page_title: Alicia Framis
section_title: Wishing
hierarchical_section_title: Alicia Framis / Work / Wishing
caption_attribution_description: English: Installation of the work Cartas al Cielo by Alicia Framis, in Central Park New York during exhibition "Drifting in Daylights", May 2015
context_page_description: Alicia Framis is a contemporary artist living and working in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She develops platforms for creative social interaction, often through interdisciplinary collaboration with other artists and specialists across various fields. Framis studied with the French minimalist artist Daniel Buren and the American conceptual artist Dan Graham and her work can be located within the lineages of relational aesthetics, performance art, and social practice art. She represented the Netherlands in the Dutch Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale. She is currently the director of an MA program at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, Netherlands and a lecturer at Nebrija University in Madrid, Spain. In 2019, Alicia Framis was awarded with the Lucas Artists Visual Arts Fellowship 2019-2022 in California.
context_section_description: The belief that humans can achieve a more fulfilling future is a key component of Framis's work, and is shown through projects that deal with the delicate act of wishing. Her piece Wishing Wall (1998-2001) traveled around Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and collected a total of 1,563 wishes. The first Wishing Wall was made for the Serre di Rapolano, Italy. Framis decided to make holes in the wall because the building was from the Mussolini era and the townspeople were slightly ashamed of it. The act of making holes in the wall became a performance for Framis, and these holes were later filled in with rolled up wishes that visitors had written on slips of paper in invisible ink. This interactive piece was later shown by Jan Hoet and Nicolas Bourriaud, the curator recognized as coining the term "relational aesthetics."
  Framis's sculpture Cartas al Cielo (2012), a stainless steel sphere 5 feet in diameter, was created to act as a postbox where one can send letters to the members of our lives who are no longer physically with us. The word "cielo" has a double meaning in the artist's original language of Spanish: it can mean both "sky" and "heaven." Cartas al Cielo is an interactive work where visitors may pen letters to anyone who now lacks an earthbound address. This poetic gesture lets people focus on their desires, dreams, and the immaterial word that coincides with our physical, human one.
caption: Cartas al Cielo by Alicia Framis, in Central Park New York during “Drifting in Daylight” organized by Creative Times, May 2015
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 5D Mark II", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2019:11:28 13:06:50", "Image ExifOffset": "224", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "862", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6505", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:05:14 16:13:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:05:14 16:13:54", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "995723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF SubSecTime": "09", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "09", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "09", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5616", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3744", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5616000/1459", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1872000/479", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "3531721316", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[24, 70, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM"}