In this series of mosaic panels, titled “Alice: The Way Out,” Liliana Porter's silhouetted figures portray characters from Lewis Carroll's “Alice in Wonderland.” The simple and engaging quality of the works echo the stagecraft found in the Broadway theaters nearby. The artist evokes the idea of the theatrical and playfully connects it with the experience of being underground, as was Alice during her adventures. Commenting on what is below the surface, Porter shows Alice pulling back a curtain to reveal the drama. Porter prefers to let the viewer's imagination fill in the details of her shadowy figures, playing on our varying views of reality while entertaining her captive audience.

Liliana Porter, born in Buenos Aires, was originally educated in printmaking and moved to New York in 1964, where she cofounded the New York Graphic Workshop with artists Luis Camnitzer and José Guillermo Castillo. Since then, Porter has worked in a variety of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, assemblages, video, installation and, more recently, theater. Porter’s work often employs a cast of characters that are inanimate objects, miniatures, toys and figurines, often placing the characters into “theatrical vignettes.” Porter was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1980) and has also been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships (1985, 1996, 1999) as well as numerous other honors. She served as a professor at Queens College, City University of New York, between 1991 and 2007. Porter’s art has been exhibited in more than 35 countries in over 450 group shows and is a part of numerous public and private collections.