Going Inside or How to Get Over Yourself

When contemplating a canvas, we are absorbed by colour, an alternative reality opening up to us. In Cecilia Granara’s paintings, the exercise of looking is all the more profound as it meets a moment of meditation. The names of the different series of paintings are indicators— Women doing Yoga, Meditation Series, Invisible Forces— that we are dealing here with questions of reflection and introspective research. One meditates to arrive at a certain peacefulness, or to feel in communion with divine forces, the cosmos, or even—in fact most of all— to change one’s point of view. The characters she represents are somehow immersed in themselves, inviting us to join them. The thinker is a transmitter.

Cecilia Granara was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1991. She completed her BA at Central St Martin’s in Fine Art in 2013 and is currently working and studying painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. She focuses on painting and draws inspiration from feminist art history and a variety of disciplines including sculpture, performance and fashion. Group shows include Blue But Not Blue at Café Héloïse, Paris, with Isabella Hin; Fragile, Galerie Mansart, curated by Jean-Luc Blanc & Azad Asifovich; Full House, Le Cabinet Dentaire, Paris; and Zone D' Utopies Temporaires, L’amour, Paris, curated by Alice Bonnot. She has performed with her collaborative partner Beatrice Bonafini at Camden Arts Centre, Guest Projects Space, Tate Modern and the Mile end Art Pavilion, London.