FREDRIC SNITZER GALLERY

Vickie Pierre
I Just Wanna Love Who You Really Are

October 15 - November 19, 2022

Fredric Snitzer Gallery is pleased to present Vickie Pierre's second solo exhibition with the gallery, I Just Wanna Love Who You Really Are. Pierre's presentation focuses on mixed media works from her ongoing Poupées in the Bush series. This series references her Haitian heritage, Caribbean culture, and broader cultural mythologies worldwide. 

Pierre continues investigating self-identity, ethnicity, and spirituality in her recent work celebrating the beauty, diversity, and blend of world cultures. Pierre references Folk art, Arts and Crafts, and Pattern and Decoration (Miriam Schapiro et al.) movements as departure points in her process. Her fem characters are voluptuous, zaftig forms that declare their presence while embodying divine otherworldliness. These mythological figures, inspired by Hans Bellmer's provocative and deconstructed dolls, are both reclamation and representation of "she forms/sisters" or the black female body. The series is also meant as a rebuke of the images of indigenous women as seen in National Geographic magazines, etc., as savages or exoticized bodies. 

Pierre creates increasingly complex lattice-like structures that envelope each entity, an evolution from previous iterations. Other recurring adornments include various types of botanical imagery taking the form of crowns, flora clusters surrounding the body/forms, and gleaming golden jewelry elements like rings, broaches, and hairpins recalling tribal jewelry or ritual dress. 

Another development takes form in scale, expanding on her previously intimate-sized paper works to almost 6 ft height canvas-wrapped panels. Interpreted through the lens of the African diaspora, these two significant pieces loosely refer to Greek primordial deities such as Nyx and Gaia, personifications of the night and earth, respectively. Oval frames of collaged paper and glittered surfaces adorn each of the works, with the center of the figures' faces coated in black glittered surfaces, absorbing the viewer's gaze into the darkness of space and time, past and present.

These fierce, powerful creatures, bejeweled and armored, capture fictional narratives of discovery while referencing historical pasts (real and imagined). These deities discover new landscapes to conquer and embrace by roaming the earth and the cosmos; they traverse the seas, speak different languages, and take flight in the sky above.

Vickie Pierre (b. 1970, Brooklyn, NY) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts New York City in 1997. Recent exhibitions of her work include Open Storage at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL; Be My Herald of What’s to Come at Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL; and Noula, an exhibition highlighting Haitian Art at the Buick Building in Miami Design District, Miami, FL. In 2019, She was selected for the Orlando Museum of Art Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. Pierre has participated in solo exhibitions in South Florida at Oolite Arts, Miami Beach, FL (2019); the Little Haiti Cultural Center, Miami, FL (2019); Diana Lowenstein Fine Art, Miami, FL (2009); and Art and Culture Center / Hollywood, Hollywood, FL (2007). The artist’s work has been included in group shows at the Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL (2019); Art and Culture Center / Hollywood, Hollywood, FL (2018); Little Haiti Cultural Center, Miami, FL (2015); ArtCenter South Florida, Miami Beach, FL (2014); Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami, FL (2011); Miami Art Museum, Miami (2010); White Box, New York (2004); National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2004); Kerry Inman Gallery, Texas (2002); as well as exhibitions at the Musée International des Arts Modestes, France (2009); Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico (2009); and Fondation Clément, Le François, MQ (2009). Pierre’s artworks can be found in private collections as well as public institutions such as the Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland; Millennium Partners Collection of Contemporary Art at The Four Seasons, Miami; The Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland; and Miami-Dade Public Library, among others. The artist currently lives and works in Miami, FL.