Artists
United States of America
Lillian Broeksmit
Ciudad arbolada / Árbol cuidado
24.06.24 19.07.24
Lillian Broeksmit is a young American artist and writer living in Washington, DC and New Haven, CT, who is currently pursuing a BA in Art at Yale University. Her practice, rooted in oil painting but expanding to printmaking and immersive installation, both references and challenges the long tradition of the two-dimensional painted image. Through material experimentation, from creating her own pigments to folding, cutting, and suspending her canvases midair, she explores entanglements between human and natural worlds.
Lillian came to ´ace to do a sub30 Production Residency. During her four weeks in the Tower studio, she worked tirelessly to capture the visual (and almost tactile) qualities of the bark of a local tree found all across the City of Buenos Aires: the “plátano” (Platanus x acerifolia). This search materialised in a series of four paintings (a large one depicting the bark and three smaller ones portraying the roots), which she shared with the local public during the ´aceNITE of July 17th, 2024.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Toeing the line of artifice and landscape, my work explores points of communion, conflict, and convergence between the human and the natural. My richly textured paintings are about surfaces, and my surfaces are living: landscapes in themselves, they both obscure and reveal the depths they contain. I’m deeply invested in material experimentation, sensitive observation, and expressive mark-making, painting with the aspiration to see.
BIO
Lillian Broeksmit
2002 | Washington, USA
Lives and works in Washington, DC and New Haven, CT (USA)
EDUCATION
2025 | Bachelor of Arts in Art and Humanities. Yale University, USA
EXHIBITIONS
2024 | ciudad arbolada / árbol ciudadado. Proyecto´ace, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2024 | Picture in Picture (solo show of a collaborative installation). Yale University, USA
2022 | Yale Visual Artists Collective Exhibition. Yale University, USA
RESIDENCIES & AWARDS
2022 | Marchutz School of Art residency. Aix-en-Provence, France
2021 | Cow House Studios residency. Wexford, Ireland
2019 | 2nd place, Congressional Art Competition
2018 | Gold Key, Scholastic National Art Contest
Related Activities
Exhibitions
Tree City / Cared Tree
Lillian Broeksmit
17.07.24 17.07.24
Lillian Broeksmit presented her work Ciudad arbolada / Arbol cuidado at the ´aceNITE on Wednesday, July 17th, 2024. A series of four two-dimensional paintings displayed as an installation in our studio’s Dialogue Space. During the four weeks that Lillian was working as resident, she developed a series of studies on the bark and roots of the Plantain (Platanus x acerifolia), a tree species present throughout the entire City of Buenos Aires.
STATEMENT FOR THE ARTWORK (by the artist)
32,351 plantain trees (Platanus x acerifolia) line the streets of Buenos Aires. They are hybrids, and therefore not native to Argentina or anywhere else. The plantain was imposed by urban planners in Buenos Aires as much as in Paris and London for its resistance to hostile city conditions: they grow fast, are easy to prune, and pull toxins out of the air without getting sick. But they also resist being boxed in on the pavement. Their huge roots break through concrete. They peel bark to grow even faster into the sun despite being trimmed every year. They are survivors. They will outlive all of us. But we hardly notice them when we walk in their shadow.
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Open Studio
Situated Knowledges
Artists in dialogue
17.07.24
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 17th 2024, we opened the studio to present the processes of the artists in residence of the June-July period to the local public. During the event, Lillian Broeksmit (USA), Roxana Leiva (El Salvador-USA) and Maflo Martínez (Argentina, artist-in-residency thanks to a fellowship from Fundación´ace), shared their work in different ways. We also had a conversation with Nélida Wisneke, a reference in the Afro community. Nélida is president of the Afrodescendant Association of Misiones, activist for the Rights of Afro-Argentinean Communities, professor at the National University of Misiones with postgraduate degrees in Human Rights and Applied Linguistics, popular storyteller and writer.
The three artists that participated in this residency slot have aspects in common in their works linked to a profound exploration and reflection on resistance and survival. Each one, from her particular perspective and context, addresses issues related to resilience in the face of adversity, identity and memory. Opening her creative process, Lillian took us to explore the streets of Buenos Aires through her work 32.351 bananas, inspired by these hybrid and non-native trees that stand out for their resistance and capacity to adapt to urban conditions. Roxana transported us to El Salvador, a country marked by a history of struggle and survival. 32 years after the Peace Accords, her work confronts us with a reality in which the long-awaited society of peace has not yet arrived for many. Through iconic images of international solidarity posters produced in Cuba during the war, Leiva rescues past ideals and invites us to a profound reflection on the post-war period, identity and the search for a better future for all Salvadorans. Maflo, for her part, focused her work on identity processes linked to the territory and the Afro communities of Misiones. With a tender and poetic gaze, she addressed in her mural painting the emotional and identity wounds of the collective of which she is a part, creating a bridge between the personal and the political.
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