NADA Miami 2023

Julia Haft-Candell works in a variety of materials, however her practice is heavily informed by ceramics, a material that the artist is drawn to for its ostensibly contradictory states: fluid and malleable when wet, and fixed when fired. Clay’s transmutable qualities are also present in Haft-Candell’s lexicon of forms and patterns, evoking universally recognizable themes such as infinity symbols, combs, hands, and chains. Haft-Candell’s methodology—explored in her Glossary of Terms and Symbols, a book and related series of watercolors started in 2017—originates in personal inquiry and ideas about gender, paradox, and physical movement. 

Recently, she has begun to explore work in bronze, including large-scale outdoor sculpture. The artist has described the series, which depicts large interlocking hands, as “monuments to touch”.

She currently has a major solo exhibition on view at the Pitzer University Art Galleries, an exhibition that will travel to Santa Clara University next year.