MARGUERITE HUMEAU: BIRTH CANAL at the New Museum

Humeau’s New Museum exhibition follows her recent solo presentations at Tate Britain and Palais de Tokyo, and will feature a new body of digitally rendered sculptures realized in cast bronze and carved stone. The forms and scale of these works reflect the artist’s research into correspondences between the shapes of prehistoric Venus figurines and the contours of animal brains. In a darkened gallery space, a group of ten Venus-like figures will prophesize the extinction of their offspring—humankind—in an ominous scene of polyphonic trance. These sculptures will appear formally ambiguous, resembling brains, figures, or spirits of different ages and statuses, and will evoke mediums or visionaries engaged in a conversation that is part convocation and part choral lament. With allusions to animism, totemism, and spiritual travel, Humeau’s installation offers a forum for these imagined voices and premonitions and underscores the brevity of human existence relative to cosmic and geologic time.