Carol Rama was a female artist of the modernist era who created art outside accepted canons. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions alongside such names as Louise Bourgeois, and in 2003 Rama received the Lifetime Achievement award at Venice Biennale. Until recently, Rama has remained relatively unknown to the wider public, but in her day she was quite famous in avantgarde art circles and society. The contemporary perspective enables us to see Rama’s sensitive and psychologically charged work at its own merits as pioneering and independently avantgarde art.

EMMA is one of the three producers of the exhibition, which will come to Espoo in autumn 2015. Produced collaboratively by three museums (EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, MACBA – Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, and Musée de l’Art moderne de la ville de Paris), the show highlights the work of this pioneer of feminist avantgarde art stretching across seven decades. The retrospective comprises some 200 works from 1936–2005. This is the first time work by Rama is exhibited in Europe as extensively as this. Her work was seen in Finland at an exhibition of Italian contemporary art in Kunsthalle Helsinki in 1951.

From the 1930s onwards, Carol Rama explored and interrogated sexuality, the female body and its representations in her art, which has had a great influence on major contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Sue Williams, Ida Applebroog, Kiki Smith and Elly Strik. The media used by Rama range from traditional watercolours and oil to mixed media, with works incorporating glass eyes, fingernails, cannulae, syringes and rubber tyres. Her themes cover the many attributes of femininity, and occasionally the works involve straightforward expressions of sexuality.

The exhibition touring to MACBA and EMMA is curated by Teresa Grandas (MACBA) and Paul B. Preciado. An extensive publication about the exhibition was released at the beginning of 2015.

Passion According to Carol Rama
MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona 31 October 2014 – 22 February 2015
MAMVP – Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris 3 April – 12 July 2015
EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art 14 October 2015 – 10 January 2016

From EMMA the exhibition tours to the Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA in Dublin and to GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Carol Rama’s home town.

Exhibition conceived by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAMVP), organised by MACBA and co-produced with PARIS MUSÉES / MAMVP, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (IMMA) and GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino.