Cuidado Personal (Personal Care)

OMA galería presents Cuidado Personal, the new exhibition by the artist Dominique Bradbury, this time in an unprecedented collaboration with the architect Agustina Jarpa. Continuing with the themes presented by Bradbury in her recent exhibition Instrucciones (January 2024, TIM Arte Contemporaneo), the concept of beauty, consumer habits and rituals of care for our physical well-being are the protagonists that articulate this interdisciplinary dialogue. Through paintings, digital prints and objects, this exhibition seeks to translate experiences of our contemporary society under a fragmentary and metonymic vision. After several months of developing ideas together, Bradbury and Jarpa have this first opportunity to show the results of their collaborative project, where Dominique's pictorial investigations open up to new contexts, meanings and materials against Jarpa's sculptural interpretations. The proposal of both creators takes on special relevance within the new location of OMA Galería in MUT (Mercado Urbano Tobalaba), a group of new buildings where commercial premises, sustainable design, offices and high-rise green areas, among others, coexist. In the midst of this hybrid environment, Cuidado Personal proposes that artworks and context combine organically to draw out the conceptual scope of the elements on display, generating a new web of signifiers both of the place that contains them and of the works themselves. In this way, the show plays with the limits between an art gallery and a shop, as well as with the definition of the "useful", the "decorative" and the "artistic". As a newly inaugurated collaborative duo, Bradbury and Jarpa (ADA) are interested in the idea of self-care, especially in these digital and post-pandemic times. While care is understood to be freely interpreted and adaptable to personal needs, the emphasis here is on the everyday self-care that we exercise through such simple and ancient routines as washing our hands or face, while still remaining aware of the fine line that separates a healthy habit from a vicious one, and the behavioural excesses encouraged by industries such as skincare that lead to the perception of certain products as essential. With a certain irony, in Cuidado Personal both creators unite under the objective of translating and resignifying simple, everyday elements that lie on our bedside tables, washbasins and vanity cases; accessories and procedures that we cannot do without; the faces of celebrities that reconfigure our parameters of beauty. In this way, this exhibition promotes new readings of seemingly mundane elements that surround us withholding ideals, stories, desires, identities and affections. About the exhibitors: In late 2023, Dominique Bradbury and Agustina Jarpa decide to start collaborating on interdisciplinary projects, forming ADA, an art and architecture agency, focused on connecting with the material and conceptual interests associated with contemporary care. Dominique Bradbury (1988). Visual Artist with a degree in Art from the Catholic University of Chile (2012). MA in Visual Arts from Slade School of Fine Arts, UCL (2019). She has postgraduate studies from the University of Fine Arts Münster, Germany. Bradbury has dedicated herself to exploring the complexities of contemporary consumption present in the broader popular culture and fashion, beauty and self-care industries, seeking to open up questions regarding the beautiful, the feminine, the politics of gender and appearance in our visual culture. Agustina Jarpa (1992). Architect with a degree from the University of Chile. She has established links with residential, furniture, curatorial and teaching projects, and has participated in projects related to the visual arts, seeking to deepen the intersection of architecture and art. She has collaborated in projects with interdisciplinary and innovative approaches, according to the needs of contemporary society and the resources and technologies of our times.