ALINA BLIUMIS





Portrait by Giulia Theodoli
Portrait by Giulia Theodoli

Alina Bliumis (b. Minsk, Belarus) is New York-based artist who received her BFA from the School of Visual Art in 1999 and a diploma from the Advanced Course in Visual Arts (professor Alfredo Jaar) Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy in 2005.

She has exhibited at SITUATIONS, NYC, USA; Ostwall Museum at Dortmunder U, Dortmund, Germany; The Aldrich Museum, CT, USA; Musée de l'Homme, Paris, France; Le musée de l'Histoire de l'immigration, Paris, France; First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia; Busan Biennale, South Korea; Tokyo Biennial, Japan; Assab One, Milan, Italy; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY, USA; Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France; Centre d’art Contemporain, Meymac, France; The James Gallery, The Graduate Center CUNY, NYC, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, USA; Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel; The Jewish Museum, NYC, USA; The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Botanique Museum, Brussels, Belgium; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; and MAC VAL/The Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France.

Her works are in various private and public collections, including MAC VAL/ The Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France; Le musée de l'Histoire de l'immigration, Paris, France; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel; The Saatchi Collection, UK; The Harvard Business School, USA; The National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, USA; Morgan Stanley Art Collection, New York, NY and Missoni Collection, Italy.

Bliumis work has been reviewed in Cultured Magazine, Artforum, ART - Das Kunstmagazin, ARTNews, AnOther Magazine, Vogue Italia, Hyperallergic and Art and Climate Change (World of Art) by Maja Fowkes, Reuben
Fowkes , Thames & Hudson.







SELECTED WORKS 


Alina Bliumis Godly Odly, 2026 Concrete and wood 12 x 9 in 30.5 x 22.9 cm Alina Bliumis, Shit Hit, 2026 Concrete and wood 12 x 9 in 30.5 x 22.9 cm Alina Bliumis, Worship Ship, 2026 Concrete and wood 12 x 9 in 30.5 x 22.9 cm Alina Bliumis, Worship Ship, 2026 Concrete and wood 12 x 9 in 30.5 x 22.9 cm Alina Bliumis, Legend End, 2026 Concrete and wood 12 x 9 in 30.5 x 22.9 cm Alina Bliumis, Euphoria, 2023 Watercolor and watercolor pencil on wood panel. Artist’s steel frame. 15 x 19 x 3 in 38.1 x 48.3 x 7.6 cm


… And in the series “Concrete Poems” familiar words that seem to be merely vehicles of ordinary communication begin to dissolve, revealing an abyss of the absurd hidden behind their grammatically correct surface.

Theodor Adorno famously said that to write poetry after Auschwitz is impossible. The appearance of the beautiful would only serve as cover making us forget the cruel reality of our world. Many artists reacted to this challenge by making their artworks look as ugly as reality itself. However, in this way they missed the cruelty of the second degree – the cruelty of the aestheticizing cover-up. It is this cruelty of the second degree – the cruelty inherent to the artistic practice itself – that Alina makes her topic in a subtle and at the same time surprisingly direct and convincing way.

Boris Groys on Alina Bliumis (ART HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, 2022)

The term “Concrete poetry” is referring to an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance, It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry. Though the term ‘concrete poetry’ is modern, the idea of using letter arrangements to enhance the meaning of a poem was popular throughout history: in Greek Alexandria during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, in religious and secular text, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. The term "concrete poetry" was established in Brazil after the National Exhibition of Concrete Art (1956/57).

Bliumis is taking the term “concrete poems” literally with this series, by writing poems in the wet concrete. The series is inspired by street wall scrabbles, graffiti, and absurdist poetry.






SHOWS WITH JOHS