Chaile works with adobe and forms connected to the Indigenous traditions of north-west Argentina, but his sculptures are not archaeological replicas. He treats recurring shapes as carriers of cultural memory that change meaning across time and context. Monumental scale gives domestic and communal forms unexpected authority. Food, gathering and ancestry repeatedly connect sculpture to lived social practices.

Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985) was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, and is now based in Lisbon. His practice combines sculpture, anthropology and storytelling around what he calls a “genealogy of form.”