Ghi Fremaux-Valdez and partner Lando Fremaux-Valdez presented “body art” exhibition in Fort Worth.
Ghi Fremaux-Valdez, associate professor of painting at School of Art, and her art and life partner Lando Fremaux-Valdez were in attendance at the reception for the “solo exhibition” of their collaborative art project titled Corpus Secretum (body secret). Exhibited at Arts Fort Worth the exhibition included eleven large scale works (as tall as 11 feet and as wide as 8 feet) executed in chalk pastel and gouache on paper. Noting that this was their “first solo exhibition," Ghi clarified that, “We characterize the exhibition as a “solo exhibition” to convey the total integration of two voices into each work, rather that the typically understood two-person exhibition in which two artists present their respective works together.”
Contemplating Renaissance paintings, medical illustrations, religious texts, and the like, Ghi and Lando work at the intersections of artistic practice and health. Their work strives to register embodied experience. Says Ghi, “Our work aims to trouble the boundaries between the clinical and considerations of the spiritual, intimacy, or desire.” During an in-depth interview between Ghi and Lando and Michael Borshuk of the TTU Humanities Center Humanities Now podcast in March, Ghi and Lando went into greater detail about their practice.
The exhibition at Arts Fort Worth is part of their Solo & Curatorial Proposals Program to which Ghi and Lando applied in 2022. The program focuses on presenting exhibitions of innovative are art a professional level by artists from Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas and Louisiana. The Arts Fort Worth building is a modern Herbayer building with a later O'Neil Ford addition. It originally opened in 1954 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. After the Modern moved into its newer quarters in 2002, the Fort Worth Community Arts Center opened. Ghi received support for travel, lodging, etc. from the Faculty Research and Creative Activity Awards (RCAA)-Red through the J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts.
Corpus Secretum continued through August 19th. Read Sophia Del Rio's review of the exhibition on Glasstire.com.