Gina Proenza

Published on the occasion of her solo exhibition at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (MCBA, May–September 2024), this monograph on French-Colombian artist Gina Proenza offers the first occasion to encompass her suggestive and sculptural work which draws from specific narratives that blend anthropological research, ancestral tales and legends—European as well as Caribbean—and literary influences. Through playful forms and installations reminiscent of modernist sculpture and theatrical displays, she activates multiple scenarios, combines micro and macro stories, and proposes a space for dreamlike thinking and alternative knowledge.

By mixing different media such as images, texts, and installations, she succeeds in creating a sophisticated and at the same time sensual visual language, where unstable backgrounds, lettering on advertising light boxes, and animal faces with outstretched tongues collide. Her research is also focused on the question and powers of language—scientific and poetical—its transmission and its social profile.

Born in 1994 in Bogota, graduated from ECAL Lausanne in 2017, Gina Proenza lives in Lausanne. Her solo exhibitions include Moving Jealously, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2022), Agarra-diablo, Centre d’Art, Neuchâtel (2020), and Passe Passe, Swiss Cultural Center (2018). She was awarded the Manor Art Prize 2024 Vaud.

Edited and introduced by MCBA curator Nicole Schweizer, the publication includes two essays by Paris-based Finnish art critic Sabrina Tarasoff and Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire Director Salome Hohl, as well as and an interview with Fribourg’s Friart Kunsthalle Director Nicolas Brulhart.