Gallery

El deseo de no querer
Nicole Mazza
Curated by Irene Gelfman

Opening: Friday, April 28, 2023. 7 PM
Exhibition held in collaboration with Quimera Galería.
At Quimera Galería, Güemes 4474, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nicole Mazza always works with images that speak to her—either because she has lived them or because they are part of her history and intimacy. Especially those related to what it means to be a woman in this world. The artist has a methodical way of working. She takes a theme and turns it into an object of investigation. She usually works in series. In the case of El deseo de no querer, Mazza takes the myth of Leda and the Swan, resulting in twenty-five embroideries and nine ceramic pieces.

There’s a subtle reading cue for the viewer: the body of work is closely tied to Nicole’s personal relationship with two key women in her life. Her grandmother was a practicing Catholic and a fervent admirer of religious imagery. Her mother, by contrast, is secular and free-spirited. This led Nicole, from an early age, to experience an internal conflict—trying to please two opposing views—resulting in enigmatic, contradictory pieces with an intimate and somewhat dark narrative.

Her iconography is a deeply personal signature, shaped by the coexistence of various worlds and a unique visual culture where religious imagery, guilt, sexuality, idols, Renaissance paintings, myths, and symbols live side by side—along with her relationship to her own body and her connection to others.
El deseo de no querer invites the viewer to enter a space built with arches reminiscent of religious architecture and to contemplate the images in order to grasp the new narrative the artist has constructed.

Irene Gelfman

About Nicole Mazza
Nicole Mazza was born in Gainesville, Florida in 1989. She graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and lived and worked in New York City until 2014, when she moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Most recently, she presented her latest body of work in a solo exhibition titled “Blandir el Quiebre” at Crudo Contemporáneo in Rosario, Argentina. She has also exhibited at several art fairs such as ArteBA (Buenos Aires), Frieze (London), and Pinta (Miami). Her work has been selected for various art awards including El Fugaz (2019 and 2022), Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2021), and Salón Nacional de Artes Textiles (2022). She is currently represented by Crudo Arte Contemporáneo in Rosario, Argentina.

About Irene Gelfman
She holds a Bachelor's and Professorship degree in Arts Education (FFyL - UBA) and completed the Artists Program #11 at UTDT (Criticism and Curating track). Winner of the First Prize for Emerging Curators awarded by La Colección AMALITA and the Argentine Association of Art Critics. She is the general curator and project manager of Pinta Art, and professor of Curating I at ESEADE. She advises private collections and writes for various media outlets, publications, and catalogues (including Otra Parte, Colección de Artistas, among others).

With over ten years of experience in various sectors of cultural management—both public (national and local) and private (foundations and NGOs)—she has coordinated and produced content, developed programming for different festivals, fairs, and international events where Argentina was the guest country in fields such as theater, visual arts, and music. She has produced large-scale events, developed and coordinated a grant program to promote Argentine artists abroad (APEX – Ministry of Culture, Argentina), and served as strategic advisor for the Barrios Creativos program.