ALLORA & CALZADILLA

In the main gallery, a new body of work titled Pulse (2025) invites us to contemplate the interdependence of human gesture and planetary rhythm. Each iteration of the series begins with a 24-hour printout of the so-called “Earth’s Pulse”—a faint, recurring seismic signal detected every 26 seconds by global monitoring stations. Arranged in precise grids, these records are then transformed through the artists’ hand-drawn interventions. Delicate linework cuts across disparate seismogram traces, introducing new temporal markers and aesthetic connections that defy the logic of pure measurement. The resulting compositions become hybrid forms—part scientific document, part gestural drawing—that fuse Earth’s slow, inaudible beat with the human impulse to respond, resonate, and reimagine through corporeal expression. With Pulse, Allora & Calzadilla ask not only what can be recorded, but what can be felt—and how this attunement links us to deeper planetary, trans-historical vibrations.

Further into the exhibition space, the recent Lightbound sculpture series (2025) expands the artists’ inquiry into the interplay of technical and embodied sensing, opening onto unseen forces that generate unusual sculptural forms. Modeled after the adaptive intelligence of climbing vines in tropical rainforests such as those in the Caribbean, each sculpture echoes the liana’s capacity to reach toward the sun. These entangled plants navigate their surroundings by sensing light and spatial cues, advancing in collaboration with other plants and agents of the rainforest. The sinuous, elongated volumes of Allora & Calzadilla’s Lightbound works are not mere representations of nature, but the outcome of a process that mirrors its sensuous logic. Working with molten glass, the artists collaborated with master glassblowers in an intimate choreography of heat, gravity, and breath. The human body— specifically, the glassblower’s exhalation—becomes an instrument of transformation, channeling energy into form. Threaded with fiber-optic filaments and directly connected to Paris’s electrical grid, the sculptures pulse in real time with fluctuating intensities of light, responding to the city’s shifting energy load. By revealing infrastructures that usually recede into the background, Lightbound stages a convergence of bodily adaptation, technological mediation, and the resilience of ecosystems—specifically those, like Puerto Rico, under colonial rule. It underscores the artists’ long-standing inquiry into the ecopoetics of light— energy understood not only as a carrier of information, but as a planetary force shaped by flows of capital, history, and ecological vulnerability.

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Jennifer Allora (born in 1974, Philadelphia, USA). Guillermo Calzadilla (born in 1971, La Havana, Cuba).

Allora & Calzadilla live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Since the beginning of their collaborative practice in 1995, Allora & Calzadilla have developed an experimental and innovative practice that addresses the entanglements between history, ecology, and geopolitics using a multiplicity of artistic media that includes performance, sculpture, sound, video, photography, and painting.

Allora & Calzadilla have presented solo exhibitions at major international institutions including: Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin (2025); La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2025); Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao (2024); Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2024); Archeological Park of Pompeii, Pompeii (2024); Serralves Museum, Porto (2023); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2022); Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro (2022); The Menil Collection, Houston (2020); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2019); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (2019); Portland Art Museum, Portland (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao (2019); Tate Modern, London (2019); Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2018); Museu Tàpies, Barcelona (2018); MAXXI, Rome (2018); Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2016); DIA Art Foundation, Guayanilla and Penuelas (2015); Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2014); Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney (2012); Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis (2012); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010), U.S. Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale – International Art Exhibition, Venice (2011); The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2009); Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin (2009); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2008); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007); Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2007); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2007); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006).

Their work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as: Akita Museum of Art, Akita (2025); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2025); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2025); Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2025); ByArtMatters, Hangzhou (2024); S.M.A.K., Ghent (2024); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2024); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth (2024); Long Museum, Shanghai (2024); Marciano Collection, Los Angeles (2024); Depo, Istanbul (2024); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Monterrey (2024); The Menil Collection, Houston (2024); Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2023); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2023); MAXXI, Rome (2023); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2022); Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection, Paris (2022); Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busan (2021); The Bass, Miami (2020), Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2020); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2020); Hayward Gallery, London (2020); Bonniers Kunsthalle, Stockholm (2020); National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2020); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2020), among others.

Their works have joined the collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Philadephia Museum of Art, Philadephia; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Tate Modern, London; Serralves Museum, Porto; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich; Collection Lambert, Avignon; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; The Menil Collection, Houston; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Long Museum, Shanghai; Leeum Museum, Seoul; The Bass, Miami; MAXXI, Rome; ICA Miami, Miami; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis; Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Krefeld; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; TBA21 Collection, Madrid; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; The National Museum of Art Osaka, Osaka; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museion: Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Bolzano; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa; National Museum of Art of Norway, Oslo; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Pinault Collection, Paris, among others.