Each piece is like a small private garden, a nature of its own.
—Carolina Carubin
A fallen branch, a piece of reed, a thread that wraps without tightening. Carolina Carubin doesn’t work from a distance, but from a silent intimacy with what she finds and its singular qualities. Time, weight, gravity, and tension shape each one of her pieces.
Born from the humidity of the Argentine delta, her figures seem to recall a pre-verbal condition. Rather than imposing a method, her practice listens to what the environment offers and then responds with a gesture, a union, an alteration that doesn’t erase the origin of the material but prolongs its story. In the artist’s own words: “I’m interested in intertwining natural elements with what is made by my hands, finding a complicity between what is given and what is created.”
In Silent Reach, her first solo exhibition in Washington, D.C., she presents recent sculptures and assemblages that mark a turning point in her practice: an openness to color, to the ready-made, to new material combinations and modes of display. They remain soft, organic bodies, yet they move away from craft orthodoxy to open up their own system—a quiet, unbounded language that experiments with minimalism, and allows itself to be transformed.
Related to artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Beatriz Morales, or Ana Teresa Barbosa, Carubin’s work doesn’t aim to please or define. Instead, she invites the viewer to stay, to observe. For that contemplation to become a visual pleasure and, as she puts it, “to raise questions that don’t necessarily need answers.”
Her textile practice is intuitive and meticulous: she selects, sews, adjusts, wraps, and adds. That insistence unfolds through compositions that blend the eye’s accuracy with the hand’s improvisation. Each one holds a small ecosystem, where cavities, membranes, skeletons, stems, roots, caterpillars, and spider webs coexist. Overlapping contradictions, emerging questions—and in between, details that invite silent wonder.
Camila Palacios
This exhibition showcases textile-based sculptures and installations that explore the relationship between textiles and nature. Each piece invites us to contemplate the concept of reaching—both physically and metaphorically— symbolizing our connections and transformations. With forms that stretch and unfold, these artworks reveal how materials interact with their surroundings, echoing the remarkable adaptability and resilience found in the natural world.
Carolina Carubin, who initially trained in architecture in Mendoza, has developed a multidisciplinary visual art practice since relocating to Buenos Aires in 2012. She studied under Paula Rivero and Mirta Kupferminc and participated in workshops with leading artists and curators. Her work involves a diverse range of materials and formats, including paper techniques, soft sculpture, and text-based practices.
Mónica Medina-Porro
Director and Co-Curator
IDB Staff Association Art Gallery
WORKS
Contact the gallery to inquire about available works
