By Caroline Picard
In her latest solo exhibition titled “Arcane Appetites,” Nancy Friedmann-Sánchez’s slyly decorative still life works reflect upon centuries of colonial trade relations. Each of the thirteen new paintings and a single wooden screen at first convey domestic tranquility with compositions of bouquets and bowls of fruit. But closer inspection reveals surprising details: floating eyes on the back of the screen, contact narratives decorating central vases, and semi-transparent figures that recede in each background like abstract patterns. Taken together, these elements reflect the roiling appetite the Americas fulfilled for centuries as well as the migratory patterns that continue to shape our world today.
The black background of each work, along with their subjects — flowers in a vase, or a bowl of fruit — loosely quote from the tradition of 17th Century Dutch still life tradition, particularly the memento mori and banquet pictures that convey themes of abundance and perishability. That thematic tradition is particularly evident in a cluster of discrete works hung in a back room of the gallery, each depicting singular vessels — baskets, a wooden bowl, and blue and white china — with Latin American fruits like uchavas, nopal, or moras. In “Cuenco con Calabazas” (Bowl with Winter Squash) (2026), an exotic insect has landed on the fruit much as houseflies would appear on Dutch counterparts. The background of each work is additionally made of Tyvek, a synthetic, polyurethane material developed for the multi-use market by the DuPont Corporation.
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