A Glimpse into Elza Kayal Gallery: with Eniko Imre

In Dialogue

Throughout her fifteen years in the art world—spanning fairs, events, curation, and non-profits—Eniko Imre built her career on a deep passion for art, a close-knit community of artists, and the trust many placed in her discerning eye. A year after COVID, during a visit to Tribeca, she was struck by the neighborhood’s burgeoning gallery scene. “Small one-woman spaces were thriving alongside multinational galleries, the blocks around Broadway bursting with art,” she recalls. Inspired by this wave of reemergence, she felt determined to carve her own path and be a part of it—on her own terms.

Tell us about the genesis of Elza Kayal Gallery.

From the beginning, it has been about good art and solidarity. While the gallery is on the 4th floor, you can often find artists, curators, and collectors hanging out in the space, having tea, and talking about art, politics, future projects, and whatever is the interest of the day. I want to provide a platform to artists of diverse backgrounds that make NYC their home and also bring works from across the world to our city. Galleries exhibiting emerging art often focus on paintings and young artists. For me it’s important to showcase artists in every decade of their lives working in a wide variety of mediums. The gallery’s name is a homage to my Mother [Elza] and Mother-in-Law [Kayal]. They both have a certain type of persistence, integrity, and strength that I adore. Not to over-romanticize—the names are also a good reminder of what not to allow in certain aspects of my life.

That ties into the current group show focuses on motherhood. The exhibition explores the interplay between creativity and motherhood. Can you tell us more about this premise?

The idea of a show on motherhood has been developing in me for many years, since I became a mother, actually. But I had to wait until I had my own space. The opportunity and interest never materialized when I worked for others. The participating artists belong to different generations and cultural backgrounds, hence they have different focal points on the topic. They work with a variety of mediums, including paintings, drawings, artist books, art objects, language, and experimental jazz.

I’ve been following most of these artists for many years and am excited to showcase them. The exhibition explores the interplay between creativity and motherhood by highlighting the often-overlooked experiences of artists who navigate both roles and, of course, the range of states one can be in. It delves into the guilt many feel when pursuing their creative passions outside of their maternal responsibilities, and also the inspiration they draw for their motherhood roles. Also, the anger that many of us feel over patriarchal patterns is directly addressed in Robbin Ami Silverberg’s artist books.

By bringing these narratives to the forefront, the exhibition seeks to reframe the conversation, transforming the perception of motherhood from a marginalized experience into a vibrant and essential aspect of artistic collaboration. I am glad to see there are more exhibitions addressing the topic of motherhood in recent years. This show not only acknowledges the challenges faced by artist-mothers but also illuminates the rich, dynamic interplay that can emerge when these worlds collide. Of course, these personal takes on the topic are also political.

How is this premise reflected in the artworks? Please guide us through the show.

Daniela Kostova grew up in socialist Bulgaria. The photograph Cosmonaut 1001 is an ironic celebration of internationalism. Her daughter’s presence is an organic part of Daniela’s oeuvre. A white dove has landed on the head of an infant child in a space suit, its sewn-on badges suggesting an affiliation with countries previously on opposite sides, capitalist and communist. The image feels borrowed from a TV commercial designed to convince us of a dream money can buy: the Cold War is over, space is ours to claim, and even infants can fly. Now, in 2024, viewers will have new associations to the image.

Robbin Ami Silverberg’s Proverbal Threads is part of a larger series of book objects that quotes proverbs describing women’s work from cultures around the world. These sayings are misogynistic, regardless of their origin. She uses vintage industrial bobbins since young women were often garment workers in the US at that time. The bobbins are wrapped with strips of paper, which are sometimes cut and spun to appear like a thread. Threads symbolize rote repetition, a concept that applies to the passing down of outmoded proverbs and notions of “women’s work”.

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Lauren Cline’s work explores the realm of the home, the bedroom, and other domestic spaces. Her characters engaged in everyday activities in dream-like surreal settings. Ambiguous layout, occasionally animals or an unruly clock, takes the attention away from the mundane. Inspired by Jungian psychoanalysis, she uses a process-based approach to create her compositions.

Katie Heller Saltoun is drawn to black and white images “to simplify the complex relationship that a mother has with themselves and their child(ren)”. The gestural, expressive, and converging lines used throughout her work represent the connections, disruptions, and energy of a caretaker’s cognitive minefield. In her artwork Endless Ordering (featured at the top), she intentionally plays with the size of her figures and placement inside domestic scenes to create humor and shed light on the caregiver’s mental state.

Sara Serpa is a Portuguese singer, composer, and improviser who, through her practice, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. Serpa has been working in the field of jazz, improvised, and experimental music, and in recent years, she has been creating comic strips of her everyday parent life. Sara also incorporates the experience of motherhood in many of her songs. The lyrics of her music cover serious existential themes, while her comics are full of humorous interactions with her son. The exhibition showcases 4 music videos (Miniatures, 2023) and some of her comic strips.

Dora Tomulic’s layered and complex visual iconography derives from personal and collective symbolism. Pulsating chaos and patterns of motions are fundamental in Tomulic’s work, no matter what she creates. She has a flair for the dramatic in her painting style, though not in an obvious way, but more through laborious, complex layering. Disarray and order, randomness, and control are the building forces in her composition. This is true in her representation of the mother-daughter relationship. She considers chaos to be a prerequisite to harmony rather than its antithesis.

What is your vision for the gallery?

I would like to continue my work on the track that I am on right now – show diverse artists across generations and mediums. I keep my overhead low, and that gives me the freedom to show what I want. But of course, a bigger space would allow me to include more artists for important shows like this. This year, we exhibited at the Art Market in Budapest. Participating at fairs is important, I think. It gives more exposure to the gallery and artists. We are now getting ready for a solo booth this upcoming spring at the Outsider Art Fair in New York.

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Bifocal: Motherhood and Creativity at Elza Kayal Gallery https://elzakayal.com/bifocal
Featured artists: Lauren Cline · Daniela Kostova · Katie Heller Saltoun
Sara Serpa · Robbin Ami Silverberg · Dora Tomulic
368 Broadway, Suite 409, New York, NY
Through Dec 14, 2024