Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo)

Summer 2023 sees the installation of a life-size bronze statue on the forecourt of the gallery by artist Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo).

Kuriki-Olivo’s work draws on the emotional resonance of found objects and shared experiences to explore themes like love, intimacy, mortality, power relations and states of being. Working with autobiographical materials she seeks to destabilise reductive narratives of racial and trans identities.

Based on a 3D scan of the artist’s naked body, the work was first presented in Switzerland at Art Basel Parcours 2022, and is titled: A sculpture for Trans Women A sculpture for the Non-Binary Femmes A sculpture for Two-Spirit People • I am a woman. I don’t care what you think • (Transphobia is everywhere and everyone is susceptible to enacting it at any moment) (Unlearn the transphobia brewing within) I am a Trans Women. I am a Two-Spirit Person. I am a Woman. This is for my sisters and siblings everywhere. History erased many of us but we are still here. I will fight for our rights until the day I die. Exile me and I’ll keep fighting., 2022

The sculpture acts as a protest and a confrontation, proudly making overt something that has long been pushed towards invisibility. Engraved on the work’s brass base is a single word: “woman”.