Silvia Levenson

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Silvia Levenson immigrated to Italy in 1981, during the "disappearances" of the Dirty War.  She explores daily interpersonal relationships through installations and objects that state firmly what is usually felt or whispered.

Her work is centralized on this unspeakable space, which is oftentimes so small, located between what we can see and what we feel, and she uses glass to reveal those things that are normally hidden.

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Silvia Levenson immigrated to Italy in 1981, during the "disappearances" of the Dirty War. In her work she mainly uses glass because she considers it an ambiguous element. It is a material that we all know well because it protects and insulates our homes, we use it to preserve our food and drinks, but somehow, we also know that it is fragile, that it can break into thousands of pieces and hurt us. For the artist, it becomes the ideal material to show the ambiguity of human relationships and things that exist but are hidden behind the thousand folds of what we call reality. In 2004, Levenson received the Rakow Commission Award from the Corning Museum of Glass. In 2008 she was a shortlisted nominee for the Bombay Sapphire Prize and in 2016 she received The Glass in Venice Award from Istituto Veneto, Venice, Italy.

Her work has been exhibited around the world and is a part of several public collections including Corning Museum of Glass, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fè, Houston Fine Art Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, Mint Museum, Charlotte, Chrysler Museum of Art, Sunderland Glass Museum, UK, Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Alexander Tutsek-  Stiftung, Munich, MUDAC, Lausanne and Castello Sforzesco Museum, Milan.

Artist’s Statement:

I explore daily interpersonal relationships through installations and objects that state firmly what is usually felt or whispered. My work is centralized on this unspeakable space, which is oftentimes so small, located between what we can see and what we feel. I use glass to reveal those things that are normally hidden. 

I believe that there are no neutral materials; in my work I mainly use glass because I am fascinated by its ambiguity. It is a material that we all know well because it protects and isolates our homes, we use it to preserve our foods and beverages but in some ways we also know that it is fragile, that it can break into thousands of tiny pieces and hurt us. For my work it becomes the ideal material to show the ambiguity of human relationships and of the things that exist but that hide behind the thousand folds of what we call reality.

Furthermore, as Tina Olkdown noted, “women's works, such as cooking and crafts, is often sarcastically described as product of “loving hands at home” and it is considered the antithesis of male-dominated “high art”. I use a very traditional, hand-crafted material to describe not what we put on top of our furniture but what we carefully hide under our rugs.

Silvia Levenson

Levenson explores daily interpersonal relationships through installations and objects that state firmly what is usually felt or whispered.  Her work is centralized on this unspeakable space, which is oftentimes so small, located between what we can see and what we feel.  She uses glass to reveal those things that are normally hidden.

The concept of freedom is very broad and subjective since it has to do with personal perceptions and sensations.  Prison does not refer only to prison in a physical sense.  Our own house can be transformed into a dungeon.  A room, a habit, a stereotype, or an image can be a minimal space in which we feel suffocated.

This society wants us to be a consumer, submissive, happy, and always young.  Naturally, it is a difficult level of demand to maintain.

In the center of this installation there is a teapot with two cups, from which thorns are born that will hypothetically transform the normal action of drinking tea into an ordeal.  Although no injuries are seen, we know that thorns can injure, they represent an invisible danger, as well as domestic tensions.

The pink glass on which the image has been applied ironically reveals the ambiguity of everyday life. It evidences that space located between the actions we automatically perform every day and our aspirations for freedom.

Silvia Levenson