Alicia Bailey – Director, Abecedarian Gallery
Denver – Colorado.
This year’s Gallery Director’s Exhibition Award for the Photo Book Works exhibit is awarded to a Amandine Nabarra-Piomelli. Amandine’s work will be featured in a solo exhibition in the gallery’s Reading Room in 2014.
In addition to working with the book form, Amandine works in photography and installation. She embraces the fact that the artists’ book can bring physical movement and create a tension to otherwise static images. Her work in both installation and books creates an interactive opportunity for her audience to view her photographs.
Her work is primarily narrative; her image based narratives not text dependent. She photographs from a stance of curiosity about individual identities and how we all navigate through our world. Amandine’s skill is in presenting navigations not only in the physical realm, but in the realms of spirit, emotion, psychology and body. These visual journeys combine a poetic and documentary sensibility, each image contributing to a a story that may span across multiple projects or series. Amandine is skillful in drawing connection between people, places and objects in unexpected ways allowing her narratives to be both linear and fragmented.
Amandine treats the structure of her work as integral to the narrative, choosing supports that convert the concept of her projects. She is a gifted photographer and skillful craftswoman.
Amandine lives both in California and Italy. She has attained international recognition, exhibiting in the US, throughout Europe and Australia, with works held in prominent international collections such as Le Centre Pompidou in France, the Art Institute of Chicago and Bibliotheca Librorum Apud Aritificem, in Sydney, Australia.
Last year she was recipient of the Masquelibros prize in Madrid, Spain and Familiar Relics award in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. It is an honor and a pleasure to exhibit Amandine’s work and we are looking forward to seeing what shape her Reading Room installation will take.