Collateral, Venice
Lita Albuquerque
Liquid Light
OlivoloBardo LA is honored to present Liquid Light, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles artist Lita Albuquerque, and Bardo LA’s third official Collateral Event at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Selected by the curator of Biennale Arte 2022 Cecilia Alemani, the Collateral Events are an integral section of the Exhibition. Curated by Elizabeta Betinski and Neville Wakefield, Albuquerque’s Liquid Light is a multidimensional experience that features the world premiere of Albuquerque’s new film by the same name, exhibited in harmony with the artist’s signature installation gestures that have earned her a celebrated place in the Light and Space and Land Art movements, both nationally and abroad. Albuquerque is one of the rare artists and humanists who are responsible for thoughtfully and imaginatively placing the elemental concepts for a living, functional cosmology for 21st century culture within public consciousness. A hybridized landscape where ancient myths and future fictions co-mingle and act upon the body to transform the realm of the possible is the subject of Liquid Light, the second film in a trilogy. The female astronaut of Albuquerque’s film transmits an otherworldly knowledge across the planes of the celestial and terrestrial. Hers is a subjectivity constituted in the space between the outer reaches of the imagination and the emotionally submerged land she discovers on Earth. Mirroring the threshold state in which humanity finds itself today, Albuquerque’s heroine is likewise caught between light and darkness, unable to avoid a metamorphosis triggered by her initial failure to communicate the poetics of Cosmic harmony to Earth’s inhabitants. An amalgam of iconography, biography, and emotional landscapes that embody a deeply personal mythology, Albuquerque’s film is exhibited as a multi-screen installation, inviting the viewer into the heroine’s journey. Filmed on location in Bolivia by David McFarland, with costumes by Jillian Oliver, edited in Los Angeles by Nicole McDonald, and featuring Jasmine Albuquerque as choreographer, dancer and performer, the film is exhibited in concert with installation components created locally in collaboration with Venetians, from glass blowers and artisans, to beekeepers and farmers. By sourcing materials locally in Venice and the region of Veneto, Albuquerque and Bardo LA intend to be a part of the solution to the issue of a considerable carbon footprint created in the name of exhibiting art. This exhibition aims to support the local community in their efforts to preserve their ancient crafts while building a sustainable future. “My 25th century astronaut character seeks to reacquaint us with our stellar origins. As she takes on human form, she re-experiences a myth from Lake Titicaca where an ancient being was said to bring light in the form of gold to earth and is caught between her mission and her newly embodied human emotions. Her mission is incomplete and she will return – there is an inextinguishable fire she feels in attempting to bring the knowledge of the celestial to the terrestrial,” states Albuquerque. Lita Albuquerque was born in Santa Monica, California and raised in Tunisia and Paris. At the age of eleven she settled with her family in the U.S. In the 1970s Albuquerque emerged on the California art scene as part of the Light and Space movement and won acclaim for her epic and poetic ephemeral pigment paintings pertaining to mapping, identity and the cosmos. Her site-specific artworks have spanned the globe including: the Great Pyramids of Giza, Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, the Saudi Arabian and Mojave deserts and the Washington Monument. She was winner of the sixth International Cairo Biennale Prize (1996) and a National Science Foundation award for Stellar Axis (2006-2007). Additional honors include: an Arts International award for U.S. artist representative for the Cairo Biennale; three National Endowment for the Arts: Art in Public Places Awards, a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship in the Visual Arts, Perugia, Italy. Her performance works were presented at: Desert X, Laguna Museum of Art, Mount Wilson Observatory, and the Getty’s Museum Pacific Standard Time Festival. Exhibitions include: Hirschhorn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, MOCA LA, Orange County Museum of Art, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, a career survey at Santa Monica Museum of Art and most recently Light and Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark, and Land Art: Expanding the Atlas, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada. She is featured in numerous public and private collections internationally, including: the Getty Trust, LACMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art NY and LA, Museum of Contemporary Art LA, Whitney Museum of Art, the archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and her Stellar Axis archive is held in the collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. Albuquerque is represented by Kohn Gallery and Peter Blake Gallery. Bardo LA is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit arts organization dedicated to promoting international dialogue in arts and culture through traveling exhibitions and events; making art available in public spaces; and supporting the local creative community by way of partnering with like-minded entities. Bardo LA is inspired by the Tibetan Buddhist concept of bardo as the astral state of the soul between two lives on Earth. The organization’s work contemplates this ancient concept of the in-between space by creating and supporting projects that cultivate creative exploration and risk taking, artistic collaboration, and innovation fueled by curiosity and a sense of wonder. Since its founding in 2014, Bardo LA has produced and presented two official Collateral Events, for Biennale Arte 2015 and Biennale Arte 2019, numerous public art projects and, most recently, a site-specific sculpture by Los Angeles artist Sherin Guirguis at the historic Giza Pyramids Plateau in Egypt.