Abigail Lucien: Molt

In Abigail Lucien’s work, what is commonly seen as ephemeral is given permanence; molted royal palm fronds pause their decay in iron, fruit evades its possibility of expiration through gaining immortality in bronze, flowers cease to wilt through softening into pigment. Simultaneously, other ordinarily fixed substances become fluid; architectural bricks risk melting, heat gains visibility through molten traces on paper, and woven palm bags suggest a collapsing of space into a cosmic-like perpetuity. Molt plays upon the liquid state of matter that the collection of objects in this exhibition have undergone through the process of their creation, while also centering this transitional spell as not only a means to an end, but a state of being to be honored on its own.

Steeped into a tincture, hibiscus, Haïti’s national flower, stains a short poem along the gallery’s walls, reciting the fateful union of two islands as tragic lovers. Like the blooms marking their tale, the two fictitious islands ask us to consider the necessary refusal of seeing place and belonging as static, but rather as malleable concepts in constant procession. 

We encounter hibiscus again elsewhere in the gallery, this time suspended in 50 pounds of cast soap; each block’s color shifts depending on how long the petals were steeped. Here, soap becomes a metaphor for purity as it blends with the hibiscus' sanguine essence, further allowing the blocks to become ephemeral objects that meditate on ancestral care through architecture. Rebar is twice cast into a fluid rope of iron. At both ends sit iron chicken feet symbolizing protection, transformation, and tradition. 

Accompanying the floral wall pigment we find three steel papilio aristor, the scarce Haitian swallowtail. A recurrent motif in Lucien’s work, the swallowtail butterflies embody freedom in movement and imply multiple and transitory homes. Despite being scientifically registered to one side of the island yet the official symbol of the opposite side, the Afrotropical subspecies moves unconstrained by the national boundaries of Haïti and the Dominican Republic, finding home in motion across the island of Hispaniola, or Ayïti by its Taíno name.

Two other creatures of flight find themselves perpetually entangled in iron. If I Should Stay features two kissing doves melded together at the point of contact, losing themselves in each other. In a collective metalworking feat to complete this iron pour, Lucien and a group of collaborators practiced the careful choreography of pouring into the cast in tandem, trusting each other and the molten material. The resulting iron kiss is a testament to the fortitude of tenderness, a vision of romance as necessity, and boundaries as malleable.

About the Artist

Abigail Lucien (b. 1992) is a Haitian American interdisciplinary artist. Working across sculpture, literature, and time-based media, Lucien’s practice addresses themes of (be)longing, futurity, myth, and place by considering our relationship to inherited colonial structures and systems of belief/care. Implicating our relationship to material and place through an architectural vernacular, they use formal poetics to ponder concepts such as loss, love, and grief as fluid processions rather than states to reach or become.

Lucien’s work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artforum, Frieze Magazine, and Art in America. National and international exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MoMA PS1 (New York), Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore), SculptureCenter (New York), MAC Panamá (Panamá City), Frost Art Museum (Miami), Tiwani Contemporary (London), Deli Gallery (New York), Nicola Vassell Gallery (New York), and Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta). Awarded fellowships and residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Madison, Maine), Amant Studio & Research Residency (New York), the Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia), the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts (Wrocław, Poland), The Luminary (St. Louis), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe), ACRE (Steuben, Wisconsin), and Ox-Bow School of Art & Artist Residency (Saugatuck, Michigan). 

Lucien is based in New York, where they are an assistant professor and Sculpture head in the Department of Art & Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York.