Paula Bonet is a multidisciplinary artist, painter, and writer known for her dynamic exploration of various mediums, including oil painting, printmaking, and illustration. A graduate of the Fine Arts program at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, she has furthered her education in Santiago de Chile, New York, and Urbino. Bonet’s artistic journey is characterised by a continual evolution, moving away from her early drawing style to focus on personal identity and themes relevant to women, such as sexuality, childbirth, and abortion. She has published over nine books, including La Sed (2016) and Roedores. Cuerpo de embarazada sin embrión (2018), which address poignant societal issues. Her work has been exhibited internationally in cities such as Barcelona, Paris, and London, and she received the Medal for Cultural Merit from the Valencian Government in 2018. Currently, Bonet presents L’anguila. The Flesh as Painting and Painting as Mirror at the Fundació Vila Casas, merging her painting with literary themes to foster deep connections between text and visual art.
The early 19th-century travel writer, Maria Graham, stands at the centre of the Lands, Real and Imagined: Women Artists Respond to the Art & Travel Writings of Maria Graham (1785–1842) exhibition, along with her four published travel journals of India, Italy, Brazil, and Chile, and her comprehensive history of Spain. The written and visual documents Graham produced in response to her travels, including her detailed and often farsighted observations about the lands and peoples she encountered, continue to be important foci for scholarly research that dwells at the intersection of gender, travel writing, and culture.
The five accomplished women artists who were invited into this exhibition project—Kavita Shah, India; Francesca Genna, Italy; Leila Danzinger, Brazil; Isabel Cauas, Chile; and Paula Bonet, Spain—collectively respond to Graham’s distinct “gaze” on their own countries, while also providing their individual perspectives on her writings, her visual art, and her extraordinary range of disciplinary interests. The breadth and sensitivity of their responses also illuminate the complex trajectory of Graham’s personal as well as professional growth, as she lived and learned from her travels. The exhibition made its debut at the Fisher Gallery at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio from February 1–July 15, 2022 and is the result of a three-year creative collaboration supported by the scholarly research and curatorial expertise of Drs. Patricia Frick (Professor of English) and Janice Glowski (Art Historian and Director of The Frank Museum of Art and Galleries) at Otterbein.
