating research and practice that confront the contemporary scene by means of its exhibition program, the gallery encourages the revival of the debate that conceives of artistic actions as contact zones for the exercise of aesthetic, social and political change. In 2020 the gallery opened its second exhibition space, in Brussels, aiming to expand our presence in Europe and to develop a multidisciplinary program that will foster connections between our artists and Brazilian art practices in an international context. ...