Ruby Rumié & Justine Graham: Common Place

Ruby Rumié exhibits two shows in NYC: Common Place at Nohra Haime Gallery, and Divine Breath NYC at La Mama Galleria.

The first show, Common Place at Nohra Haime Gallery, is a joint project by Colombian artist Ruby Rumié and French-American photographer Justine Graham.

This project explores the relationship between Latin American housekeepers and their employers, through issues of gender, power, class, and race. Made up of photographs, videos, and interviews with one hundred women between the ages of nineteen and ninety-five, this multidisciplinary project combines art and sociology, seeking to dismantle the hierarchical relationship between these women.

The artists examine the inherited colonial prejudices surrounding domestic work and propose new angles for comprehension and social communication. The visual treatment of the women is the same across the board—they are even dressed in the same clothes as an exercise in equality and for the purpose of undermining bigotry. These actions transcend the artistic plane and the piece becomes a symbolic act with real life repercussions.

Common Place has been exhibited at the Museo de Artes Visuales MAVI, Santiago, Chile; The Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C.; The Cartagena Biennial, Colombia; and Fair., Miami, FL.

Ruby Rumié develops projects with political content related to psychology and injustice, referencing particular collectives in questions of territorial inheritance and the role of the socially committed artist. Her works do not merely present critical arguments, but also propose solutions and pave a road of hope for issues that concern her.

Justine Graham is a French-American visual artist, photographer and editor working in Chile since 2005. Her artistic work explores photography as a tool for conceptual research through collecting, classifying, and creating community as forms of re-thinking identity.

Nohra Haime Gallery
500 W 21 St, NYC
T 212 888 3550 / gallery [​at​] nohrahaimegallery.com

In the second show, Divine Breath NYC at La Mama Galleria, Rumié aims to help women survivors of domestic violence overcome their pain and move on with their lives by conducting 100 individual healing ceremonies. The exhibition explores their pain, identifies the damage this violence does to them, and recognizes the need for them to fully mourn in order to revive their self-esteem.

Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Divine Breath committee and the support of the Safe Horizon Foundation, this exhibition recreates artist Ruby Rumie ́s project of one hundred survivors of domestic violence in Cartagena, Colombia with one hundred survivors in New York City.

The participants joined Ms. Rumié in intimate ceremonies of meditation and breathing exercises, after which, each woman exhaled her pain into a ceramic vessel as a symbol of recognizing, releasing, and transforming her silent pain into divine breath. The goal was to collectively create a positive and transformative experience for the women. To represent the diversity of New York City, the ceremonial vessels were created by seven local ceramic artists: Rana Amirtahmasebi, Will Coggin, Paula Greif, Eleni Kontos, Ben Peterson, Biata Roytburd and Mia Schachter.

Through this exhibition, Ruby Rumié joins the voices of the Colombian survivors with those of the New York survivors, showing us that domestic violence is a universal problem that transcends age, race, class, and culture. The Divine Breath project does not merely represent this hidden and escalating social issue, but instead, infuses it with hope and dignity for the survivors and those who experience the exhibition.  

The exhibition will consist of the following phases: (1) The seven NYC prototype vessels. (2) Photographs of the 100 New York women and their vessels, along with the 100 Cartagena women and their vessels. (3) The 100 NYC vessels. (4) Photographs of the 100 New York vessels along with the corresponding Cartagena vessels. (5) Projected texts with the participant’s comments.

La Mama Galleria
47 Great Jones St, NYC
T 917 862 8789 / divinebreathnyc [​at​] gmail.com