Harvest
Marta Jakobovits and Anderson Borba
7th March – 26th April 2025
Private View: 6th March 2025 Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Deptford
Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents Harvest, a duo exhibition of works by Marta Jakobovits and Anderson Borba, artists whose practices are rooted in exploring materiality. Their work focuses on experimentation: failing, reworking techniques, and creating a visual language using their chosen mediums, clay and wood, respectively.
“There is a powerful artistic dialogue between Anderson Borba and Marta Jakobovits’ practices, which have more in common than what may be visible at first glance. They are both strongly committed to using their own hands as the main instrument of their work.” – Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes, Exhibition Curator.
For the first time, these artists from Europe and South America, spanning different generations, will exhibit together, in a dialogue that allows similarities and differences to emerge between their practices. Jakobovits and Borba mould their chosen materials, clay and wood; fire their materials using a kiln and a blow torch; and build layers through glazes and collages, respectively. For both artists, there is a constant negotiation with the material within their process-orientated approach. Jakobovits and Borba have a deep understanding of various techniques and how their chosen materials respond to processes to create shape, feel, texture, and colour. They use natural elements, mimic nature, and initiate personal experiences, including wider societal and political concerns, through their work. Their practices are inherently linked to and part of proud and profound traditions while being within a contemporary context.
Harvest, the exhibition title, derives from the artists’ processes. Both employ manual gestures to harvest their works by researching, respecting, and understanding their chosen materials.
Marta Jakobovits‘ practice is founded on researched and developed explorations of ceramic techniques. Jakobovits’ complex oeuvre encompasses casting, modelling, firing, and glazing. The artist works with shape, colour, and texture, building a vast, detailed personal library of how her use of chemicals informs the physical result.
In this exhibition, the artist’s installations will continue Jakobovits’ trope of borrowing and mimicking natural forms, presenting a unique visual dialogue, namely working with collected and newly found stones, leaves and tree bark. Her contact with the natural is a meditative practice, as the artist’s objects all carry and create memory anew. The artist’s works speak to the intrinsic connection between art and nature, capturing a tactile relationship that is central to her production. Ultimately, the artist’s chosen medium is derived from nature, clay. Jakobovits creates several groupings of similar objects and adds to them over time. The artist experiments with modes of display to create new narratives and installations tailored to the context of an exhibition. Through this action, Jakobovits instils new dialogues, memories and meanings.
The artist explains, “[My work is] a personal approach to trying to make the invisible of the conscious and subconscious psyche visible through [my chosen] materials. This is an ongoing process; it is very important to me. This is my life. Making shapes, families of shapes, putting them in a relationship with natural materials, such as sand, pebbles, leaves, different plants, barks and shells, or even bringing them back as a reverence for nature. [It is] an intuitive dialogue between me and what is outside of me.”
Sculptor Anderson Borba’s practice involves carving, collaging, painting, cutting up, reassembling and burning found materials, particularly industrial-grade wood, as well as cardboard, fabric, magazine pages, and textiles. The artist’s works retain a readymade quality. Borba uses these materials as a starting point to carve and mould his initial shapes and forms in his process-guided approach to making. The artist spends half the year in his East London studio and the other half in his native Brazil, in his studio in Barra Funda in São Paulo. Both places alter the artist’s work, namely the types of materials he finds and works within each location.
Borba’s works explore the possibilities of wood, primarily his free-standing totem-like structures and wall reliefs. The artist’s practice involves using oils and varnishes to add colour to his works and coating them in collages consisting of various images, some found, others rendered by the artist. He finds his colour palette through the myriads of images he accesses from contemporary culture. Before becoming a visual artist, Borba worked in the fashion industry as an accessories designer, and this lens still inspires how he creates his works.
Borba’s practice involves carving a multitude of grooves to create undulating textures. Here, the artist mixes contemporary making and a ritualistic approach with a traditional craft, often inspired by inner Brazil’s self-educated craftspeople. Like a medium of paint or ink, Borba burns certain works with a blow torch, creating rich contrast to the exposed wood underneath through subsequent carving.
Embracing the use of found materials, in his works, Borba frequently simulates nature, for example shells and rocks, even presenting those encrusted with plastic as a commentary on humankind’s impact on the natural world. The artist’s fragmented assemblages, and his exploration of surfaces, create thought-provoking works that engage with Brazil’s societal and political affairs. His works carry the weight of this exploitation of natural resources as they incorporate the look and smell of endless burnt forests as well as the plastic that dominates the earth’s ecosystems.
The works in this exhibition will showcase Borba’s intensified techniques. The artist will display reliefs with a tactile quality, which are embellished with photographic images transferred onto the wood using colour stains. These pieces evoke ancient tablets fused with the faded remnants of paintings. Anthropomorphic totem works will dissect the exhibition space; their installation appears to defy gravity as their almost inconceivable shapes stand without toppling over. These works challenge traditional coherence and unity by assembling fragmented figures using rough materials with visible joints. Also featured are sculptures with untreated surfaces. Borba’s process creates haptic works that shift and change as the viewer moves around them, at once abstract, detailed, playful, seductive, and daring.
