Exploring office culture, the artist Amalia Pica (Argentina, 1978) taps into the all too well-known frustration of having to complete paperwork and turns it into a joyful exercise. A bureaucratic obstacle, in the form of an absurd questionnaire, mediates visitors entrance into the gallery; and though required for entry, filling out the form proves a pointless exercise. Cubicle partitions form a maze that traverses the gallery space and leads past stacks of paper in varying sizes. Stacks topped with bronze paperweights forged from found household goods, and evocative of the strange melding of office and home that emerges from the recent large-scale shift into working from home.

Pica defiantly asserts a space for play in the face of the oppressive, complicated, and form-driven reality we seem to have created for ourselves.

Amalia Pica explores systems of communication and civic participation in works that span from sculpture and drawing to performance, video, and installation. Pica was born in Neuquén in 1978 and moved to Buenos Aires to complete her BA (2001) at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes P.P. She was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2004-05) and now lives and works in London. Her work poses questions about contemporary systems of communication, human connection, social participation, and state control. Pica examines the things and circumstances that bring people together by injecting collective celebration into subjects rife with conflict or tediousness. Using simple materials and found objects, she investigates human modes of interaction and the political potential of joy.

Pica has had solo exhibitions at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2020); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville (2019); Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth (2018); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2013); among many others. Her work was also included in the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2016); The Ungovernables: New Museum Triennial, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2015); and ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale (2011). Pica received the Zürich Art Prize (2020); Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2011); and participated in the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation’s Grants and Commissions Program (2011).