NOTTINGHAM.- This summer, Nottingham Contemporary presents Pia Camil’s first solo exhibition in the UK, including existing work and a series of new commissions.

Pia Camil’s work highlights the shortcomings of consumerism and globalization, exposing the traces it leaves on our our day to day and our built environment. Working with textiles, ceramics and video, Camil reconfigures these urban failures into works that are playful, interactive, yet socially critical.

Conceived as an immersive installation across two of Nottingham Contemporary’s galleries, Camil’s exhibition features a series of textile installations, forming spaces for communal interaction within the gallery.

A large curtain installation created from black and white t-shirts and presented for the first time in Europe, Fade into Black (2018) theatrically divides the exhibition, establishing a soft architecture that connects the body with the built environment, merging personal and public spheres. Repurposing t-shirts that were originally manufactured in Mexico for export and then illicitly sold back to Mexico to be resold in street markets, her work highlights the impact global trade.

Camil is presenting new commissions including a video produced in collaboration with writer Gabriela Jauregui who has written the script, and a usable hammock made out of discarded jeans sawn together. The exhibition also features Camil’s ceramic masks. Inspired by jewellery display busts, the masks engage with Carl Jung’s concept of persona – our public mask or public image.

Playful architecture connects Pia Camil’s art with the work of architects and designers, Trix & Robert Haussmann, whose first UK solo-show is being exhibited at Nottingham Contemporary in the adjacent galleries. Regarded as one of the most important Swiss architects of the twentieth century, Nottingham Contemporary celebrate the Haussmann’s innovation in a retrospective showing a variety of work from their 50-year career, comprising architecture, product design, furniture, and textiles. The exhibition design has been conceived by Caruso St. John, architects of the gallery Nottingham Contemporary’s iconic RIBA award-winning building.

Pia Camil (b. 1980) lives and works in Mexico City. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo-exhibitions including "Fade into Black", SCAD Museum of Art (2018); "Bara, bara, bara", Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2017); “Slats, Skins & Shopfittings”, Blum & Poe, New York (2016); "A Pot for a Latch", New Museum, New York (2016); "Skins", Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2015); "The Little Dog Laughed", Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2014); "Espectacular Telón" at Sultana Gallery, Paris (2013); "Cuadrado Negro", Basque Museum Centre for Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2013) and "El Resplandor" at OMR projects, Mexico City (2009).