Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art invites everyone to have a look at Autorretrato (Self Portrait), a striking solo installation by Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile. Rather than presenting a conventional likeness, the work reimagines self-portraiture as a monumental sculptural form, one that maps identity through material, memory, and ancestral lineage. Part of Mathaf’s 15th anniversary programme and the Qatar-Argentina and Chile 2025 Years of Culture initiative, the installation will be on view until 21 February 2026.
The sculpture, Autorretrato (Self-Portrait, 2022), is inspired by Chaile’s Afro-Arab and Indigenous heritage. It reflects on the centuries of cultural interconnection shaped by histories such as the Spanish colonisation of the Americas. By embedding references to traditional materials and forms from Indigenous cultures, the art piece positions personal identity within a broader collective and historical framework. Surface textures that evoke hair and subtle sets of eye-shaped impressions suggest a presence that is both intimate and archetypal, emphasising duality, introspection, and layered identity.
Crafted in adobe clay, a material historically used in Indigenous architecture and ceramics across the Americas, Autorretrato anchors itself in the earth and evokes everyday objects such as traditional pipes from northwestern Argentina. This material and formal vocabulary supports what Chaile describes as a Genealogy of Form, an approach in which ancestral memory, material history, and lived experience converge to shape meaning.
About the artist
Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina), who resides in Lisbon (Portugal), studied Plastic Arts at the National University of Tucumán and participated in the first Artist Programme of the Torcuato Di Tella University (Buenos Aires, 2009). He is the Art Director of NVS, an exhibition platform founded in Buenos Aires and based in Lisbon.
Chaile is known for sculptural practice grounded in archaeological histories, Indigenous material cultures, and hybrid identities shaped by diasporic experience. His work often interrogates the ways individual and collective histories intertwine, using texture, form, and traditional materials to evoke memory and cultural continuity. Chaile’s practice bridges personal narrative with broader histories of community and resistance, positioning sculpture as a vessel for embodied experience and ancestral connection.
Chaile has displayed his art pieces in many exhibitions, such as Islamic Arts Biennale (Jeddah, KSA, 2025); Usos y costumbres (solo) (Studio Voltaire, London, UK, 2023); and The Milk of Dreams (the 59th Venice Biennale, Italy, 2022), among others. His works are part of several esteemed public collections, such as the Kadist Foundation (Paris, France) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (Madrid, Spain).
To get more information about Autorretrato (Self Portrait), please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in exploring we refuse_d, a collective exhibition also on view at Mathaf.
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