Finding Alice

Artists Exploring Wonderland featuring Abelardo Morell

This exhibit features works from two photographic series by Abelardo Morell, as well as several versions of the book to examine how different artists have illustrated the classic story.

When Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland came out in 1865, it was a blockbuster success and was widely credited with changing the landscape of children’s literature, adding nonsensical fun to what had been a genre obsessed with moralizing. Since its first publication, it has been translated into over 175 languages and continues to inspire artists from around the world to interpret Carroll’s story in their own visionary ways.

Finding Alice: Artists Exploring Wonderland featuring Abelardo Morell features works from two photographic series by the acclaimed artist Abelardo Morell, as well as several versions of the book to examine how different artists have illustrated the classic story. Artists include Andrea D’Aquino (American b. 1979), Salvador Dalí (Spanish 1904–1989), Camille Rose Garcia (American b. 1970), Yayoi Kusama (Japanese b. 1929), Oleg Lipchenko (Ukrainian/Canadian b. 1957), Peter Newell (American 1862–1924), and Evgeny Alexandrovich Shukaev (Russian 1932–1988) among others.

Of his initial Alice in Wonderland series, Morell says, “I designed my images to be situated within a landscape made of books because it struck me that Carroll had linked Wonderland to the idea of discovering imagination by digging deep into the pages of a book. At this time my daughter, Laura, was seven years old and these pictures felt in part to be tributes to her, who like Alice, was an equally brave girl in my life.” Later, his experience during the COVID-19 pandemic and sheltering in place “sent [him] down another, different sort of rabbit hole. Suddenly, Alice’s adventures seemed to have a lot in common with what was going on in the world—and within me. His Through the Looking Glass series revolves around Alice stepping into a mirror, on the other side of which there is a topsy-turvy, unfamiliar, and illogical world. “What she encounters there seemed to me to have parallels to new realities in our present moment. Notably, however, in both her trips to Wonderland, Alice is resilient. She confronts the many disturbing things she encounters with determination and, in the end, she manages to adapt to her new situation. Alice’s rolling with the punches supplied me with an instructive guide to living in turbulent times. Brave Alice learns to deal with the irrational without ignoring it.  She makes her own sense out of nonsense.”

This exhibition was inspired by an exhibition of the same title, organized by the Ellen Noël Art Museum (Odessa, Texas) who has generously donated the books included in the exhibition, and provided curatorial support as the touring exhibition concept developed.

About the Artist, Abelardo Morell

Abelardo Morell and his family fled Cuba in 1962, moving to New York City. He is well known in the fine art and photographic communities for creating camera obscura images in various places around the world. In 1998, he was an artist-in-residence at Boston’s Gardner Museum, and the following year, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts hosted his retrospective Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye. A later retrospective entitled Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door was held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, and was subsequently shown at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The artist was also the subject of a documentary film, Shadow of the House, in 2007.

Abelardo Morell was awarded the CINTAS Foundation fellowship (1992); the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1993); the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award (2011); and the Lucie Awards Honoree for Achievement in Fine Art (2017). His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Fondation Cartier, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. There are numerous publications and monographs on his work, including his illustration of Alice in Wonderland and Book of Books, with an introduction by author Nicholson Baker.

Abelardo Morell lives and works in Boston. He studied at Bowdoin College and holds an MFA from Yale University, and an honorary doctorate from Bowdoin. Until 2009, he was a professor of photography at Massachusetts College of Art. He is exclusively represented by the Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.

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