Consuelo Cavaniglia: seeing through you

Consuelo Cavaniglia’s project represents the first time an artist has been invited to respond directly to the architecture of the Chau Chak Wing Museum. Cavaniglia intensifies the viewer’s experience of the interior spaces as they navigate the building, by colouring the ‘lantern’ skylight, and by intervening onto glass surfaces to create perceptual shifts. 

In the Penelope Gallery, she has selected objects from the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s collection, including optical instruments and glass from the ancient world, which are presented alongside her own recent works.

The artist has also selected to display artworks from the collection by Lily Greenham (1924–2001), and Martha Boto (1925–2004). Cavaniglia celebrates these women artists and connects her own practice to theirs in a lineage of engagement with abstraction, colour, light, and perception.

Cavaniglia’s interest in perception extends to the ways that voices are represented within the museum. The artist has invited women and gender-diverse staff members to reflect on their experience of the museum and its collections. Their responses create alternative narratives to the more formal voice of museum wall labels, reframing the experience of the museum and its collections through personal perspectives.