Videos

The Screening Room is proud to present Traveling Lady, a solo exhibition by Jessica Mitrani.

Traveling Lady conjures the daring spirit of Nellie Bly, the nineteenth-century American journalist who circled the globe in seventy-two days, carrying little more than the clothes on her back and a jar of cold cream. Transcending the realms of the psychological, the physical, and the cosmic, iconic Spanish actress Rossy de Palma embodies this timeless figure in Mitrani’s fantastic and subversive world.

Originally presented as a live performance with film, Traveling Lady has been reimagined for The Screening Room as a site-specific installation. A selection of videos will be projected onto three surfaces: a long curved screen with Rossy de Palma as Traveling Lady; a suspended canvas bag, and an eight-foot-tall coat illuminated by patterns, colors and textures evoking a voyage around the world.

The black leather bag that Nellie Bly carried with her will also be on display, open to reveal its contents: three items of silk clothing, a jar of cold cream, a porcelain box for the perfect pill, a tea cup, a leather manual, and a hopelessness scale for measuring emotions.

About the artist

Jessica Mitrani  (no relation to Rhonda Mitrani) was born in Colombia and now lives in New York. Her work has been exhibited, screened, and broadcast internationally. In 2012, her video Headpieces for Peace won the Grand Prix at the ASVOFF5 Festival at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Her short film La Divanee (2013) was an official selection of the Oaxaca and Marfa film festivals; previously, it was shown in a solo exhibition in Vienna and included in “Future Feminism” at The Hole gallery, in New York. In 2014, Mitrani received a grant from the Hermès Foundation to create the immersive film and performance work Traveling Lady, presented by the Crossing the Line festival in New York and the New Settings program in Paris. This year, her theatrical collaboration The Undertaking appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of its New Wave festival, and she performed in Ryan McNamara’s Back to School at MoMA PS1, New York. She is currently writing and directing five-minute cultural shorts for Brazil’s ARTE1 network. In 2017, Traveling Lady will be performed at the Soluna International Music and Arts Festival, in Dallas.

About the curator:

Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig is an historian and independent curator. She received her master’s degree in Art History and her PhD in Latin American History from the University of Miami. From 2008 to 2015 she worked as adjunct curator at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University. Some of her recent curatorial projects include Realities in Conflict (Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, 2015); Colombia Recounted: A Project of Contemporary Colombian Art (Christie’s, New York, 2015); Beyond Abstraction (Espacio ArtNexus, Bogota, 2015); Shadow Dancing (Galería Impakto, Lima, 2016); Contexto: escritura, palabra y narración en el arte contemporáneo (Universidad de Antioquia-Universidad Nacional, Medellin, 2016); and Todo, Caro en Las Nieves (Espacio ArtNexus, Bogota, 2016). She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), College Art Association (CAA), Funding Arts Broward, and ArtTable. She is the president of ArtNexus Foundation and she currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Friends of the Uffizi Gallery.

About The Screening Room: 

The Screening Room is a new-media exhibition and project space located in Miami's Wynwood Art District. Video artist, filmmaker and Miami native Rhonda Mitrani recognized a need in the community for a multi-disciplinary space dedicated to film and video programs, lectures and gatherings.