Isabelle Albuquerque

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

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 multivalent 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. In her latest series of sculptures, Orgy for 10 People in One Body, Albuquerque marries ancient and contemporary technologies such as 3D scanning and robotic carving, rendered across multiple materials each with their own agency and complex history. These life size sculptures transition from bronze, wood, plaster, rubber, and wax to synthetic resins and human hair. Empathetic, subversive, confrontational and steeped in cultural memory, Albuquerque’s works are often caught in an intangible state of transformation that speaks to the dynamics of sexuality, violence and power throughout human history and to our present volatile moment - where the very idea of the human and the limits of the body are being confronted with unprecedented metamorphosis. Isabelle Albuquerque was born in 1981 in Los Angeles where she lives and works today. Albuquerque studied architecture and theater at Barnard College. As a founding member of the music and performance duo Hecuba, she released three albums between 2006 and 2012 and performed at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, The Walker Art...

Artwork