British graduate student among the 11 recognized by the International Sculpture Center

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug 5, 2021) – Amalia Galdona Broche, a recent graduate of the University of Kentucky’s School of Art and Visual Studies, is one of 11 students who received the prestigious International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award for 2021.

The International Center for Sculpture (ISC) established the annual awards program in 1994 to recognize young sculptors and encourage their continued engagement in the field. It was also designed to draw attention to the sculpture programs of participating universities, colleges and art schools.

The growing publicity of the ISC awards program has resulted in an outstanding number of participating institutions, including 100 universities, colleges and art school sculpture programs for a total of 234 nominated students.

This year’s winners were selected by a distinguished jury including artist Alejandro Almanza Pereda, from Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico; artist Chido Johnson, Kresge Fellow and current chair of the sculpture section at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan; and art historian, curator, consultant, and ISC board member Marin Sullivan of Chicago, Illinois. The panel deliberated on more than 570 images of sculptural works to select 11 winners and six honorable mentions. The selection of recipients from a large number of applicants, including international students, is a great achievement and a testament to the artistic promise of the students’ work.

Fiber artist, sculptor and media artist Amalia Galdona Broche, who received a Masters of Fine Arts in May in the UK, was recognized for ‘From my sewn prayers the gazebo grew a skin’. Garry R. Bibbs, Head of UK Sculpture Area, was the Broche faculty sponsor for the international competition.

Broche and the 10 other winners will participate in a group exhibition this fall. The artists’ work will also be featured in the January / February 2022 issue of the International Sculpture Center’s award-winning publication, Sculpture magazine, as well as on the ISC website at https://sculpture.org / page / studentawards.

The recipients of the 2021 Prize for Outstanding Achievement of Students in Contemporary Sculpture are:

• Stephen Abernathy, University of North Texas;
• Erin Antonak, State University of New York at New Paltz;
• Allena Marie Brazier, from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville;
• Amalia Galdona Broche, University of Kentucky;
• Noah Greene-Lowe, Sam Fox School of Art and Design, Washington University in St. Louis;
• Keith Kaziak, University of Wisconsin-Madison;
• Miru Kim, Arizona State University;
• Anna Kruse, State University of New York at New Paltz;
• Kylie Little, Georgia State University;
• Hanna Makkonen, Arizona State University; and
• Heidi Zenisek, University of Maryland.

For more details on the recipients and honorable mentions, visit the 2021 Student Awards page on the ISC website.

Originally from Santa Clara, Cuba, Broche works with textiles and fibers to create installations that materialize psychological landscapes of nostalgia and remembrance.

“My work materializes and translates real and psychological landscapes, exploring identity, personal and collective memory, as well as belief systems and processes of transculturation. Through textiles, I study the complexities of identity construction as a woman of Cuban origin affected by displacement, migration and transculturation. Nurturing myself from the cultural, aesthetic and natural environment in which I reside, I use layers in my work to mask individual objects and textiles, complicating and entangling encrusted stories beyond recognition, ”said Broche .

Through knotting, weaving, rope making, wrapping and other methods of accumulation, Broche’s sculptures explore the role and definition of textiles in today’s world, focusing on the plan woven as a second skin, a complex reconfiguration that protects the material, ideas and memories from the elements. Manifested in organic, feminine and generative forms, the work acts as an offering, an act of sharing and expression of a multilingual identity, abstract and obscured, but nuanced and familiar, as is the process of living in liminality. Soft and malleable yet playful and colorful, Broche creates a visual language where verbal communication has been rendered ineffective in communicating the multiplicity of identities within each of us.

Broche, who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture and Art History from the University of Jacksonville in Florida, has attended residencies at the New York Academy of Fine Arts, studios of the MASS MoCA and at the WOC residence. Her work has been exhibited in places such as the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Parachute Factory, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Field Projects and The Sculptors Alliance.

The UK School of Art and Visual Studies, part of the College of Fine Arts, offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of art studio, art history and visual studies, arts education, curatorial studies and digital media design.