Dora García: Love with Obstacles

For her first solo exhibition in the United States, Spanish artist Dora García (b. Valladolid, 1965) focuses on her work of the recent years to open new platforms of analysis, reflection and visibility. Through a practice that prioritizes the use of performance in a participative manner, García will transform the Lois Foster Gallery into a living platform to investigate the relationship between audience, architecture and artistic work.     

Love with Obstacles includes both newly commissioned works and existing projects, and also features drawings, films, intervened documents and letters that will be activated through performances and readings to articulate a collective space where dialogue is central. Two newly commissioned works will be premiered at the Rose Art Museum: the film Love with Obstacles (trailer here), focusing on the legacy of the extraordinary author, feminist, October revolutionary, political exile and diplomat, Alexandra Kollontai (St. Petersburg,1872– Moscow, 1952) who advocated for the sexual emancipation of women and radical equality; The Labyrinth of Female Freedom, a performance where female poetics and politics meet; and a new production of García's series Golden Sentences: the sentence "She has many names" opens the exhibition. 

Love with Obstacles also brings together for the first time rarely seen documents from Brandeis University Special Collections that the artist has personally selected and classified, highlighting the institution´s unique legacy of committed work to social justice and in the struggle for human rights.

Love with Obstacles is organized by Ruth Estévez, Senior Curator-at-Large, with research assistance from Rayelle Gardner and Emma Peters.

Dora García: Love with Obstacles is made possible and supported by the Lois Foster Exhibition Fund; the Rose Exhibition Fund; the Henry and Lois Foster Exhibition Fund; Programme for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture (PICE) Acción Cultural Española AC/E; and Office for Contemporary Art Norway: OCA.

Project support is kindly provided by Fond for lyd og bilde, Kulturrådet, Norway; Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds, Belgium: VAF; and Garage Field Research, Moscow, Russia.

Lead support for the publication is provided by the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, KHiO; Premio Arte y Mecenazgo, Fundación “La Caixa”, Barcelona, Spain, and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.