Ad Minoliti
Abstracción geométrico-galáctica
In Ad Minoliti’s expansive three-panel painting Abstracción geométrico-galáctica the artist’s hallmark geometric abstractions serve as playful substitutes for more straightforward depictions of the world. A departure from previous bodies of work that explore the modern interiors of 1960’s-era American homes, porn sets, and jungles, Abstracción geométrico-galáctica launches the artist’s geometric characters into space for the first time. The work draws directly from Minoliti’s experience with The Feminist School of Painting. In this program hosted by the artist at KADIST San Francisco, ideas regarding the genres of painting, developed with collaborators and students during the workshops, are embodied in the triptych’s vivid cosmic scene.
The background image features illustrated propositions for spatial colonies that NASA commissioned from artists during the 1970s, thus exporting the colonial dreams and strategies of the White American Way of Life beyond the terrestrial sphere. In Minoliti’s version, this vision is contaminated by techno-feminist figures occupying a spaceship setting whose design is pulled directly from the animated television show Steven’s Universe (an Emmy award winning program that premiered on Cartoon Network in 2013—the network’s first show created solely by a woman, and well-known for featuring LGBTQ themes and science fantasy worldbuilding). After exploring the non-human, post-gender alternative universe, Minoliti is now addressing the future of genres.
Ad Minoliti is a painter who combines the pictorial language of geometric abstraction with the perspective of queer theory. Engaging in a diversity of formats and media from easel painting to installation, she assumes painting not as a mere material practice, but rather as a visual set of ideas to approach normative categories of sexuality and biology. Throughout her work, geometrical forms and surreal landscapes serve to imagine a post-humanist setting in which feminist and gender theories can be applied to an open interpretation of painting, design, and art history.
Minoliti’s socially engaged project The Feminist School of Painting, a series of programs hosted during her 2018 residency at KADIST San Francisco, began to shift her concerns from canvas to classroom, initiating workshops and symposiums that interrogated historical narratives (in art and more generally) through a queer feminist lense.