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Artful immigrationAna Maria Pacheco's 'Shadows' break new bordersBy Porter Anderson  Ana Maria Pacheco's "Shadows" is a group of sculptures made in London and on view for the first time at New York's Salander-O'Reilly Galleries. RELATED
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSNEW YORK (CNN) -- Amid the uproar over immigration in this country, sculptor Ana Maria Pacheco arrives in New York as an expatriate, herself, twice removed: She left her home in the Brazilian interior the early 1970s and has lived ever since in London. Her latest work, a collection of nine figures she calls "Shadows," is having its debut exhibition at New York's Salander-O'Reilly 79th Street gallery. Some 43 to 47 inches tall, each sculpture is starkly individual -- and almost painfully alone, although grouped with others in an eerie "black-box" room. These peculiarly touching, yet subtly disturbing, sculptural characters are figures, Pacheco says, "of displacement. We've never seen in history such displacement of people as we see today. It leads to this idea of wandering -- to people without direction." Onyx eyes gleaming, skin tones picked out of the darkness by tightly focused lighting, these carved figures of polychromed wood stand in animated suspension, each perched on a black plinth. WanderingPacheco is the Brazilian-born sculptor whose work first drew wide attention in 1999 at London's National Gallery. These characters of hers look over her shoulder as she meets Salander-O'Reilly visitors at the show's opening. She almost could be the 10th member of her own delegation. Twice represented at Salander-O'Reilly in the past -- in 2002 and 2003 -- Pacheco arrives now with this all-new collection of diminutive "displacements" that draws on, she says, on "a part of our psyche -- we see the repetition of this in the world today as never before." Her hair swept back from her 63-year-old face, Pacheco tracks with her eyes the gallery guests as they move quietly in the darkness among her sculptures at the show's opening. She's learning, she says, from which points they notice, remark on, stop to study. The artist points to the plight of so many former New Orleans residents after Katrina and to the dilemma of illegal immigrants in the United States. "It's felt in the flesh now," she observes. "You now have felt it here. People in America understand what it means" to lose a home, a sense of belonging, a direction. This is human experience." And what comes next from Pacheco's studio in London is a deeper consideration of that experience, of what may happen to those who are displaced in life. 'History on our shoulders'The traditional Pacheco work is a scene in which several oversized figurative pieces are frozen in a scenario: A 3-D quandary of arrested interaction. In the 1991 "Some Exercise of Power," for example, business-suited figures loom over what might be a board table -- on which lies a naked being who may be a subordinate employee, even a peer who has fallen from grace. That sub-group is called "The Banquet."  An earlier work, "The Banquet," a part of a larger sculpture group titled "Some Exercise of Power," puts Pacheco's dark humor on the table. "Shadow of the Wanderer" is her next major work. It will comprise larger-than-life sculptures, a hallmark of her work. These smaller "Shadows" in the current exhibition are actually studies for that bigger effort. "Shadow of the Wanderer" will be centered on a 106-inch double-figure sculpture of Aeneus carrying his father from the burning city of Troy: displaced persons. "There are to be 10 figures behind that son and father," Pacheco says. "And who are they? Are they people who have lost their place?" A voiceless, male figure stands a few feet from her, his cloak tightly covering his mouth. He has nails for hair and concern in those black eyes. "There's a notion," Pacheco says, "that we carry our history on our shoulders. Post-colonialism. This is how it started. "And I want to make some connection with the triumph of force, the context of the triumph of Caesar, the spoils of war."  Sculptural boat people: Pacheco's 1994 "The Longest Journey" was first seen at England's Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Standing near her on his pedestal, indeed, a Caesar-like figure boasts a gleaming gold helmet and shoes adorned with a serpentine motif. His robe is a toga of dazzling white and his hand is open in a gesture of annoyed confusion. Despite a merry disposition that punctuates her conversation with quick laughter, Pacheco's work, to many, appears darkly frightening. "The Land of No Return" (2004), the seminal "Dark Night of the Soul" (1999) and the boatful of forlorn figures in "The Longest Journey" (1994) place characters into bleak, cruel scenarios. She nurtures the unease she can cause even herself, she says. "It's important that we not be too at ease. I want us to be pushed to another world. We live our baggage. You have to rely on your experience. And by using a connection with the past, I'm looking for a kind of message that's very contemporary -- and that includes a sense of insecurity." Ana Maria Pacheco's "Shadows" is on view at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, 20 East 79th Street, New York, through April 29, (212) 744-0655. Gallery hours are 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. 
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