Gabriel Chaile: Volverme Pequeño para habitar lo Grande
Cecilia Brunson Projects is pleased to present Volverme Pequeño para habitar lo Grande (Small Enough to Fill the Universe), an exhibition of new work by Gabriel Chaile. Following his recent Whitechapel Gallery commission, the exhibition features a group of domestically scaled amphoras, ceramic vessels traditionally used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing and transporting liquids and other goods, each accompanied by a support structure made by the artist. Working with symbolically charged, organic materials including clay, mud, and adobe, Chaile reinterprets familiar forms through the material and cultural languages of the Indigenous communities of Northeast Argentina. In these new works, the amphora becomes both a functional object and a carrier of cultural memory, connecting histories, traditions, and lived experience across time and place.
Acting as both anthropologist and storyteller, Chaile investigates what he terms the “genealogy of form”: the idea that forms, motifs, and shapes recur throughout visual culture, acquiring new meanings within each historical and cultural context. His practice draws on the sacred rituals and communal traditions of pre-Columbian cultures, as well as contemporary customs, to memorialize and revitalize the traditions of his ancestors and community. By pairing each amphora with an individually constructed support, Chaile creates configurations that evoke archaeological displays while resisting the distance and fixity of the museum object. The vessels appear instead as intimate, almost anthropomorphic presences, their forms and material histories suggesting relationships that extend beyond their immediate function. Together, the works create a space in which objects can carry, preserve, and generate stories anew.
Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985; San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina) has exhibited extensively around the world. His large-scale public work The wind blows where it wishes was presented on the High Line in New York in 2023. Chaile’s work was included in the Biennale of Sydney in 2026, the Venice Biennale and the Coimbra Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2022, and the New Museum Triennial in 2021. His work has been the subject of several solo presentations including Gabriel Chaile: Archeology of Memory at Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK, 2026); Los jóvenes recordaron sus canciones at the Fundación Cervieri Monsuárez (José Ignacio, Uruguay, 2025); Contemplating Is How We Have Been Changing at the Tabakalera (San Sebastián, Spain, 2024); No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (California, US, 2024); Usos y costumbres at Studio Voltaire (London, UK, 2023); and Migrantes são bem-vindos at Kunsthalle Lissabon (Lisbon, Portugal, 2022), among others. He has been featured in group exhibitions such as Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, US, 2026) and Arts of the Earth at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain, 2025); as well as at the Islamic Arts Biennale (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2025); MALBA Puertos (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2025); Madragoa (Lisbon, Portugal 2025); the 14th Bienal do Mercosul (Porto Alegre, Brazil 2025); MARCO (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2024); and C3A – Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía (Córdoba, Spain 2023), among others. Chaile’s work is in the collections of Arthaus Central, Buenos Aires, Argentina; GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy; Kadist Foundation, Paris, France; MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; Qatar Museums, Doha, Qatar; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. The artist lives and works between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Lisbon, Portugal.