Exhibition
Arpais & Sebrack: Love/Gone
14 Sep 2023 – 24 Sep 2023
Regular hours
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 15:00
- Friday
- 10:00 – 15:00
- Monday
- 10:00 – 15:00
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 15:00
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 15:00
Free admission
Address
- 130 Bulleen Road
- Melbourne
Victoria - 3022
- Australia
Donina Asera's debut solo exhibition, featuring artworks from her "Arpais & Sebrack" series
About
Donina Asera’s debut solo exhibition, featuring artworks from her “Arpaïs & Sebrack” series, will be held at Art to Art Gallery in Balwyn North, from 14 to 28 September, with the opening night at 6-9pm on Thursday, 14 September 2023.
Donina’s style could best be described as sophisticated naïve; the figures’ heads are consistently painted in a naïve profile, while bodies are silhouetted and patterned. The backgrounds are flattened into abstraction with graphic representational elements.
Her series “Arpaïs & Sebrack” is loosely based on the failure of her parents’ interracial marriage, and the figures include elements taken from their ethnic backgrounds. The masculine character, Sebrack, wears markings inspired by the traditional men’s Samoan tattoo, called pe’a, while the feminine figure, Arpaïs, features patterns inspired by Delft Blue tiles.
Donina is heavily inspired by mythology, and while the series’ story has its roots in her parents’ relationship, the two characters carry the visual weight of archetypal gods acting without forethought of consequence. A diptych in the series, “Sebrack Leaves the Ancestral Home”, depicts Sebrack leaving to be with Arpaïs while his family mourns his departure. The family figures huddle together in mutual grief and incomprehension.
“I’m excited to be holding my solo exhibition at Art to Art. It was the first bricks and mortar gallery to sell my work back in 2021, so it feels fitting to hold my first exhibition here,” Donina said. “This series feels more personal to me than previous series, and I think people are going to feel both an emotional and a visual connection to the works.”