Exhibition Artwork: “Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding” (great blue heron), 33 x 36 in., collage tapestry of magazine pages, 2023
Seed Scattering: Solo Exhibition featuring Nicole Salimbene
October 16, 2023 - February 4, 2024
The Silva Gallery x Latela Curatorial is pleased to present Seed Scattering, a solo exhibition of new collage tapestries by Nicole Salimbene.
“Birds have been scattering seeds in me for a while now. They mysteriously arrive inside my home, make visitations outside my windows or come so close when I am in nature we could nearly touch. I am not a birder, but I find myself in places witnessing migratory patterns I never imagined. This year winged creatures entered my dreams. In that unconscious landscape, the seeds started to crack open. This work is the sprouting and hopefully seeding of a collective conversation with birds. It is my human response to their birdsong, to their planting.” - Nicole Salimbene
Bridging the seen and unseen, Salimbene engages a surrealistic approach to spiritual ecology. Composed of 11 contemporary collage tapestries - odes to medieval tapestries and bird encounters - this exhibition intersects the realms of relationality, mysticism, and materiality.
Salimbene sculpts her tapestries from receipts and repurposed magazine pages. She makes use of the papers’ previous contents and contexts while formulating her own visual poetics: alternately hiding and revealing content as she rolls and binds each page with wire.
The first of many hidden messages in this body of work stems from the materiality itself as the pages used in the tapestries are from Artforum, the international contemporary art magazine. Within this context, Salimbene reflects on the tension of inclusion and exclusion embodied in the magazine and artworld. Threaded together, pages containing art criticism and exhibition advertisements transform the power dynamics of the traditionally male-dominated art market into the traditionally feminine craft of tapestries.
Paradoxically, the pages also contain the work of artists Salimbene loves and admires. Their work collaged into the tapestries serve as seeds – germinating the exchange of ideas and inspiration, an example of the interdependence among artists. The juxtaposition of image and text, at times both intentional and random, speaks to the historical context of tapestries as a textile art used for communication and storytelling.
The woven poetics of dreams, myths, memory, nature, and empathy in this work – and the source materials of Salimbene’s practice – come together to both commune and communicate curiosity and reflection on how as living beings – human and more-than-human – we are constantly seeding each other in our exchanges. Our interdependence with the more-than-human world is a reciprocal call and response – a birdsong of our collective consciousness calling us to cultivate the sacred and grow in stewardship with the Earth.
Seed Scattering
by Nicole Salimbene is on display at
The Silva Gallery x Latela Curatorial
1630 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009
Mon-Sat 10am-5pm and Sun noon-5pm
Public Reception:
Thursday, November 30, 6–8pm (RSVP)
*click RSVP button below
All artwork displayed is available for purchase.
*click catalog button below
Inquiries for art purchases should be directed to
Latela Curatorial: studio@lateladc.com.
by Nicole Salimbene is on display at
The Silva Gallery x Latela Curatorial
1630 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009
Mon-Sat 10am-5pm and Sun noon-5pm
Public Reception:
Thursday, November 30, 6–8pm (RSVP)
*click RSVP button below
All artwork displayed is available for purchase.
*click catalog button below
Inquiries for art purchases should be directed to
Latela Curatorial: studio@lateladc.com.
