Geles Cabrera: Museo Escultórico

Geles Cabrera: Museo Escultórico explores the legacy of Mexican sculptor Geles Cabrera, presenting a selection of works created over 40 years of the artist’s career, along with archival materials. Her work is characterized by an interest in the human body, interrogating and challenging its limits and definitions. After undergoing formal training in sculpture in the 1940s in Mexico City and Havana, Cabrera found her own aesthetic, creating forms between abstraction and figuration while embracing and experimenting with varied sculptural media. 

Directly carving and molding such materials as bronze, volcanic rock, or terracotta, Cabrera’s sculptures explore embodiment through gestural poses, texture, and suggested movement. Cabrera particularly engages with female forms, creating numerous sculptures that offer affective representations of femininity. Over the years, her artistic practice stretched in new directions to incorporate large-scale collaborative public art projects and experiments with plexiglass and papier-mâché. Throughout much of her career, Cabrera ran her own museum, the Museo Escultórico Geles Cabrera, which she opened in 1966 and from which the current exhibition takes its name. Cabrera’s interest in sharing her work with her community can be seen as her way of carving out a unique space for her artwork and telling her story on her own terms. 

This exhibition is curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Tie Jojima, and Rachel Remick.

The presentation of Museo Escultórico is made possible by the generous support from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation. The project is also supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by the Smart Family Foundation, the William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and Galería Agustina Ferreyra. 

Americas Society acknowledges the generous support from the Arts of the Americas Circle contributors: Estrellita B. Brodsky, Virginia Cowles Schroth, Emily A. Engel, Diana Fane, Galeria Almeida e Dale, Isabella Hutchinson, Carolina Jannicelli, Vivian Pfeiffer, Phillips, Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti, Erica Roberts, Diana López and Herman Sifontes, and Edward J. Sullivan.