A Conversation with Magali Lara and Madeline Murphy Turner

ISLAA and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University are pleased to welcome you to A Conversation with Magali Lara and Madeline Murphy Turner, a public program in association with the spring exhibition, Magali Lara: Interior Landscapes, on view at the James B. Duke House. Magali Lara, the exhibiting artist, will be joined by Dr. Madeline Murphy Turner, a recent IFA graduate and currently the Emily Rauh Pulitzer Curatorial Fellow in Contemporary Drawings at the Harvard Art Museums. Together, they will share their valuable insights on Lara’s past and current practice, starting with the paintings on view in the exhibition and expanding into her multifaceted work with artists’ books and other media. 

Curated by Angelina Medina, Giovanni Falcone, Katie Svensson, and Vivian Wu, Magali Lara: Interior Landscapes presents four major paintings by Magali Lara, one of Mexico's most important living artists, highlighting her interior landscapes as acts of reclamation and healing.

Created between 1983 to 1995, the paintings on display in the James B. Duke House reflect the changing ways Lara articulated her own corporeal experiences and subjectivity. Her early domestic spaces grapple with memories of her childhood and the misogyny that surrounded her, while her later abstract works confront her personal experiences with grief and, simultaneously, consider the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Through her work, Lara contests the traditional expectations of women in Mexican society and proposes new avenues for expressing desire and recuperation.

Learn more about the exhibition visiting hours here. We'd like to give special thanks to Professor Edward J. Sullivan, Magali Lara, and Dr. Madeline Murphy Turner for their support for this exhibition and program. ISLAA provided funding and extensive archival and research support. The works on view are on loan from the ISLAA collection.

The program will be presented onsite at the James B. Duke House at 6PM EDT and live streamed on Zoom. RSVP here to attend in person. Register here to join via Zoom. Virtual attendees will receive Zoom details upon registration.