Notes to Editors
Marta Jakobovits (born 1944, Satu Mare county, Romania) lives and works in Oradea, Romania.
In 1971, Jakobovits graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 2006, Jakobovits earned a Doctorate in Liberal Arts from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary. Since the early 1990s, Jakobovits has been the recipient of various awards and esteemed recognitions, including the Fire Arts Award by the Union of Artists from Romania, in 2007; the Ferenczy Noémi Award from the Ministry of the Cultural Heritage and Human Resources, from Hungary, in 2011; the Hungarian Knight’s Cross of Merit, presented by the President of the Republic of Hungary, in 2013; and the Life Achievement Award, Romania, in 2024.
Having lived under one of the most brutal and repressive dictators in history, the Romanian Nicolae Ceaușescu (‘The King of Communism’), the Jakobovits family, whose heritage is a mix of Armenian and Hungarian, lived on the border between Hungary and Romania, in the town of Oradea. Ceaușescu stripped them of their lands and moved them to old Jewish quarters, so a sense of displacement and adapting to new surroundings was an early influence on Jakobovits’ practice. At the time of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime, Marta Jakobovits’ practice became a form of release from the oppressive forces around her. Along with her late husband, the renowned painter and sculptor Miklós Jakobovits, Marta Jakobovits became part of the inner circle of the important Transylvanian artists who were vigilantly creating art as an act of resistance against the dictator and a regime which did not allow for such freedoms.
Jakobovits is a member of several international professional organisations, including The International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva, Switzerland. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, symposiums, and biennales worldwide. Furthermore, several publications have documented Jakobovits’ career and showcased her artistic contributions. Márta Jakobovits: Part of the Road Travelled was published alongside her retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania, in 2022.
In 2022, Elizabeth Xi Bauer presented the solo exhibition Look and See, which included works from Jakobovits’ career and site-specific pieces. In 2023, Jakobovits presented Blue Segment at the Blue Biennale at the Museum of Brasov, Romania.
Jakobovits’ artworks are held in private and public collections worldwide, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest; Transylvanian Art Centre, Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania; Ţării Crişurilor Museum, Oradea, Romania; Art Museum, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Art Museum, Covasna, Romania; IRIS Porcelain Museum, Cluj, Romania; Collection of the Cultural Centre, Szárhegy Arts Museum, Baia-Mare, Romania; Contemporary Art Collection of the Peter Jecza Foundation, Timişoara, Romania; Stefan Jager Museum, Jimbolia, Romania; Art Collection Cucuteni, Romania; Art Museum, Baia Mare, Romania; Haáz Rezső Museum, Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania; Fine Art Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Art, Budapest; Collection of the International Ceramic Studio, Kecskemét, Hungary; Rákóczi Museum, Sárospatak, Hungary; Katona József Museum, Kecskemét; Continental Art Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Contemporary Hungarian Art Gallery, Dunajská Streda, Slovakia; Contemporary Art Collection of the Romanian Academy in Rome, Italy; and the Contemporary Art Collection of Rah Art Residency, Tehran, Iran.
In November 2024, Ţării Crişurilor Museum, Oradea, Romania, opened Metaterra, a retrospective of Marta Jakobovits’ work to celebrate the artist’s 80th Birthday. This extensive survey of Jakobovits’ career ran until February 2025 and featured an accompanying catalogue of essays.
Anderson Borba (born 1972, Santos, Brazil) lives and works between London, UK, and Barra Funda, São Paulo, Brazil.
Borba studied at the Alternative MFA program at the School of the Damned in 2018 before completing an MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2021. Borba received the Yitzhak Danziger Scholarship from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2019. In 2020, he received both the Herbert Seaborn Memorial Scholarship prize and the Gilbert Bayes Scholarship.
In 2022, Borba was an artist-in-resident at nthspace, Turin, Italy. Recently, Borba completed a residency at Pivô Salvador, Brazil.
Exhibiting throughout the UK, Europe, and South America, Borba’s works have been included in both solo and group exhibitions, including those at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil; Instituto Artium de Cultura, São Paulo; Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; kurimanzutto, Comporta, Portugal; Lamb Gallery, London; and Kupfer Gallery, London, among others.
Recent exhibitions include the group show Quebracorpo, presented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel at Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, in 2025; Dudi Maia Rosa and Anderson Borba in 2024, Auroras, São Paulo; and Anderson Borba and Erika Verzutti in 2023, Pivô, São Paulo.
Bringing together contemporary artists in conversation with painters Edward Burra and Frank Walter, Anderson Borba’s works were included in the group show Ghosts in Sunlight at Thirst Hall, North Yorkshire, UK, in 2024.
Borba first exhibited with Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery in 2023, in Warm Sun Cold Rain: Brussels Chapter and Warm Sun Cold Rain: São Paulo. This collaborative project between Elizabeth Xi Bauer and The Bridge Project, was exhibited at ZSenne Art Lab, Brussels, and Galpão Cru, São Paulo, Brazil, as two chapters.
Harvest will run from 7th March – 26th April 2025, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s Deptford location, open Wednesday through to Saturday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 6th March 2025, 6 – 8 pm, in the presence of the artists. The artists will be available for interviews.
