Josefina Posch

Miami Beach, FL
Residency: April-May 2008

Project Description
The working title for this new series is “A refugee crosses her own tracks” and is taken from the Danish-Norwegian author Axel Sandemose novel “A refugee crosses his own tracks”. The work deals with returning to your birthplace after being gone for year at ends and the prejudice of Scandinavian society specifically noted in the “Laws of Jante”.

Further this series is a continuation of my inflated rubber sculptures but now I have returned to figurative based work. The pieces are also much more personal than my other work that tended to concern social issues as well as being socially engaging. Here I am completely introspective, my residency at Sculpture Space allowed me to at an extremely important crossroad in my life fully emerge myself in a view, analysis of my own person. It is about passiveness but also accepting a situation, as it is knowing it will eventually change. It is about transparency, about exposing ones inner most thoughts, urges and emotions.

But much more than this, it is also a celebration of fashion, of bodily adornment from indigoes people and native Americans- inspired by my time at Sculpture Space in Utica Mohawk valley and also directly referring to the Bling I encountered during my years living and experiencing the Miami Beach hip hop culture club scene.

It is about the baroque; the uneven imperfect pearl but still a pearl and valuable. About having it all and at the same time realizing it is far from perfect.

About the Artist
Josefina Posch was born in Göteborg, Sweden. She received her BFA in fine Arts from Academy of Art University in San Francisco, USA 1998 and has since then exhibited internationally: Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA , Miami, The Moore Space Miami, Berkley Art Center, Berkley, CA, San Francisco Art Institute, Art League Houston, Houston, TX, Contemporary Art and Design Museum, San Jose, Costa Rica, National Museum of Fine Art, Havanna, Cuba, Spinello Gallery, Miami, Zendai Museum of Contemporary Arts, Shanghai, China and a stunt at the Copenhagen Mogadishni Gallery to mention a few.

In the summer of 2006 the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai presented her solo exhibition at the DDM Warehouse and this spring she was invited to create a site-specific sculpture in a public plaza part of the 52nd Venice Biennale part of the Migration Addicts event. In the fall of 2007 she participated in the Independent Study Course at Konsthögskolan Valand in Göteborg. Presently participating in the Artmultiple exhibition at the Ke Art Center, Shanghai as well as enjoying her artist in residency at Sculpturespace in Utica, NY. Josefina is the recipient of several grants, her works can be found in collections around the world and she has been featured in various publications.

"There is a lyricism in Josefina Posch work which has resonance. The most beautiful of the images is from the series of China-the shadow puppet theatre which blends the traditional form of cultural story telling. A playful but poignant critique where the message/or the underbelly plays, like the theatre itself, is an underlying sublimation of what or of what not we are informed. In this case, the image informs with out falling into illustration. It has a seductive clout."

—Adam Nankervis Director of MuseumMAN, Berlin

“Slowly you are in the grip of fascination, taken by the aesthetic quality of her all-white works: a desire of perfection or eternity? But beyond sensuality, if you come even closer, you understand that Josefina's point is essentially mental, and that she is appealing to your innermost feeling. It is about flesh, but above all the "pulsions", urges that animate flesh, about the insatiable hunger of being, the insatisfaction or the search for a true communication. The world is beautiful, but is it actually reachable? Liquids, teats, breasts, and some times small animals are obviously treated as symbols, and through the particular cluster that composes her aestheticism, Josefina reveals our intimate urges; our often convulsive will to exist is expressed by these figures ironically and paradoxically attractive and repulsive. "Les yeux des enfants ont des bouches", together with our hunger – like the small animals we still are- is Josefina's true message and one of her fields of research and expression.”

—by Jean-Christophe Paolini, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Reg.des oevres from French by Yann Battenfort, Vice Consul de France, Miami