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with text from essay by Sarah Montross, Ph.D., Museum Director and Chief of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum at the Clark Art Institute -
Gabriela Albergaria explores relationships between nature and humans, often focusing on care, healing, and our manipulation of the environment. She draws us into less noticed phases of lifecycles, like decomposition, or expansive geologic time that vastly exceeds human-centered experience. Through the reverent attention of her eye and hand, she magnifies the importance of pausing, rest, and restoration amid these seemingly fallow or inert periods. The meditative nature in her work generates a fuller appreciation of how phases of life and death travel in a reliant circle.
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The nurse tree drawings, which she calls Landscapes in Repair, point us toward a throughline in Albergaria’s work: the idea of curing. Curing is, of course, a way to describe healing an illness, but it also refers to the preservation of organic materials, often food, to inhibit rapid decomposition and protect from microbial growth. Curing is part of preparation before a long winter or a vast voyage. Albergaria cures certain found objects of the home and woods, preserving and protecting, mending and stitching them. She also takes from the common adage of the “nature cure”, that regular exposure to nature and outdoor space results in greater health, balance, and well-being.
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Landscape in Repair, Nurse log at Forêt de Soignes #2, 2025Colour pencil on paper (Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)33 1/8 x 44 7/8 in
84 x 114 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Landscape in Repair, Nurse log at Sequoia National Park #1, 2025Colour pencil on paper (Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)33 1/8 x 24 1/4 in
84 x 61.5 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Landscape in Repair, Nurse log at Forêt de Soignes #1, 2025Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)33 1/8 x 47 5/8 in
84 x 121 cm
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)
Landscape in repair Villa Dei Cedri 1, 2023-2024Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)
54 x 70 1/2 in
137 x 179 cm -
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Endangered (Castanea Sativa) #4, 2024Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)11 5/8 x 18 3/4 in
29.5 x 47.5 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Endangered (Fagus Sylvatica) #1, 2024Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)8 5/8 x 13 3/8 in
22 x 34 cm
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)
Fagus Villa Dei Cedri 1, 2023Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)
35 3/8 x 25 5/8 in
90 x 65 cm each sheet -
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Boulder transported by continental glacier- Triassic, Brooklyn Botanic #1, 2025Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)19 3/4 x 23 5/8 in
50 x 60 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Boulder transported by continental glacier- Triassic, Brooklyn Botanic #2, 2025Colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in
50 x 70 cm
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An important, less public, part of her process is her time spent outdoors on walks in forests and parks, to explore, notice, and collect minor objects, like small twigs, for future use. Albergaria brings these dead and rotting sticks back to her studio. She washes and treats the small branches with sulfur free plasticine clay. Freezing the sticks for weeks further pauses the decomposition process. Through this ritualistic cleansing process, each wooden component takes on a bone-like appearance, like a relic honoring the fallen natural world. The sticks become modular units for installations of meandering pathways that Albergaria arranges on the wall. The lines generate a micro and macro perspective: individually these are minor, entirely overlooked, or useless landscape features. Yet repaired and assembled into linear form, they become horizon lines of an imagined landscape seen from a distance.
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)
Line-Repair, 2024-2025wood sticks, Sulfur free Plastiline
49 5/8 x 115 3/8 x 1 5/8 in
126 x 293 x 4 cm -
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Brooklyn Botanical Garden 278, 2025Ink jet print on rag, color pencil on paper (Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315 gsm)24 x 23 5/8 in
61 x 60 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Brooklyn Botanical Garden 279, 2025Ink jet print on rag, colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315 gsm)24 x 23 5/8 in
61 x 60 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Villa Dei Cedri 17.53.37, 2024Ink jet print on rag, colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)34 5/8 x 31 3/4 in
88 x 80.5 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Sequoia National Park #1, 2023Ink jet print on rag, colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)35 7/8 x 39 3/8 in
91 x 100 cm
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Sequoia National Park #2, 2023Ink jet print on rag, colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)33 7/8 x 39 3/8 in
86 x 100 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)Cedar at San Francisco Botanic Garden, 2025Ink jet print on rag, colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)63 x 17 3/8 in
160 x 44 cm
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)
Fagus Sylvatica at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2025Ink jet print on rag, colour pencil on paper ( Heritage Woodfree Bookwhite 315gsm)
59 x 52 3/8 in
150 x 133 cm -
The centerpiece of this exhibition, Textile Remediation, offers one more chapter into Albregaria’s meditations on decomposition and repair. This thick expansive “blanket” is composed from cloths that are used in washing machines to absorb the tints of colored clothing (and thus not stain white clothing). Ever resourceful, Albergaria noticed that these cloths don’t naturally decompose after use. Incrementally amassing the sheets wash-by-wash, she began to stich them together like a quilt, inspired by the Japanese embroidery technique Sashiko that is used to recover clothes in poor condition and make them usable. These cloths vary in shades of soft gray and muted tans, traces of their stain-absorbing role. Cascading into the center of the gallery, the artwork resembles the aerial view of a “patchwork” of enclosed agricultural fields. The sewn lines of Textile Remediation also let us see the nearby stick installation anew, as the small twigs could be read as linear stitches on the wall.
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Gabriela Albergaria (Portugal/Belgium)
Textilremediation #4, 2023-2024Reused textiles and Colour catch, with sashiko embroidery, cotton thread
276 3/8 x 44 1/8 in
702 x 112 cm -
Gabriela Albergaria is a Portuguese artist who lives and works between Brussels and Lisbon. With a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Oporto, she has been awarded numerous scholarships and artistic residencies, such as Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2000/2001) with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) / Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2004) / Villa Arson, Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Nice (2008) / The University of Oxford Botanic Garden, in collaboration with The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford (2009/2010), Winter Workspace, Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, New York (2012), Residency Unlimited, New York, USA (2015), Flora ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia (2015), Gate 27, Istanbul (2024).
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Her work is represented in the following collections: BESart Collection, Portugal; Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado, Portugal; CAM, Centro de Arte Moderna Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Portugal; CAPC, Portugal; Coleção da Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Portugal; Coleção António Cachola, Portugal; Coleção da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Portugal; Coleção de Arte Portuguesa Fundação EDP, Portugal; Coleção Figueiredo Ferraz, Brazil; Coleção FLAD, Portugal; Coleção Fundação PLMJ, Portugal; Coleção José Olimpio, Brazil; Coleção Luis Augusto Teixeira de Freitas (Coleção de Serralves), Portugal; Coleção Norlinda e José Lima, Portugal; Colección Coca-Cola, Spain; Colección Navacerrada, Spain; Deutsche Bank Collection, Germany; Fundación Kablanc Otazu, Spain; Jorge M. Pérez Collection, USA; KFW bankenngrupe, Frankfurt; Lars Pahlman Collection, Finland; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahía, Brazil; Museu Nacional dos Açores, Portugal; TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection.
