Basie allen

Cassandra mayela allen

Nada miami 2024

Booth #C100

December 3 - 7, 2024

Ice Palace Studios, Miami, Florida

Olympia is thrilled to present a two-person exhibition of husband-and-wife artists Basie Allen and Cassandra Mayela Allen for NADA Miami 2024. Known for their materially nuanced, diasporic explorations, both artists examine the tensions and harmonies within natural and urban environments. Celebrating their craft and the life they’ve woven together, this marks the first time their work has been presented in an exclusive dialogue.

Basie Allen’s “tarp transfers” blur the boundaries between carpentry, collage, printmaking, and painting. Each stage of the process becomes a vital form of mark-making. Allen pours and paints directly onto camping tarps, and then meticulously transfers these elements onto canvas. Riffing off the grid, Allen’s compositions are built through handmade modular surfaces, with painted components stretched across intricate micro-systems that mirror the structure of New York City. The use of tarps evokes a range of socio-economic associations, from temporary housing for displaced people to glamping and storage systems. While Allen’s carpentry suggests a sense of ‘order,’ his painted materials emphasize gesture, chance, and improvisation.

Cassandra Mayela Allen’s work is deeply influenced by her migration from Venezuela to the United States ten years ago. Her labor-intensive process of ripping and sewing worn materials—often donated by fellow Venezuelans—explores the extended lifecycle of organic matter within urban contexts. These map-like forms trace a migration crisis that has been inadequately documented while also celebrating the rich Venezuelan diaspora present in major U.S. cities. Mayela Allen critiques contemporary "disposability" mindsets, challenging viewers to repurpose and extend material lifespans. This presentation also marks an exciting evolution in her practice: a new series of drawings created in direct dialogue with the textile-based works, which encapsulate material transformation and serve as physical and emotional catharsis.

For both Basie Allen and Cassandra Mayela Allen, the shared impulse to reuse and repurpose essential everyday materials reflects a like-minded approach to navigating the world. Through their transformation of the grid, both artists invite viewers to consider how we engage with and inhabit built, natural, and urban environments.

**Cassandra Mayela Allen**, *Balanced Contrast*, 2023, Repurposed fabrics and garments, 50 x 44 x 1 in (127 x 111.8 x 2.5 cm)

**Basie Allen**, *Untitled (amalgamated summer in the city rain)*, 2024, Tarp transfer, acrylic, pastel, pencil, spray paint on linen, 55.5 x 56.5 x 2 in (141 x 143.5 x 5.1 cm)

Basie Allen (b. 1989, New York City) uses poetry and painting to explore the space between living in cities and being in nature. Through a process of layering written text, paint, décollage, and transfer, Allen experientially mimics the sensation of putting on boots and walking into a landscape. The work is accentuated by cultural and personal identity, memory, and gestural abstraction.

Allen’s use of carpentry and the grid brings his work into direct communication with the city itself through ideas of the architecture of form. By painting on his own camping tarps and then transferring the image onto muslin and linen, Allen is metaphorically and literally pulling from his past, asking the viewer to wonder, “Is nature a bigoted term?” His work attempts to deepen this question.

Allen’s work has been exhibited at Eric Firestone (East Hampton, 2024), V1 (Copenhagen, 2024), MoMA PS1 (Queens, 2024), Massimodecarlo (Milan, 2022), Olympia (New York, 2021), and Marlborough Contemporary (New York, 2018). NADA Miami 2024 marks the artist’s first two-person participation at an art fair in the United States. Allen will have a solo exhibition at Olympia San Francisco in 2025.

His debut collection of poetry, Palm-Lined with Potience, was nominated for the National Book Award in 2023.

Cassandra Mayela Allen has lived and worked in New York since 2014, when she migrated from Venezuela. Her practice delves into identity, migration, and belonging, drawing from personal experiences, research, and conversations. Recent solo exhibitions include Olympia (New York, NY, 2024, 2021), JO-HS (Mexico City, Mexico, 2023), and NADA House (New York, NY, 2022).

Group exhibitions include Eric Firestone (East Hampton, NY, 2024), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI, 2024), V1 Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2024), apexart (New York, NY, 2024), Olympia (New York, NY, 2023), EFA Project Space (New York, NY, 2023), and Acompi and NARS Foundation (New York, NY, 2021).

NADA Miami 2024 marks the artist’s first two-person participation at an art fair in the United States. Forthcoming projects include Palacio de Autonomia (Mexico City, Mexico, 2025).

Mayela Allen was an Artist in Residence at Modern Ancient Brown (Detroit, MI, 2024), a Latin American Performance Artist Fellow at Pocoapoco (Oaxaca, MX, 2024) and will be in residence at Campo Garzon this December (Pueblo Garzon, Uruguay, 2024). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, Family Style, and Vogue Mexico.