Lita Albuquerque made a strange kind of painting in 1978 that changed her course as an artist. An abstract painter at the time, she had felt the urge to step out of her studio and work directly on the land where she lived, an artist colony on the Malibu bluffs. He dug a narrow, shallow, 41-foot-long trench in the ground, running perpendicular to the Pacific Ocean, and poured powdered ultramarine pigment into it. From some points of view, the bright blue color seemed to run into the sea, visually connecting this strip of land with the ocean and the horizon.
She called it the “Malibu Line” and it was the first of her many earthworks that explored the body's relationship to the earth and the world, using bold pigments in natural materials like stones and sand. Now famous for bridging the art of light and space – such as Robert Irwin's perception experiments – and the Earthwork movement, defined, for too long, by male artists of the 1960s and 1970s such as Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson, which they used heavy machinery such as bulldozers to transform — some say mark — the earth.
Albuquerque, however, had a light touch, and the original “Malibu Line” disappeared within two years, overgrown with grass and wildflowers. “The beauty of the ephemeral is what it teaches us about nature – here we are, trying to control things, and nature is so powerful and it will do what it does,” said Albuquerque, 78, standing outside the house her in Malibu where she is. recreating this artwork for the first time. It has the same strong color and southern orientation but, 46 years later, a different resonance.
The most striking difference: this badge will have a counterpart Tunisia, home of her mother's family. She plans to build by the end of 2025 an extension of the line to Sidi Bou Said, a blue-and-white village overlooking the Mediterranean, not far from the Catholic monastery in Carthage where she was an early boarding student.
“This work is about longing and belonging. I miss the spirituality and sensuality of Tunisia,” said the artist, who was born in Los Angeles and returned there at the age of 11. She had already dug Malibu's new trench – somewhat larger and wider to accommodate a new terrain – with the help of assistants and was in the process of pouring the dye herself. Painter Marc Breslin, the studio's former director, gave her plastic cups filled with the vibrant blue powder.
She looked like a mourner quickly scattering ashes or a Buddhist monk making a sand mandala as she carefully moved the cup over one section of the ditch at a time. The whole process, which he described as meditative, took about 90 minutes.
Adding to the emotional resonance for Albuquerque is the fact that she was digging this trench on her own property, where her longtime home and studio stood until burned in the 2018 Woolsey fire. (The lot used for the original “Malibu Line” is now privately owned and was not available on this one.) Uphill from the new earthworks is the construction site where she and her husband are building a Tunisian-inspired house with white walls and blue doors. The ocean is further away than it was from the first “Line” but still visible.
“The pigment grains are my favorite part – it's like seeing Mars from a great height, this rocky landscape, but blue,” he said at one point while spreading the pigment.
“I feel like this heals the earth,” she added, her hands full of blue, which was also dusting off her khaki pants. Her husband, Carrie Peckhe said they lost 43 large trees in the fire, including pines and eucalyptus, but the cacti were stubborn and survived.
Albuquerque started the “Malibu Line” after taking a job as a visiting artist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. During her commute on the Pacific Coast Highway, she would stop her truck to pick up large rocks. Back in her studio, she tried to dust off This led to the “Malibu Line” and two smaller earthworks: covering a boulder with ultramarine and creating a blue disc in the soil. corresponding to the position of the full moon as he put it.
“This 1978 work expands the art historical canon and broadens our understanding of who was making Land Art — it wasn't just men in the desert,” he said. Christopher Mangum-James, the associate director of LAND, the nonprofit that produced the 2024 edition. He credited last year's museum exhibit “Groundswell,” at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, with recognizing the more intimate work of artists such as Albuquerque, Ana Mendieta and Alice Aycock as part of the earthworks movement.
The challenge for curators and fans alike is that many of these works of art no longer exist, either because of their ephemerality, institutional neglect, or both. In May, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking the Des Moines Arts Center, the museum that commissioned the Mary Miss work.Greenwood Pond: Double Site” (1989-1996), since being demolished for safety reasons.
But curators today are increasingly interested in highlighting those experiences, prompting artists like Albuquerque — usually loathe to look back — to revisit some early works.
In 2012, Albuquerque reimagined her 1980 work “Spine of the Earth” — a red spiral drawn on a dry lake bed at Mojave Desert — for Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative. In place of the red dye, she choreographed some 300 performers with red overalls to form a large spiral in Culver City, California, visible from a panoramic view. This year he did another version indoors, returning to pigment, for a gallery in Brussels.
The idea of revisiting the 'Malibu Line' was inspired by independent curator Ikram Lakhdhar;, which encouraged Albuquerque to consider showing her work in Tunisia for the first time. “I also left the country early – we were both looking for Tunisia in our work,” said Lakhdhar. (The curator also researched pigments to make sure the ultramarine was non-toxic.)
While they haven't yet finalized the venue near Carthage, they turned to LAND to organize the California leg of the project. Free tickets for public screenings on June 22 and 23 sold out quickly, prompting the group to open additional time slots for that weekend.
Albuquerque plans to host another public screening in Malibu in a few months during her exhibit, “Earth Skin,” at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, opening September 11. For this, he covers almost the entire floor of the gallery with a layer of composite granite so thin that it appears flush with the concrete. The work suggests the unpredictability of nature and the precision of geometry — like an organic version of a square canvas by a modernist painter. “The artwork I love most, apart from prehistory and pre-renaissance, is Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich — that kind of abstraction,” he said.
He sees the two “Malibu Lines” as siblings, separated by decades. “Both point to something beyond ourselves,” says Albuquerque. “In another sense they couldn't be more different. It's like trying to draw the same line twice. It's impossible.”