The Un-Private Collection: Distinct Encounters through Object Making—Isabelle Albuquerque + Sharif Farrag + Guadalupe Rosales
In conjunction with the special exhibition, Robert Therrien: This is a Story, The Broad has organized two discussions to contextualize L.A.’s current terrain of sculptors in this storied history. The starting points for these discussions are two interconnected yet contrasting topics: Distinct Encounters through Object Making and World Building.
Saturday, November 22, 2025: World Building
Saturday, February 28, 2026: Distinct Encounters through Object Making
The second of the two panel discussions contextualizes L.A.’s current terrain of sculptors in this history. Distinct Encounters through Object Making takes place during Frieze Los Angeles and looks at sculpture inviting concentrated and often isolated encounters with viewers. The conversation features artist Isabelle Albuquerque, who recently exhibited her sculptures at Robert Therrien Studio alongside and...
In conjunction with the special exhibition, Robert Therrien: This is a Story, The Broad has organized two discussions to contextualize L.A.’s current terrain of sculptors in this storied history. The starting points for these discussions are two interconnected yet contrasting topics: Distinct Encounters through Object Making and World Building.
Saturday, November 22, 2025: World Building
Saturday, February 28, 2026: Distinct Encounters through Object Making
The second of the two panel discussions contextualizes L.A.’s current terrain of sculptors in this history. Distinct Encounters through Object Making takes place during Frieze Los Angeles and looks at sculpture inviting concentrated and often isolated encounters with viewers. The conversation features artist Isabelle Albuquerque, who recently exhibited her sculptures at Robert Therrien Studio alongside and amongst his own work; new Broad collection artist Sharif Farrag who creates organized chaos through his maximalist ceramic sculptures; and recently acquired Broad collection artist Guadalupe Rosales whose artworks archive and celebrate the collective memories of Chicano youth culture of the ‘90s.
The conversation will be moderated by Ed Schad, curator of Robert Therrien: This is a Story.
Know Before You Go
Tickets to this event include same-day access to Robert Therrien: This is a Story, The Broad’s third floor rotating collection galleries, and The Shop at The Broad during regular museum operating hours, 10 am – 6 pm.
Tickets to this event do not include access to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), which must be booked separately.
To learn more and plan your trip, visit Know Before You Go & FAQ. Visitor policies are subject to change.
Isabelle Albuquerque (left) by Olivia Malone; Sharif Farrah (center) and Guadalupe Rosales (right) photos courtesy of the artists
Bios
Isabelle Albuquerque
Isabelle Albuquerque’s formally powerful and psychologically charged sculpture invites multiple, simultaneous readings and perspectives. With a background in performance, Albuquerque uses her own body to investigate the protean nature of identity and to create a cross-temporal conversation that centers the experiences of women and their own connection to desire, sexuality and works embodiment. Albuquerque (b. 1981) studied architecture and theater at Barnard College and lives and works in her native Los Angeles. Exhibitions include Alien Spring, Nicodim, New York (2025, solo); Isabelle Albuquerque and Louise Bourgeois: The Wandering Womb, lumber room, Portland (2025); Witchcraft, Magic, and Occult Knowledge, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto (2025); It Smells Like Girl, Jeffery Deitch and Company Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); The Amber of this Moment, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2025); Portals to Unwritten Time, Perrotin, Paris (2025); The Neverending Story: The Dream, Vito Schnabel Gallery, St. Moritz (2024); Isabelle Albuquerque X Robert Therrien, The Studio of Robert Therrien, Los Angeles (2024); Post Human, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2024);Orgy for Ten People in One Body, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2022, solo); The Emerald Tablet, curated by Ariana Papademetropolous, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2021); Nuestrxs Putxs, Human Resources, Los Angeles (2021); and Sextet, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020, solo). Albuquerque’s work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Artforum, L’officiel, and Flash Art. Her most recent publication Orgy for Ten People in One Body (Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim, Pacific, 2023), is a 450-page monograph about the sculptural series that includes conversations with the artists Miranda July and Arthur Jafa.
Phot by Olivia Malone
Sharif Farrag
Sharif Farrag was born in 1993 in Reseda, California and received a BFA from the University of Southern California in 2018. Farrag was an artist in residence at California State University, Long Beach’s Center for Contemporary Ceramics from 2018 to 2020, and in 2019 he was awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; In Lieu, Los Angeles; The Pit, Los Angeles; and 356 Mission, Los Angeles. Farrag lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Photo courtesy of the artist
Guadalupe Rosales
Guadalupe Rosales is best known for her community generated archival projects, “Veteranas and Rucas” and “Map Pointz,” on social media. The projects manifested in 2015 from the under/misrepresentation and historical erasure of Latin@/x communities in Southern California. These community-generated projects begin with an open invitation to various Latin@/x communities to share personal images and memories that create visual narratives that celebrate identities and historicize subcultures.
In her studio practice, Guadalupe works with sculpture, photography, video, sound, drawing, and community-based projects and collaborations, and the archive, centering on the creation of immersive and sensorial spaces to activate memory and evoke a collective experience and embodiment. These spaces conjure up emotions as well as collective feelings of longing that reside in our bodies and remain as living archives. Here, she wants us to consider the body as archives and a locus that preserves, carries, moves, and transforms memory but also intervenes in the continuum of a life archived. The purpose is to uplift private experiences and create space for them to be shared, to see what is concealed and collectively create a multidimensional experience.
Guadalupe’s studio also houses and preserves a physical archive of Chicano/Latinx ephemera from the 1970s to the late-1990s, including but not limited to magazines, prison art and letters, posters and flyers from the Los Angeles underground backyard-party and rave scenes of the 1990s.
Her forthcoming book, EAST OF THE RIVER, will be published by One World, Summer 2026.
Photo courtesy of the artist