The home\u2019s dissolving interior boundary suits an artist who has spent her career questioning where humans fit within the vastness of space and time. Albuquerque, 80, describes her work as examining the limits of human perception and asking what lies beyond.<\/p>\n
But she is not dwelling on what was lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I don\u2019t even think about the fire \u2014 I mean, at all,\u201d she said. \u201cLook at this,\u201d she added, gesturing around her. \u201cIt is such a different life, and I\u2019m so ecstatic about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791934700_623_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Artist Lita Albuquerque at home in Malibu. <\/p>\n
(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Albuquerque has much to look forward to. On Friday, a survey of her work, \u201cLita Albuquerque: Cosmic Land,\u201d opens at the Palm Springs Art Museum. And on Nov. 14, her installation \u201cThe Interval Between Things\u201d opens at A\u2013Z West in Joshua Tree \u2014 artist Andrea Zittel\u2019s 80-acre compound that now serves as the headquarters of High Desert Test Sites, a nonprofit presenting experimental, site-specific art.<\/p>\n
Other projects are also underway. Albuquerque\u2019s painting \u201cVisible Light\u201d (2026) will appear in \u201c80s,\u201d a group exhibition opening Nov. 7 at Des Artistes in Culver City, and she is beginning a project for the Powder Art Foundation at Powder Mountain in Utah.<\/p>\n
Albuquerque was born in Santa Monica but raised in Tunisia and Paris, returning to California with her family at age 11. She emerged in the California art world during the 1970s, associated with the Light and Space movement, which explored perception through light and the surrounding environment. She also became a pioneering figure in land art, which used the landscape as both site and material.<\/p>\n
Her practice has long spanned painting, film and performance, using movement, gesture and culture to explore the body\u2019s relationship to the landscape \u2014 and space. Whether spreading pigment across the desert floor, choreographing participants into a living drawing or appearing in her own films, Albuquerque brings a human presence into environments whose scale can dwarf it.<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791934701_75_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Artist Lita Albuquerque in Malibu in a home that was built again after the first one burned in the 2018 Woolsey fire.<\/p>\n
(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
She found the language that would help define her work with \u201cMalibu Line\u201d (1978), for which she filled a trench along a coastal bluff with ultramarine pigment. The ephemeral piece introduced an approach she would carry into the desert, using intense color to connect the scale of the human body with the immensity of earth and sky. That inquiry eventually took her far beyond California: In 2006, she led a team of artists, scientists and other specialists to Antarctica to create \u201cStellar Axis,\u201d positioning 99 blue spheres on the Ross Ice Shelf to correspond with stars above.<\/p>\n
Hannah Grossman, executive director of High Desert Test Sites, sees Albuquerque\u2019s physical engagement with the landscape as a distinguishing feature of her practice. Grossman noted that she was among the women working in a field whose history has long been dominated by men.<\/p>\n
![\""20\/20:Accelerando"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791934701_725_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201c20\/20:Accelerando\u201d (2016), video installation. Installed at the USC Fisher Museum of Art in 2016.<\/p>\n
(USC Fisher Museum of Art)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about who her contemporaries and peers are, there\u2019s something quite radical about her putting her body in so much of that work, especially that early work,\u201d Grossman said. \u201cThe work is both very much installation and also very much performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spanning five decades, the Palm Springs exhibition presents Albuquerque\u2019s multimedia practice through paintings, sculpture, installations and films, including contemporary iterations of earlier works.<\/p>\n
Visitors will be greeted at the museum\u2019s entrance by a sculpture of an imagined 25th century female astronaut, \u201cNAJMA Returns (Guardian of the Earth)\u201d (2023). The figure helps introduce the exhibition\u2019s exploration of humanity\u2019s relationship to nature; Albuquerque imagines the character as the maker of her landscape projects and considers her an alter ego.<\/p>\n
![\""Particle](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791934702_599_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cParticle Horizon\u201d (2014), video projection. Installed at the Laguna Art Museum in 2014.<\/p>\n
(Laguna Art Museum)<\/p>\n
