Isabelle Albuquerque
Isabelle Albuquerque
Mother and Child, 2025
patinated steel
58 x 18 x 42 in
148 x 45 x 108 cm
Ed. 1/3 + 2AP
Alien Spring, Isabelle Albuquerque’s second solo exhibition with Nicodim and her first with the gallery in New York, is a sculptural erotic meadow populated by biophilic hybrid forms born out of environmental catastrophe and mutated into new life. Albuquerque adapted the title for her new series from Silent Spring, the 1962 book by pioneering queer writer Rachel Carson, which was an early, radical call to arms for environmental protection.
The exhibition contains a suite of six new steel and bronze sculptures that merge human and floral anatomies into psychologically charged new beings “growing” throughout the gallery, enmeshing elements of her own human form with the natural landscape, envisioning a more symbiotic future for humanity and the environment from which life is derived.
Mother and Child, the first sculpture in the series, is a five foot tall stainless steel hybrid human-orchid form that has a complex root system and speaks to the passing of generational knowledge, symbiosis, empathy and chemical exchange. Sisters, the second, is a stainless steel sculpture with vulvic buds that appear to glide across the floor on its roots. The Self, the third, is an uprooted intermediate form that stands at the same height as the artist.
Three new bronze works complete the ecosystem: Lovers I, Lovers II, and Lovers III, in each of which flower “couples” are caught in moments of heightened intimacy. Stemming from a lineage of works like Brancusi’s The Kiss and Louise Bourgeois’ The Couple, Lovers I depicts the entanglement between an orchid and anthurium blossom growing from the same shared stem. Lovers II portrays an encounter between hermaphroditic blooming forms inspired by the eroticism in Robert Mapplethorpe’s and Georgia O'Keefe's floral obsessions.
Blossoming from Darwin’s orchid theories and the artist’s own personal experiences with the flowers that emerged from the scorched earth all around her studio after the Eaton Fires earlier this year, Alien Spring explores coevolution, catastrophe and rebirth, pollination, cross-species intercourse, and hybridity while imagining what new kinds of life and relationships might emerge out of seismic political, personal and climatic events.
– Ben Lee Ritchie Handler
Isabelle Albuquerque’s formally powerful and psychologically charged sculpture invites multiple, simultaneous readings and perspectives. With a background in performance, Albuquerque uses her own body to investigate the protean nature of identity and to create a cross-temporal conversation that centers the experiences of women and their own connection to desire, sexuality and embodiment.
Albuquerque (b. 1981) studied architecture and theater at Barnard College and lives and works in her native Los Angeles. Exhibitions include Alien Spring, Nicodim, New York (2025, solo, forthcoming); Isabelle Albuquerque and Louise Bourgeois: The Wandering Womb, lumber room, Portland (2025); Witchcraft, Magic, and Occult Knowledge, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto (2025); It Smells Like Girl, Jeffery Deitch and Company Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); The Amber of this Moment, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2025); Portals to Unwritten Time, Perrotin, Paris (2025); The Neverending Story: The Dream, Vito Schnabel Gallery, St. Moritz (2024); Isabelle Albuquerque X Robert Therrien, The Studio of Robert Therrien, Los Angeles (2024); Echoes of Eden: A Return to Bosch's Garden, curated by Gaïa Jacquet-Matisse and Peter Brant Jr., Private residence, New York (2024); Post Human, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2024); DISEMBODIED, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN, Nicodim in collaboration with the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Orgy for Ten People in One Body, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2022, solo); BodyLand, curated by Lauren Taschen, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2022); Skin in the Game, curated by Zoe Lukov, Chicago (2022) and Miami (2021); The Emerald Tablet, curated by Ariana Papademetropolous, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2021); Nuestrxs Putxs, Human Resources, Los Angeles (2021); and Sextet, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020, solo). Albuquerque’s work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Artforum, L’officiel, and Flash Art. Last year she released Orgy for Ten People in One Body (Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim, Pacific, 2023), a 450 page monograph about the series that includes conversations with the artists Miranda July and Arthur Jafa.