Vickie Pierre
What You Long For is Real, What You Long For is To Be
July 19–September 7, 2025
Opening reception Saturday, July 19, 2025, 3–5 PM
TURLEY introduces the phantasmagorical into Gallery 2 by way of Vickie Pierre’s What You Long For is Real, What You Long For is To Be. Just as sci-fi and fantasy genres contemplate and recontextualize the moral and social afflictions of society, so too do Pierre’s colorful collage works. Invoking mythical, magickal, and cultural signifiers, the exhibition explores the dynamics and intricacies of the worlds around us—begrudging realities and hopeful futures included.
Vickie Pierre, An Echo Blooms, 2025, Acrylic, metallic paint, decorative paper collage, and glitter on canvas, mounted on panel, 18 x 18 x 1 inches
My work is informed and inspired by identity, memory, high fantasy, surrealism, craft, and women’s work, as well as the decorative and ornamental arts.
Poupées in the Bush is a collage series that I’ve been working on since 2016, inspired by German surrealist Hans Bellmer’s La Poupée, while paying homage to classical Greek and global mythological characters interpreted as fierce female deities and spirit creatures whimsically decorated with jewels and armor. They are wrapped and physically bound in visual, colorful motifs that mimic body binding, modification, and tattoos, recalling rich tribal adornments from around the world as symbols of status, ritual, or spells of protection. The addition of gold and glitter connects the body forms to divinity and the mysteries of the metaphysical world, alchemy and magic. The collaged elements are gift wrapping papers from the Art Deco, Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau movements, representing the natural world as well as additional clippings from nature, jewelry, and interior design magazines.
There is an underlying interconnectivity that exists between these “she forms’’ and higher, universal energies and enlightenment. They are in a state of becoming, sometimes appearing to be in motion, and other times they are still as if sitting for a portrait. Their bodies are morphed and distended, often missing recognizable parts. It appears that a transformation is taking place, a ritual or a possession...
The inner saga of these mistresses is a story of all warrior women: beguiling yet powerful entities that have long walked the earth, laying waste and sailing the seas to discover new worlds to conquer and transform. Sensual and flamboyant, they speak the different languages of the universe and travel through space and time, referencing historical pasts, real and imagined.
Vickie Pierre, Venus Rising (Poupées in the Bush series) 19/50, 2024, Unique screen print, metallic paint, glitter and collage on stonehenge paper, 14 x 11 inches
Vickie Pierre is a multidisciplinary artist whose artworks have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions throughout South Florida, including the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, Miami, Perez Art Museum Miami, Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Girls Club, Fort Lauderdale, Art and Culture Center Hollywood, and Boca Raton Museum of Art, among others. Additional national and international venues include White Box, New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, Habitation Clément, Martinique, the International Museum of Modest Arts, France, and the Oriente Gallery and the Center for the Development of Arts in Cuba.
Pierre was a recipient of the 2017 South Florida Cultural Consortium award. In 2019, the artist was a finalist in the sixth annual Orlando Museum of Art, Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. In 2023, the artist was selected by the Art in Embassies Program to have her artworks displayed in the U.S. Embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Pierre’s first large-scale solo exhibition is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Florida.
Pierre’s artworks can be found in private and public collections, including Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland; Millennium Partners Collection of Contemporary Art at The Four Seasons, Miami; The Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, and the Oolite Art Collection, Miami, among many others.
The artist currently lives and creates in Vero Beach, Florida.
Installation photography by Spencer House Studio