Contemporary

Venn Diagrams (Under the Spotlight)

Amalia Pica makes sculptures, installations, performances, and drawings that address a correspondingly broad array of themes. She favors found objects and commonplace materials to create her pieces, whose concerns range from language and communication, to history and politics, or to the ways in which our childhood experiences shape our adult imaginations.

As a primary school student in Argentina, Pica was taught set theory as expressed in Venn diagrams, though, as she notes, only a few years before she would not have been. She recalls that the ban of set theory by Argentina’s dictatorship in the 1970s occurred just as group assembly was also deemed subversive. Pica speculates that set theory was prohibited because it was seen as the mathematical expression of a gathering. With this work, she literally shines a light on the absurdity of the injunction. A caption on the wall provides historical context for the work. 

(Source: Catalogue for the exhibition Portadores de sentido)
  • Artist: Amalia Pica
  • Title: Venn Diagrams (Under the Spotlight)
  • Date: 2011
  • Materials: Two-channel spotlight and motion detector
  • Dimensions: Variable installation dimensions
  • Credit: The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Stuart Comer
  • Artist: Amalia Pica
  • Title: Venn Diagrams (Under the Spotlight)
  • Date: 2011
  • Materials: Two-channel spotlight and motion detector
  • Dimensions: Variable installation dimensions
  • Credit: The Museum of Modern Art. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Stuart Comer
Amalia Pica makes sculptures, installations, performances, and drawings that address a correspondingly broad array of themes. She favors found objects and commonplace materials to create her pieces, whose concerns range from language and communication, to history and politics, or to the ways in which our childhood experiences shape our adult imaginations.

As a primary school student in Argentina, Pica was taught set theory as expressed in Venn diagrams, though, as she notes, only a few years before she would not have been. She recalls that the ban of set theory by Argentina’s dictatorship in the 1970s occurred just as group assembly was also deemed subversive. Pica speculates that set theory was prohibited because it was seen as the mathematical expression of a gathering. With this work, she literally shines a light on the absurdity of the injunction. A caption on the wall provides historical context for the work. 

(Source: Catalogue for the exhibition Portadores de sentido)