Pia Camil: "Friendly Fires" Book Launch Party

Pia Camil: Friendly Fires
Book Launch Party

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Los Angeles, join us for a book launch celebrating the first monograph dedicated to the practice of Mexico City-based artist Pia Camil. combines exhibition documentation with material from the artist’s personal archive to explore thirty-two projects from 2006 to now.

As the title suggests, Camil’s work is often done in a climate where kinship and the affective are proposed as a radical way of working in contrast to the highly individualized world. The three illustrated essays delve into this and the artist's oeuvre. Justine Ludwig explores the capitalist critique in the artists’ overall practice; Karen Cordero looks through cloth as a surrogate body to press on the material significance of Camil’s pieces; Cecilia Fajardo-Hill considers the work from a feminist and Latin American perspective, and Elise Lammer and Camil discuss the importance of participatory and collective practices in a multispecies world. The book was designed in collaboration between the artist and Mexican designer Sofia Broid and includes an addendum presented as a poetic visual essay by Gabriela Jauregui. With English and Spanish texts, this book makes Camil’s important contribution to feminist and Latin American practices in the context of late capitalism accessible to a wider audience.

This event is free and open to all. RSVP is encouraged.

Please note this event will be filmed; by attending, participants and visitors consent to video and audio recording and its publication and reproduction.

Limited parking available. Rideshare highly encouraged.

About Pia Camil

Pia Camil draws inspiration from the urban landscapes of Latin America, engaging with the history of modernism to create paintings, sculptures, performances, and installations. Often using laborious fabrication processes in collaboration with local manufacturers, the artist decelerates the frenetic pace of mass commodification with handcrafted production, as evinced in the intimate quality of her works.

Camil lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo museum exhibitions including Three Works, MOCA Tucson, Tucson, AZ (2021); Velo Revelo, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2020); Fade into Black, Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2019); Bara, Bara, Bara, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland (2019); Telón de boca, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Split Wall, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2018); Fade into Black, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2018); Bara, Bara, Bara, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2017); A Pot for a Latch, New Museum, New York (2016); Skins, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2015); and Cuadrado Negro, Basque Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, Spain (2013).

Host or Publisher Blum & Poe