Sean Kelly, New York is delighted to present Bruma, Ana González’s first solo exhibition in New York. The paintings and prints on fabric in Bruma depict the flora and fauna of González’s native Colombia and represent the ecosystems under threat from industries seeking to exploit them for their natural resources. González’s practice opposes the disappearance of these habitats, not only warning us of what will be lost in their destruction but proposing new ways to relate to the natural world. Bruma engages with the vast ecological and human history of these landscapes encouraging the viewer to see our environment in a new way. 

"The heart of the jungle continues beating and keeps us alive. Why do we destroy so much beauty, why slowly and with such an indifferent, apathetic, and systematic way do we continue living without understanding that this heart is almost disappearing from the world?"
- Ana González

These landscapes reappear in the artist’s Devastations series, textiles onto which the artist prints photographs of Colombia’s vulnerable ecosystems. The monumental five-part work, QUIMBAYA offers a panoramic view of the cloud forest, capturing in monochromatic green the verdant abundance of the forest at an immersive scale. Here, as in all her Devastations works, González has partially unraveled the tapestry, disrupting the coherence of the image and physically representing the ravaging of these sites.

As much as González’s practice is concerned with the future, it is equally attentive to history. This is most apparent in González’s decision to title the works in Bruma in the language of the Muisca, the indigenous civilization that inhabited the Colombian Andes from 600–1600 CE. Referencing a pre-colonial past, the titles invoke the spiritual importance that the Muisca placed on the environment, implicitly contrasting them with our contemporary culture of accumulation and consumption. 

González’s works in Bruma are at once a return to the past and a reimagining of the future, reactivating ancient ways of interacting with the environment at a moment when they are urgently needed.

Ana González is a graduate in architecture from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She pursued advanced studies in Art and Gender at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and completed a Master’s in Arts and Media, focusing on Photography, Printing, and Publishing, at both the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in France. Her work is part of significant private and public collections, including the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, the Havremagasinet Länskonsthall Museum in Sweden, the National Museum of Colombia, the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA, the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, NY, and the Museo de la Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. González has engaged extensively with Colombian Indigenous communities, implementing social and humanitarian projects with the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta communities, the Nukak people of Guaviare, and Misak women in Cauca. She is currently collaborating with the Amazon Conservation Team and Cartier to build a traditional healthcare house located in the Colombian Amazon.

For media inquiries, please email Adair Lentini at Adair@skny.com

For all other inquiries, please email Thomas Kelly at Thomas@seankellyla.com