Clara Maria Apostolatos

Clara Maria Apostolatos is a contributor to the Brooklyn Rail.

With its instructive title, Do Ho Suh: Walk the House invites visitors to move through a life—room by room, and seam by seam. The exhibition charts Suh’s decades-long investigation into the architectures of memory, from intimate dwellings and household fixtures to state-sanctioned monuments. His iconic 1:1 fabric reconstructions of domestic interiors—paired here with works on paper and collaborative performances—ask what it means and what remains when the places we once called home exist only as impressions.

Do Ho Suh, Nest/s, 2024. Polyester, stainless steel, 161 ½ × 147 ⅘ × 846 inches. © Do Ho Suh. Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Photo: Jeon Taeg Su.

A year after publishing her essay “truth is, or is not” in the Brooklyn Rail, Martha Rosler returns with an exhibition of the same name—staging in images the very crises she outlined in writing: media distortion, conspiratorial thinking, and the erosion of journalistic standards.

Martha Rosler, It Lingers…, 1993. Installation with color photographs, text, and photocopies. © Martha Rosler. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.

For her latest exhibition at PROXYCO Gallery, Sofía Gallisá Muriente ventures into spaces where memory resides—elusive, fragmented, or obscured—to unearth “unknown unknowns,” the aspects of history we cannot yet name or imagine. 

Installation view: Sofía Gallisá Muriente: Unknown Unknowns at PROXYCO Gallery, 2024–2025 New York. Courtesy PROXYCO Gallery.
Through his performances, Martiel orchestrates situations of physical and psychological duress, allowing him to embody and make visible the oppression that has shaped the lived experiences of migrant, Latinx, and Black communities, among others. Cuerpo offers a mid-career survey of two decades of his key performances, featuring photographs, videos, and preparatory drawings.
Carlos Martiel, Prodigal Son [Hijo prodigio], 2010. Video documenta+on of performance at House Witch, Liverpool, United Kingdom. Photo: Alex Panda.
Here Everywhere at Nicelle Beauchene offers a retrospective glimpse of selected artworks created over nearly fifteen years. The “In Resin” series features objects encased in yellow resin, transformed into three-dimensional geometries that reveal glimpses of the items trapped within.
Lucy Puls, Equulus Duo (Two Horseys), 1993. Resin, steel, toy horses, 6 1/2 x 12 x 5 inches. Courtesy the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Photo: JSP Art Photography.
In the wake of the feminist art movement’s emergence during the 1960s and early 1970s, the Italian-Venezuelan artist Tecla Tofano addressed the uneasy position of women working within—or against—a history that systematically reinforced patriarchal perspectives with La mujer en la historia (Women in History) (1975).
Tecla Tofano, La mujer en la Historia (Women in History), 1975. Glazed ceramic, 10 1/2 x 7 x 5 inches. Courtesy James Cohan, New York. Photo: Phoebe d'Heurle.
For his latest exhibition, The Monument, The Monster, and The Maquette, Rakowitz reframes the construction of monuments—those ostensibly enduring structures and lasting historical symbols, which in recent years have become subjects of calls for removal and reclamation—as an ongoing work in progress, akin to crafting a preliminary model for fixing memory to image.
Installation view: Michael Rakowitz: The Monument, The Monster, and The Maquette, Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo: Arturo Sanchez.
Although the show’s title, Chosen Memories, may afford its artists greater agency, it also illustrates the challenging terrain of ongoing debates concerning cultural preservation, identity, and the multifaceted narratives that shape our understanding of the region. MoMA’s exhibition reminds us how important it is to actively engage with history, not only as a passive observer but as an agent of transformation, working towards a future that reflects our collective values and aspirations.
Thiago Rocha Pitta. Herança (Heritage), 2007. 16mm film transferred to video (color, sound), 11 minutes. Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Sebastián Cisneros-Santiago. © Thiago Rocha Pitta.
Loriel Beltrán’s first solo presentation with Lehmann Maupin, Calor y Color (Heat and Color), explores the subject of light and how it is created, perceived, and materialized through vibrant color. Close inspection of his works reveals that congealed paint creates surfaces that ripple like water rather than drippings or brushwork. Beltrán pours diverse hues of paint into specially crafted molds and allows them to dry for extended periods. This laborious process is repeated numerous times over the course of months. Once the paint has fully settled, Beltrán slices open the canvas, revealing a tapestry of stratified bands of paint in mesmerizing layers of vivid color that seem to undulate and converge, forming an entirely new visual field.
Loriel Beltrán, Yellow Purple, 2022. Latex paint on panel, 66 x 58.25 x 2 inches. © Loriel Beltrán. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London and CENTRAL FINE, Miami Beach. Photo: Zachary Balber.
It is tempting to think of Bispo’s work, like that of other artists conventionally grouped under the parameters of the “Outsider” or other approximate synonyms, as launching back and forth from the margins of society to the forefront of artistic innovation. But such a simplistic view misses the complexity and depth of his artistry.
Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Untitled [Manto da apresentação (Annunciation garment)], n.d. Fabric, thread, ink, found materials, fiber, 46 × 55 × 2 inches. Courtesy Americas Society. Photo: Rafael Adorjan.
It is not easy to unravel the different strands of Andrea Fraser’s institutional critique, which remains as clever, wry and provocative as ever. The artist has opened her first US commercial gallery show in over a decade at Marian Goodman, a six-piece survey showcasing the artist’s decades-long study of systems of power embedded within the art system. Bringing together photography, film, and installation art, the show traces her longstanding commitment to addressing local and global issues of structural inequality and marks a shift in Fraser’s angle and attitude in her critical approach—an incited reckoning with questions of social justice.
Andrea Fraser, Reporting from São Paulo, I'm from the United States, 1998. 5 channel SD video installation, color, sound; 5 min. 40 sec., 4 min. 6 sec., 2 min. 25 sec., 5 min. 16 sec., 6 min. 50 sec. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. Copyright: Andrea Fraser.

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