Teresa Solar Abboud’s sculptural practice finds interest in the surreal corporeality of interconnected lifeforms—cellular, microbial, human, animal, marine, geologic—underscoring their organic essence and alien uncanniness. Her sculptures are modeled after natural forms, but their exteriors often have an electric hue and machine-like sheen finish, blurring the boundary between real and imagined. In Tu sombra sustituida1, she presents a new body of work that delves deeper into the dislocation of the self, the divide between body and psyche, and the strange, visceral rapture triggered in host bodies in the process of pregnancy, as they gestate a foreign life within their own.

In Self-portrait as a pregnant woman, the soft pink and red fleshy hue of the work suggests an interconnected, rib-like appendage unfolding or expanding—a thoracic opening through which a gestating body relinquishes its autonomy to make room for the stranger taking shape. For Solar Abboud, this is a nod to the art historical trope of the reclining nude, which has long eroticized the female form while disregarding the euphoric monstrosity involved in the process of metamorphosis—leaving behind a former skin to embrace a new identity centered around mothering and prioritizing this newly formed entity.

Symbiont deepens her study of microbe universes and the multiplicity of complex ecosystems of organisms that coexist within one another. Timothy Morton, in Queer ecology, describes this community as “strange strangers”—familiar yet uncanny, their uniqueness inseparable from the others they compose. Morton argues that life forms cannot be categorized without violence, yet their interdependence reveals a shared connection: “Every life-form is familiar, since we are related to it”2. Symbiont, with its tentacle-like appendages resembling a parasitic insect, whose mandibles suck and encircle its host, twisting and grabbing onto it, embodies the desire to connect, touch, and intertwine with the Other.

Tu sombra sustituida also features two new works from the Tuneladora series, shifting dramatically from their characteristic hallucinogenic hues to a more spectral essence, defined by an overall bold matte black with deep marine blue edges. Inspired by the subway tunnel machines that burrow into the earth, the Tuneladoras summon the raw, geologic essence of the earth’s core. The hybrid biomorphic sculptures from this series recall animal fragments, teeth, or shreds of bodies from deep time—blending ancient geocidal history with future machine entities. The first Tuneladora sculpture we find in the space appears like a crustacean carcass pulled from the ground, a biramous appendage with sharp, rounded edges either grasping forth or in a state of decay. The second Tuneladora, descending from above, has not been pulled from the earth but from an alternate alien dimension. Its sharp, spiked limb gives it a menacing presence, poised to attack or defend itself.

The exhibition also includes a suite of new watercolor and black ballpoint pen drawings in blue and red colors, that connect with the sculptures. Solar Abboud’s intuitive, accumulative research process involves layered sketchbooks collaged with zoological forms from books or magazines, drawings exploring various creatures, and extensive notes reflecting on cited texts and her own corporeality. These notebooks and the resulting drawings inform her sculptures, often envisioning fantastical shapes before they can be physically realized. While existing within the sculptural universe, the drawings also suggest potential forms that perhaps one day will come to fruition. The figures in the blue drawings, though appear simple, carry conceptual depth, balancing looseness with control. In contrast, the red shapes are more aggressive, featuring hybrid forms—sharp mouths, body fragments, insects, and birds—in surreal compositions. For the artist, these images evoke tension, visceral intensity, and unsettling, symbolically charged narratives.

Like many of Solar Abboud’s works, this exhibition draws from her own lived corporeality—specifically, her physical and psychological transformation into motherhood and the implications of being displaced from one’s own body. It addresses the idea of not succumbing to the shadow of oneself, but rather embracing the capacity to shapeshift and, in turn, to form, nurture, and carry the foreigner within. What might appear as an alien intruder serves as a reminder of the other communities of organisms that reside within us, highlighting the interconnected ecosystem of forms to which we, too, belong.

(Text by Jovanna Venegas)

Notes

1 This title was borrowed from the artist Lucia C. Pino from her poem Cling 2 beauty (2024).
2 Morton, T. (2010). Guest column: queer ecology. In PMLA.