Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present two concurrent solo exhibitions featuring new works by Cecilia Paredes: Walking in My Galaxy Blue at our New York City gallery and The Weaving of Dust at our San Antonio gallery. This will be Paredes’ fourth exhibition with the gallery. Walking In My Galaxy Blue opens at our New York City gallery on Thursday, September 21st, with an opening reception from 6:00 - 8:00 PM. The Weaving of Dust opens at our San Antonio gallery on Thursday, September 28th, with an opening reception from 6:00 - 8:00 PM. A fully illustrated catalogue will be published accompanied by an essay by art historian Emily Alesandrini.

Born in Lima, Peru, and based in Philadelphia since the early 2000s, Cecilia Paredes uses her camouflaged body as an expressive medium to interpret themes influenced by nature, femininity and transformation. As a result, she is capable of acquiring multiple identities through a blend of sculptural recreations and photography. Paredes creates distinctive representations through “photo performances”, as the artist refers to them, often centering around the concept of migration, stemming from her move from Costa Rica to the United States in 2004.

“Multi-disciplinary artist Cecilia Paredes presents a new collection of work exploring embodied relationships to the cosmos, celestial mythologies, as well as earthly vegetation. Her textile, performance, and painting-based practice refuses boundaries and reimagines correlations between planet, plant, and body” - art historian Emily Alesandrini. Walking In My Galaxy Blue is a reference to Paredes’ piece Galaxy Blue: a work that evokes the vision of the personal landscape within her mind. Whether it be a dream or a parallel world that she possesses, everything within the natural world, from the stars and sun, to the never ending cosmos, is blue in her mind. As Paredes says, “If I have a dream or a parallel world that is blue, it is my own galaxy.” Her own blue world is a concept that is central to the narrative of these exhibitions, and the celebration of this world is the overall tone Paredes intended to capture.

Within the exhibition, Paredes explores concepts of identity and the natural world channeled through her strong interest in ecology. Through her photo performances, Paredes’ physical form undergoes a transformation and she becomes one with nature and the cosmos. She is engrossed in these natural elements. As Paredes touches on concepts of the natural world, she poses the idea that we are guests of mother nature.