Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami - Marguerite Humeau: \*sk\*/ey-
Marguerite Humeau presents her first significant institutional exhibition in the United States, delving into form by investigating the abstract stories of alternative realities.
Humeau employs laboratory-like techniques to rigorously test materiality and time, delving into the enigmas of human existence from ancient histories to speculative futures. Her work is deeply researched and often created in collaboration with experts, including anthropologists, paleontologists, foragers, and clairvoyants, blending knowledge generation with the crafting of new mythologies. “I extract essences of real events and extend into ‘what if?’ scenarios,” Humeau expresses. “I prototype worlds that are unseen, extinct, or parallel to our own.” Drawing from forgotten concepts and extinct species, she uses imagination and research to bridge existing gaps in various realms of knowledge.
In a major new installation, Humeau conjures a desert setting. She references art historian Petra Lange-Berndt’s observation that “the soil is full of decomposed bodies” as inspiration for three sculptures that seem to rise from the ground in the center of the space. Crafted from organic materials like 150-year-old carved walnut, cast rubber, hand-blown glass, and semi-translucent embellished silk, their surfaces evoke both mold and flesh, appearing to emerge as protrusions of the earth.
ICA Miami presents ‘\*sk\*/ey-,’ a significant solo exhibition by artist Marguerite Humeau, featuring newly commissioned sculptures and video installations. This immersive display marks Humeau’s first major institutional showcase in the United States, where she explores form through the abstract narratives of alternative realities. Addressing the looming threat of climate change, the sculptures are designed to pollinate, bloom, and protect, suggesting a potentially unavoidable lifestyle where nomadic beings inhabit the air and are always in movement.
The exhibition derives its title from the ancient proto-Indo-European word “sk-ey,” meaning to shed or split, hinting at a mysterious transformation of Earth. Humeau envisions a world in constant change, where soil disintegrates and morphs into airborne nomadic entities. The exhibit opens with a newly commissioned video narrating the cosmos of a human-made eternal sun, a vast migration, and the metamorphosis of terrestrial beings into unmoored, roaming inhabitants of the sky. Accompanying the video, a soundtrack captures the essence of a shifting landscape with evocative tunes that occasionally break into visceral, rhythmic sounds.
Another group of sculptures, positioned throughout the space, appears to have torn themselves from the soil. Their silhouettes reminiscent of matriarchal figures, these artworks seem to have transformed from plant-like forms into winged, feather-shaped entities. The materials—blown glass, semi-translucent silk, waxed felt, and raw wool—underwent intricate processes of dyeing, dipping, casting, and rusting, resulting in elaborate details reminiscent of mold, dried mud, melting bark, flames, and golden sunlight. Functioning as closed systems, these nomadic beings “house” themselves independently and populate the exhibition area, poised high on the walls as if they could take flight at any moment.