Versions of the astronaut also appear in her films \u201c20\/20: Accelerando\u201d (2016) and \u201cLiquid Light\u201d (2022), which will be shown at the museum. Both feature her daughter, dancer and choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque, who also performed in \u201cThe Sea Is Within Me,\u201d staged live at Houston\u2019s Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern in 2025.<\/p>\n
Astrid Preston, a Santa Monica painter who has known Albuquerque since they attended UCLA in the 1960s, said that the themes and disciplines Albuquerque now combines were present from the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was interested in art and doing very personal things \u2014 figure pieces, stars, moons. The cosmos was already there,\u201d Preston said. \u201cAnd she also had performance, theatrical interests at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grossman calls Albuquerque \u201can artist\u2019s artist,\u201d citing her openness about how she works and her generosity toward other artists.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791934702_738_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cLiquid Light\u201d (2022). Video installation. Installed as a Collateral Event for the 59th La Biennale di Venezia Biennale; Arte 2022 at Olivolo in Venice; and at the MAXXI in Rome in 2025.<\/p>\n
(Ugo Carmeni)<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter where she\u2019s showing and who she\u2019s showing with, she brings along with her a lot of people who really look to her as a mentor,\u201d Grossman said. \u201cAnd I think she does that with a lot of grace.\u201d<\/p>\n
A carousel of 135 slides dating from 1976 to 1996 will accompany the four-gallery survey, underscoring the role documentation has played in preserving work created in remote locations for brief periods.<\/p>\n
Albuquerque is revisiting \u201cSpine of the Earth,\u201d one of her seminal pieces, for the exhibition. First created in 1980 in the Mojave Desert, the work involved students spreading red, yellow and black pigment in a geometric pattern more than 600 feet in diameter. Because the complete design could be seen only from above, most people encountered it through photographs.<\/p>\n
Albuquerque is adapting the work as a 40-by-40-foot installation. Rather than reproduce the desert experience, she said, the indoor presentation may alter the viewer\u2019s physical relationship to the piece, allowing it to function as a \u201cmeditation centering device,\u201d a description she attributed to French curator Lorenzo B\u00e9atrix.<\/p>\n
Palm Springs Art Museum executive director and chief curator Christine Vendredi said experiencing the work in person offers something its documentation cannot.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re missing the performance because you\u2019re not there as it unfolds, but you can still see the result face-to-face, without the filter of a video or photograph,\u201d she said. \u201cYou remove that distance.\u201d<\/p>\n
At High Desert Test Sites, about 40 miles from the museum, Albuquerque plans to embed cylindrical aluminum vessels packed with ultramarine pigment flush with the ground, creating a constellation of \u201cstar points\u201d that guide visitors through a desert wash toward a rock formation. Developed during Albuquerque\u2019s 2026 fellowship sponsored by the organization, \u201cThe Interval Between Things\u201d continues her investigation of how people locate themselves within the landscape and the larger universe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s art that makes you think about what is not seen,\u201d Albuquerque said. As for how long it will remain: \u201cI will let nature take over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albuquerque and Vendredi emphasize that \u201cCosmic Land\u201d is a survey, not a retrospective, as the artist hopes to mount one in the next decade. Her other ambitions include completing the third film in her astronaut trilogy, realizing an ephemeral project across nine Mediterranean sites, publishing a monograph and returning to the Venice Biennale, where \u201cLiquid Light\u201d was presented in 2022.<\/p>\n
She regards the Palm Springs exhibition not as a summation but as another point in an expanding body of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot left to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Lita Albuquerque: Cosmic Land<\/p>\n
Where: Palm Springs Art Museum<\/p>\n
When: Oct. 16, 2026, to May 3, 2027<\/p>\n
Info: psmuseum.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artist Lita Albuquerque walks through the Malibu home she and her husband, writer Carey Peck, moved into just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[23911,3257,290468,437,434,435,436,33109,438,146,878,290466,290467,85,10872,46,17356,703,4608,14337,52331,11132,1264],"class_list":["post-645595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-albuquerque","tag-artist","tag-artist-lita-albuquerque","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-body","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-hannah-grossman","tag-high-desert-test-sites","tag-il","tag-installation","tag-israel","tag-landscape","tag-light","tag-painting","tag-performance","tag-practice","tag-relationship","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}