SUMA is collaborative project by American sculptor Mia Pearlman and her husband, Catalan jazz pianist Albert Marquès. SUMA, or “sum” in English, means both the aggregate of two or more quantities, and the substantive meaning of a matter. As a title, it refers to the way every culture and landscape contains the entire complex history of how it came to be: all of the peoples and cultures who lived there, their stories, identities, political systems, art forms, languages, religions, built structures and use of the earth. There are no pure cultures, lands or peoples: we are all the product of countless ingredients, often forgotten by history.
Mia Pearlman created a new site specific installation using cut paper pieces that contain reimagined Islamic, Japanese, and other patterns, as well as hand cut and painted paper, plastic garbage bags, found objects and incandescent lights. This installation will hang from the ceiling beams in the main gallery space and trail out onto the floor. http://miapearlman.com
Albert Marquès created a series of discussions and concerts with musicians from Barcelona and New York City to explore new ideas in improvised music and whether music is influenced by one’s cultural identity. When three jazz drummers, an Afro-Catalan, a Spanish Jew and an Afro-Latino New Yorker get together, do they see percussion differently? Does it affect their playing? What does it mean to play this music today for musicians of different backgrounds? The concerts and discussions will be experiments in what this music can be and what it becomes when inspired by Mia’s site specific installation. twitter.com/marquesjazz?lang=es
About the artists:
