Christina Lucia Giuffrida (b. 1990, Sydney, AUS) is an Queer Australian artist, who currently lives in Brooklyn (NYC) with her wife Sophia and their dog Vito.
The epic landscapes of Giuffrida’s Australian home have become the back drop for her community of irreverent Lavender Women. What results is a kind of auto-fiction that interlaces her geographical longing with wishful queer fantasies, climate dread and the ever changing vistas of the future. The paintings operate much like film still, cinematically depicting her characters living in a chromatic world of beauty and effervescent adventure. Using primarily gouache paint, the intense and brilliant chroma of the paintings are tempered by a gritty and tactile surface that reminds us of paintings potential for material object-hood. Giuffrida’s work also refers to the Western canon of female nudes, for her these kinds of images are “… for the most part, a tradition of perfectly ineffectual women with no clothes - which at a certain point becomes absurd - their humorous.”. Her own nude women are a articulated response to this history, using a collision of influences, including the work of artists such as Gladys Nilsson, R.Crumb, Romantic painting - specifically the Pre-Raphaelites and the Florida Highwaymen. From this conglomerate emerges Giuffrida’s idiosyncratic relationship with line and shape, blending potent and layered environments with decisively graphic figures that unseat the viewers sense of reality, allowing for an orchestrated vivid fantasia.
Giuffrida has most recently exhibited with Rhodes Contemporary (UK), SoHo Revue (UK), Taymour Grahne (UK), Eve Leibe Gallery (UK), Steven Zevitas Gallery (USA) and Collar Works (USA). Her works having been featured in TOH Magazine, Front Runner Magazine, Create Magazine, Peripheries and Journal of the Harvard Divinity School. Christina earned her Bachelor of Visual Art from the Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She is a recipient of the Art Start Grant from the Australia Council and Emerging Artist Grant from the Ian Potter Foundation and has participated in residencies in Italy, USA and the Dominican Republic. Christina's works are part of the MACAAL Collection (Marrakesh, Morocco), the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection (NYC) and the X Museum Collection (Beijing, China).
CV
Education and Training
2016-2018 - Masters of Fine Arts (Sculpture), The New York Academy of Art
2011- 2014 – Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours (Class I ), Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney
Solo Exhibitions & Dual Exhibitions
2023 - Dark Pastoral , Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK
2021 - Diesel & Dust, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK (Online)
Group Exhibitions
2024 - Uplands, Rhodes Contemporary, London, UK
2024 - Reverence , Purslane, London, UK (Online)
2024 - Inside/Out, Soho Revue, London, UK
2022 - Touch Wood , Prior Art Space/ Eve Leibe Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2022 - Intimacy, Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK
2021 - Shift, Living Gallery, New York, USA
2021 - Animal Instinct, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, USA
2021 - Collective Health, Collar Work, New York, USA
2020 - Young Blood, Space Gallery St Barth, New York, USA
2019 - Origins, The Art Vacancy, New York, USA
2019 - Phantasmagoria, The New York Academy of Art, New York, USA
2018 - Take Home A Nude, Sotheby's Auction House, New York, USA
2018 - Emerging, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, USA
2018 - Wavy Baby, New Liberty Distillery, Philadelphia, USA
2018 - The Unveiling, ABC Stone, New York, USA
2016 - Hidden Gesture, Articulate Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2015 - Annual Winter Group Show, M Contemporary, Sydney, Australia
2015 – Mythologies of My Land, M Contemporary, Sydney, Australia
2014 – Dani, Home@735 Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2013 – Queering The Body, Verge Gallery, Sydney, Australia
2011 – Performance Evening (Sydney Underground Festival Special Event), Paper Planes Gallery, Sydney, Australia
Publications
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TOH Magazine - 2022, https://toh-magazine.com/2022/08/christina-lucia-giuffrida-e-le-sue-fantasie-romantiche-nella-natura/
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Peripheries – Published by Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions 2020 - (Fall Edition)
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Create Magazine – 2020, Issue 23, pp. 56 - 57
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FrontRunner Magazine , 2020 https://frontrunnermagazine.com/posts/profile-of-the-week-christina-giuffrida/
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New American Paintings (Instagram – Editors Pick of The Day) - 2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/CAehMdcJzKJ/
Grants
2018 - Pat & Scott Moger Alumni Grant
2018 - Tuscany Study Carrara Scholarship
2017 - Sculpture Merit Scholarship, New York Academy of Art
2016 - Sculpture Merit Scholarship, New York Academy of Art
2015 - Ian Potter Cultural Trust
2015 - ArtStart Grant, Australia Council for the Arts
Residencies
2018 - Altos De Chevon Residency, La Romana, Dominican Republic
2017 - ABC Stone Carrara Marble Residency, Carrara, Italy
2015-2016 – Sculpture Space NYC, New York City, USA
Selected Performances
2010 – 2012 - Queer Central, The Sly Fox, Sydney, Australia
2010 – 2011 – The Pussycat Club, The Oxford, Sydney, Australia
2011 – Enchanted Lips: Mardi Gras, The Vanguard, Sydney, Australia
2011 – The Sydney Underground Film Festival, The Factory Theatre, Sydney, Australia
2012 – The Sequinned Menace, The Imperial, Sydney, Australia
Curatorial Positions
2024 - They Can't Hide The Sun, Spring Break Art Show, New York City, USA
2012 – The Sydney Underground Film Festival (Closing night Host and Performance Curator), The Factory Theatre, Sydney