Angela de la Cruz's artworks at Ikon in Birmingham are a study in brokenness and repair. Crumpled canvases, wobbly three-legged chairs, and a piano perched atop another piano fill the gallery, each piece appearing on the verge of collapse. Yet, as the exhibition reveals, these objects have already collapsed and been mended, propped back up into a semblance of form and function.
The Spanish artist, who uses a wheelchair after a disabling stroke, imbues her work with a sense of bodily fragility and resilience. A black-painted canvas wraps around a two-legged table once owned by Guardian art critic Adrian Searle, while a thick, brown monochrome painting has its corner snapped off and gaffer-taped back on, wedged upright. These pieces feel like faulty, leaky bodies patched up and forced back to the vertical.
The show includes a work created for a performance of The Nutcracker with Birmingham Royal Ballet, echoing the nutcracker doll's repair and dancers' snapped pointe shoes. However, the piano sculpture, played standing up, falls a bit flat in performance, as making a pianist stand is not radically limiting. Yet, it transforms the exhibition, making the paintings and sculptures feel like a cast of broken ballerinas still twirling.
De la Cruz's reliance on modernist tropes like monochromes and minimalism lends a formal, cold surface, but emotionally the works are humorous and filled with frustration. They tell a powerful story of staying strong in adversity, of getting back up no matter how hard you fall. 'Angela de la Cruz: Upright' runs at Ikon from 25 March to 6 September.
