Clare E. Rojas

Pressetext:

Forget me not is the first solo exhibition in a Dutch museum for the American artist Clare Rojas (b. Columbus, Ohio, 1976).

Rojas, who lives in San Francisco, California, draws on a wide range of media, such as painting, graphics, film, installations and quilting, taking gouache and latex on wood panel as her foundation. In addition to her visual art, Rojas has produced CDs of original songs with banjo and guitar under the name of Peggy Honeywell.

Her work is strongly influenced by American folk art, especially the materials, aesthetics and history of quilts, and she embroiders on traditional European fairy tales and fables. Most of the figures in her paintings are rendered with delicate brushstrokes against a background of stylized landscapes or monochrome plains. In exhibitions, Rojas groups a variety of works into large, kaleidoscopic installations on the walls and in the space, creating manifold connections between them.

With irony and melancholy, Rojas presents a personal vision of relationships between women and men, people and animals, and between all these living creatures and nature. Her protagonists are smiling, self-confident women of many ages and colours, interacting with animals, men or other women in quite outlandish situations. In contrast, she portrays men’s naked bodies, or parts of them, in poses reminiscent of female models in fashion magazines. In a cheerful, free-spirited style, Rojas illustrates sex roles and gender boundaries, without caricaturing them or losing sight of the subjectification of the female body in art and the mass media.

During T-Time at the exhibition Forget me not on Sunday 13 May at 12.30, Clare E. Rojas will appear in the museum as Peggy Honeywell, with Stijn Huijts joining her on bass for this performance. Rojas has also made a children’s book for this exhibition, which will be published in English and Dutch.

Clare E. Rojas
Forget me not