Jimena Sarno: Las Tres Gracias

November 9, 2024 - February 14, 2025
Nichols Gallery

Las Tres Gracias is a site-specific operatic installation by Jimena Sarno that critically examines the built environment to illuminate asymmetrical relations and violent power structures within our patriarchal, capitalist, and imperialist landscape. The work’s title, which translates to “The Three Graces,” references the neoclassical ideals associated with the daughters of Zeus – mythological figures who embody youth, beauty, mirth, and elegance. Echoing these neoclassical ideals, Sarno’s installation seeks to inspire a reimagining of how grace can manifest in contemporary contexts, fostering resilience and hope. 

The immersive installation transforms the gallery into a dynamic stage, utilizing architectural features such as high niches and an upper mezzanine to redefine the roles of participants within the space. The audience is no longer a passive observer; instead, viewers become unwitting participants, disrupting the performance through their active engagement. By blurring boundaries between viewer and performer, Sarno dismantles traditional power dynamics and invites a reconsideration of how meaning is constructed, emphasizing the potential for joy and self-determination amid hierarchical and systemic oppression.

Las Tres Gracias includes an array of multimedia elements, including sound, video, sculpture, and text, to create a rich tapestry of experiences that provoke reflection and dialogue. This combination immerses participants in a sensory landscape that enhances emotional connection and engagement. Drawing from neoclassical aesthetics, the installation evokes the qualities of beauty and harmony associated with the Graces, sparking dialogue about how these ideals can inform contemporary practices and resonate with present-day experiences. 

Ultimately, Las Tres Gracias serves as a transformative exploration of utopian potential, celebrating collaboration and collective experience as pathways to envisioning a more equitable future. 

Jimena Sarno: Las Tres Gracias is organized by Pitzer College Art Galleries

About the artist

Jimena Sarno is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and living in Los Angeles. With a focus on the sensorial and affective experiences shaped by political subjecthood, she works across a range of media including installation, sound, moving image, text and sculpture. 
 
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at MASS MoCA, REDCAT, Vincent Price Art Museum, Clockshop LA, 18th Street Arts Center, LACE, Visitor Welcome Center, The Museum of Latin American Art, The Mistake Room, Human Resources, PØST, UCI Contemporary Art Center, Grand Central Art Center, Control Room, San Diego Art Institute, The Luminary, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea de Santiago De Compostela, Fellows of Contemporary Art, Calico Gallery and Small Editions among others. Sarno is a recipient of the 2021 California Arts Council Individual Fellowship, the 2015 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, the 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, and the 2019 Rema Hort Mann ACE Grant, and is a 2019-2024 Lucas Artist Fellow in Visual Arts at Montalvo Art Center. 
 
Jimena Sarno is an Assistant Professor of Art at the California State University Dominguez Hills Art Department, where she teaches sculpture, installation, sound, and moving image. She's the founder of office hours, an independent artist-run space within her office at the CSUDH Department of Art and Design. Bringing together works by current and recently graduated CSUDH art students with the work of artists from the international arts community, the space features three exhibitions a year with related programming.
  
She was the organizer of analog dissident, a monthly discussion gathering that features work and work-in-progress by two invited artists. As an informal, open studio visit, analog dissident encouraged intersectional approaches and was aimed at radical/immigrant/queer artists and thinkers to engage critically outside of traditional art institutions, school, gallery openings and most importantly, outside of social media; and resident alien, a free, short-term, project specific, need-based residency, for local and visiting underrepresented artists.

Reception

Saturday, November 9, 2024, 3:30 - 5:30 pm
Nichols Gallery

Visit

While exhibitions are on view, Pitzer College Art Galleries are open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12:00 to 5:00 pm