39 3/8 x 31 1/2 x 3/4 in
(Pictorial) Recipes is the first solo exhibition of German-Guinean interdisciplinary artist Ava Binta Giallo (b. 1995) at Hope93 Gallery.
Ava Binta Giallo (b. 1995) is a German-Guinean interdisciplinary artist mainly working in the field of abstract painting and installation. They live and work between Vienna, Austria and Mindelo, Cabo Verde. They studied TransArts BA and MA (University of applied Arts in Vienna, AT), Painting (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, IT), Abstract Painting and Critical Studies (Academy of fine Arts in Vienna, AT). Giallo has exhibited her work across Europe and Africa. Their exhibitions include the Forum Frohner (Krems, AT), CNAD (Mindelo, CV), DAS WEISSE HAUS (Vienna, AT), Basis Frankfurt (Frankfurt, DE), Kunstverein Langenhagen (Langenhagen, DE), PACT Zollverein (Essen, DE), The Bridge Gallery (Paris, FR), Exhibit Gallery (Vienna, AT), Heiligenkreuzerhof University Gallery (Vienna, AT), the Gabès Ethnographic Museum (Gabès, TN), Centro Cultural do Mindelo (Mindelo, CV) and Baltasar Lopes Foundation (Mindelo, CV) amongst others.
She has been selected for artist residencies at the Foundation for Contemporary Art Ghana (Accra, GHN), La Boîte Tunis (Gabès , TN) and Atelier Mar (Mindelo, CV).
(Pictorial) Recipes
One part egg, one part linseed oil, mixed with one part water (ratio 1:1:1). To the binder clove oil is added for its antibacterial and antifungal properties. Pigment is then introduced to a small amount of clove water which is mixed with the tempera emulsion. The amount of pigment depends on the desired consistency and opacity. The solution is then applied – with additional water or binder – to the cotton fabric.
At the heart of Giallo’s practice, and so the title of the exhibition, is the concept of the “recipe.” Their rather nomadic studio practice can be divided into two intertwined areas: image-formation and the laboratory. Image-formation describes Giallo's process-oriented painting practice, where she works always on several canvases at the same time – moving from one, to another, layering paint, washing out, layering again, until the final images unfold.The laboratory describes the necessity for technical research, which focuses on substances with small and traceable material cycles - clay, soil, stone, sand, natural fiber, soil, oil and egg among others. Here, these recipes refer to the compositional formulas within the specific spatial context of the studio. They are transmitted structures of making and forms of inherited knowledge that persist through adaptation.
Ava Binta Giallo’s tempera paintings unfold as a negotiation of the visual field, contemplating spatial dynamics whilst intentionally remaining untethered to literary reference, fixed meaning, or explicitly representational subject matter. Instead, the crux of her practice resides in a sensory and experiential approach, considered in conversation with her material collaborators. Her paintings become a rumination on organising and composing space, through colour, form, line, gesture, and movement. This is a refusal that resonates with the call to arms issued by the 20th century French abstract artist, Jean-Michel Atlan:
“The time has come to elaborate a new language, to invent the forms, to create the shapes, to call up a world of lines and colours with no indebtedness to literature, one which does not resemble what one calls reality, but which constitutes, by itself, a reality.”
A defining sentiment within Giallo’s work, this is not a historical reference but an operative mode, abstraction as the generation of reality rather than its reflection. Even though earthy browns, terracottas and rust tones may give the impression of something slightly recognizable, something familiar perhaps bodily or landscape adjacent, these strange murmurations or echoes remain indirect and ambiguous. Spatial qualities conveyed through the chosen matter available at the moment of its creation - invisible to visible, immaterial to physical and vice versa - the work is conversational.
Much like the paintings themselves, moving between hints and traces, at times almost diaphanous, the recipes are given body through the temporal and spatial conditions of each place. She works across various locations, at each creating a body of work that is distinct to that specific geography.The works shown within (Pictorial) Recipes were developed during a 2025 residency in Accra at the Foundation for Contemporary Art Ghana, as well as in her base in Mindelo in 2026. Environmental forces actively shape the works: humidity alters drying times, affecting pigment saturation, the bleed, and the pooling of liquid. These elements operate in tandem as collaborators, or indeed, as sous chefs. What emerges is an understanding of intuition not as the antithesis of knowledge, but as a form of knowledge in itself: a trained sensitivity to variation, to timing, to the thresholds at which material shifts state. In this sense, making becomes less about executing a fixed plan and more about sustaining an ongoing conversation.