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AFTER EDEN / MY BERLIN WALL



WORKS OF SANDRA CAVANAGH + MARIANA CICERCHIA

SEPTEMBER 11  - OCTOBER 4

After Eden / My Berlin Wall brings together two serial bodies of work - Sandra Cavanagh’s narrative oil painting series After Eden and Mariana Cicerchia’s ongoing project My Berlin Wall - in an exploration of the way cycles of history continue to impact and play out within our contemporary lives.

OPENING RECEPTION - SEPTEMBER 11; 5-8pm


AFTER EDEN sustains a figurative focus in reaction to current and historical narratives, considering mortality and loss of innocence in transgenerational stories, the usefulness of art’s centuries old regard of myth, foundational stereotypes and the mundane occurrence of violence.

Interested in the pairing of form and message, and formal variations on a theme, Cavanagh often works in series, creating pictorial storylines with some urgency to exhaust the subject and  form to the point of understanding or unburdening myself of it. The result is an annotation of  feelings and opinions underscoring a dramatic approach to composition.


SANDRA CAVANAGH was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her early life was pitched on a growing awareness of the prevailing political instability, an overbearing patriarchal society and the dangers of state sanctioned brutality and censorship. Cavanagh read Social Sciences at the University of Belgrano, emigrated to California and later to the UK. She is a Fine Art graduate from the Kent Institute of Art and Design, UK. Since 2010, she's worked and resided in New York City.

Cavanagh's work has been exhibited at various venues, including the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, Pen & Brush, Gallery 14C, Westbeth Gallery and PS122 Gallery in New York; Schelfhaudt Gallery at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut; the Susquehanna Art Museum and the National Liberty Museum in Pennsylvania; Miami National Fine Arts in Florida; and Museo Limen in Italy. In 2025, she presented a solo exhibition at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.


MY BERLIN WALL: A SILENT PROTEST SONG created between 2025 and 2026, reflects on the recurring cycles of history and the forces that shape individual and collective experience. Through newspaper-based compositions, Cicerchia examines power, repression, displacement, and the persistent human desire for freedom. 

The exhibition’s title evokes the Berlin Wall as both a historical marker and a broader symbol of the boundaries—visible and invisible—that divide people, communities, and nations. Conceived as a quiet act of resistance, My Berlin Wall functions as what the artist calls a “silent protest song,” an urgent but restrained response to the instability and absurdity of contemporary global politics.


MARIANA CICERCHIA is a self-taught visual artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work is shaped by personal experience, including formative years marked by Argentina’s repressive military dictatorship and her history of immigration. Her practice explores identity, belonging, isolation, displacement, and the tension between solitude and freedom. Through layered materials and meditative reflection, Cicerchia develops a visual language that links personal memory with broader social and political realities.

Cicerchia was awarded the 2026 Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals, as well as the 2026 The Martha Boschen Porter Fund for Artists, awarded by Berkshire Taconic Foundation. She is also member of the 2026 AMP it Up cohort at Northampton Center for the Arts.

Cicerchia has exhibited her work throughout Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island. Her first Solo exhibit was at Barn Door Gallery in the Northampton Center for the Arts. She was also a participant of the 2026 Every Woman Biennial at Pen & Brush Gallery in New York. www.marianacicerchia.com
IG: @mariana.cicerchia




A.P.E.'s programming is made possible in part by sustained support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.