Argentine artist Gabriel Chaile's towering adobe sculptures are making an indelible mark on galleries worldwide, both literally and figuratively. As High Line Art curator Cecilia Alemani jokingly warned dealers at Marianne Boesky Gallery during the opening of Chaile's recent exhibition, they might never completely remove the adobe dust from the gallery's corners. The 40-year-old artist, who creates monumental works inspired by pre-Columbian ceramics from northwest Argentina, uses traditional adobe materials that inevitably leave traces wherever his sculptures are installed.
Chaile's artistic mission extends far beyond creating visually striking works. Born in 1985 in San Miguel de Tucumán in northwestern Argentina, he draws inspiration from the modestly sized ceramics of pre-Columbian communities, transforming their forms into towering abstract sculptures that can reach up to 10 feet in height. His work serves as a powerful reminder of Indigenous cultures that were displaced by European colonizers, addressing a history of dispossession that remains poorly understood by many Argentinians today.
'There are very few people left in Argentina that are Indigenous to the place where they are [now],' Chaile explained in a recent interview conducted in Spanish through a translator. His sculptures seek to honor the culture and knowledge that was lost during colonization, immortalizing these traditions and projecting them into the future. The artist, who is of Spanish, Afro-Arab, and Candelaria ancestry, compares his work to the oral histories passed down by his grandmother, Rosario Liendro, who kept family stories alive through repetition.
The creation process itself reflects Chaile's commitment to community building and cultural preservation. His studio ships metal armatures in pieces to exhibition locations, where they are coated with adobe created on-site by Chaile and his crew. This hands-on approach inevitably spreads adobe dust throughout installation spaces, creating lasting physical reminders of the work's presence. Margot Norton, chief curator of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, recalls a colleague's amazement at seeing adobe everywhere during Chaile's 2023 installation at her California institution.
Chaile's international profile has grown dramatically in recent years, with his career reaching new heights following his inclusion in curator Cecilia Alemani's 2022 Venice Biennale. The exhibition featured several of his towering sculptures, each resembling creatures with stubby legs and bulbous bodies, including one with an elongated neck that rose closer to the Arsenale's rafters than any other artwork in the show. This piece was titled after his grandmother, Rosario Liendro, connecting personal history with broader cultural themes.
The artist's current exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, running through October 18, represents just one stop in an extensive world tour that has brought his work to multiple continents. Recent exhibitions have taken place in Montana, Uruguay, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Berlin's ChertLüdde gallery, which has represented his work since 2018. Next year, Chaile is scheduled to participate in the Biennale of Sydney, further expanding his international reach.
Despite his growing visibility, Chaile maintains a remarkably humble presence that contrasts sharply with the monumentality of his sculptures. His approach to titling works reflects this complexity – pieces bear deceptively simple names like 'Candelaria' (2025), which resembles a faceless bird without talons, decorated with crayon markings that don't actually derive from Candelaria culture. Through these titles, Chaile poses fundamental questions about identity and cultural authenticity.
Valeria Pecoraro, a director at Buenos Aires-based Barro gallery, which has shown Chaile's work since 2019, notes that 'he's really moved by something that goes beyond his own time. He is always looking for an origin of things, an origin of ideas, an origin of cultures.' This archaeological approach to art-making began during Chaile's studies, when he received a scholarship to study in Buenos Aires after attending art school near his hometown.
Initially trained in traditional oil painting and clay sculpture, Chaile's breakthrough came when he realized that adobe – a material his family had used practically during his childhood – could serve more conceptual purposes. His early sculptures directly copied objects from the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta, which houses artifacts more than two millennia old. Gradually, he began moving away from literal reproduction toward creating what he describes as 'combinations of animal forms and human forms' – hybrid creatures that blur boundaries between species.
The functional aspect of Chaile's work became apparent around 2010 when his sculptures began serving as working ovens. 'My family was always making bread, and that influenced the idea to make ovens,' he explained. This practical dimension reached its peak during a 2018 Art Basel exhibition in Buenos Aires, curated by Cecilia Alemani, where viewers could toast empanadas by inserting them into a fiery opening in the back of an imposing adobe sculpture with breast-like appendages for legs.
Norton, the BAMPFA curator who included Chaile in the 2021 New Museum Triennial that significantly raised his international profile, emphasizes how his works depend on community engagement for their full impact. 'He's working with people in the production of the work, and also allowing the work itself to exist beyond the space of the gallery or museum where it's shown,' she observed. 'It's about the experience that sculpture can conjure. He's so generous.'
Chaile's commitment to community building extends beyond his artistic practice. In the mid-2010s, he curated exhibitions for other artists at La Verdi, a project space in Buenos Aires's La Boca neighborhood run by artist Ana Gallardo. The space provided Chaile with both a place to work and, secretly for a time, to live. Currently based in Lisbon, where he became stranded during the 2020 pandemic and has remained since, he continues fostering artistic networks by employing local graffiti artists in his studio to help create his sculptures.
'Each setup of a show or a sculpture is really a coming together of a community that he has built,' explains Pecoraro from Barro gallery. This community-oriented approach extends to the political dimensions of Chaile's work, which he frames as a form of peaceful protest. At his current Marianne Boesky exhibition, an untitled drawing of tapirs rings the gallery walls, showing groups of the animals congregating among reeds – some mating, some observing each other, others simply wandering.
The tapir imagery carries deep symbolic meaning for Chaile, who points out that these animals face extinction in South America due to hunting and human interventions like highways cutting through their forests. 'Just like persecuted Indigenous communities in Argentina,' he explains, 'the tapirs are diminishing, going down in number. Scientists talk about them being peaceful animals – they avoid killing.' He sees parallels between the tapirs' peaceful nature and an anti-Trump 'No Kings' protest he witnessed in Montana, noting that 'people were not really looking to create animosity or chaos. Just like them, the tapirs are protesting in a peaceful way.'
