
Margaret Humeau
Through Mar 30, 2025
Select Days
From: 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Explore alternative worlds at Marguerite Humeau: \*sk\*/ey- at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, on view from December 3, 2024, to March 30, 2025. This large-scale solo exhibition marks the first major institutional presentation of Humeau's work in the United States, featuring newly commissioned sculptures and video installations.
The exhibition immerses viewers in speculative futures shaped by the ongoing climate crisis. Humeau's abstract narratives propose a post-human existence where nomadic beings live in perpetual motion, detached from the Earth’s surface. Through meticulously researched and multidisciplinary methods, Humeau explores the intersections of materiality, temporality and human existence. Her works are often informed by collaborations with a diverse range of experts, including anthropologists and paleontologists, who help the artist blend scientific knowledge with imaginative mythologies.
The title, *\*sk\*/ey-*, references an ancient proto-Indo-European term for shedding or splitting, which reflects Humeau’s vision of a world undergoing transformation. The exhibition begins with a newly commissioned video that portrays a human-made eternal sun, a mass migration and the evolution of earthbound life forms into sky-dwelling beings. This narrative is reinforced by a haunting soundtrack that mirrors the shift in landscapes and lifeforms.
At the heart of the exhibition, Humeau’s sculptures evoke a desert landscape in flux. The artist uses materials such as carved walnut, cast rubber, handblown glass and silk to create three central sculptures that appear to rise from the ground, reminiscent of the decomposing bodies buried within the soil. Another group of sculptures, perched throughout the space, seem to have torn themselves from the Earth, transforming into feathered, winged figures. These intricate works, shaped through processes like dying, casting, and rusting, conjure imagery of melting bark, caked mud and golden sunlight.
Humeau’s work has been exhibited internationally, including solo shows at the New Museum in New York and Tate Britain in London. Her latest project, Orisons, a 160-acre earthwork in Colorado, continues her exploration of the boundaries between the natural world and imagined futures.