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Getty Conservation Institute: “Lita Albuquerque: Dust to Dust”
Albuquerque's multi-media artistic practice has evolved from painting to creating site-specific, pigment-based works in the earth, to performances, and, recently, to incorporating pigments and materials in the studio context. She explores how these materials—charged with history and time—create an intimate connection to the past and the future. For Albuquerque, art conservation is about preserving not just the material objects themselves, but the very essence of human experience—our connection to nature, time, and memory.
In Lita Albuquerque: Dust to Dust (2024), the artist reflects on her creative practice and its influences, from her childhood in Tunisia, to her role in the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles, to her overarching fascination and connection with Earth and cosmos. Albuquerque discusses how her work employs natural pigments, rocks, and salt, reminding us of our link to both the planet and the stars.
This video is part of Getty Conservation Institute's Artist Dialogues video series. This film was developed in collaboration with independent curator jill moniz.
Albuquerque's multi-media artistic practice has evolved from painting to creating site-specific, pigment-based works in the earth, to performances, and, recently, to incorporating pigments and materials in the studio context. She explores how these materials—charged with history and time—create an intimate connection to the past and the future. For Albuquerque, art conservation is about preserving not just the material objects themselves, but the very essence of human experience—our connection to nature, time, and memory.
In Lita Albuquerque: Dust to Dust (2024), the artist reflects on her creative practice and its influences, from her childhood in Tunisia, to her role in the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles, to her overarching fascination and connection with Earth and cosmos. Albuquerque discusses how her work employs natural pigments, rocks, and salt, reminding us of our link to both the planet and the stars.
This video is part of Getty Conservation Institute's Artist Dialogues video series. This film was developed in collaboration with independent curator jill moniz.

Lita Albuquerque: Visions and Reinventions | Frieze Los Angeles 2025
A pioneer of the light and space and land art movements, Lita Albuquerque has always made work in dialogue with the environment and natural forces. In this video, we visit her home in Los Angeles and her nearby land piece Malibu Line (2024), which marks the landscape with the artist’s signature blue pigment in an ancient gesture of protection. She and her husband Carey lost their home in the 2018 Los Angeles fires. More than six years on, they were still reassembling their lives as they watched fires once again sweep through their neighbourhood and the community that had sustained them in their darkest moments.
A pioneer of the light and space and land art movements, Lita Albuquerque has always made work in dialogue with the environment and natural forces. In this video, we visit her home in Los Angeles and her nearby land piece Malibu Line (2024), which marks the landscape with the artist’s signature blue pigment in an ancient gesture of protection. She and her husband Carey lost their home in the 2018 Los Angeles fires. More than six years on, they were still reassembling their lives as they watched fires once again sweep through their neighbourhood and the community that had sustained them in their darkest moments.

Stellar Axis: Lita Albuquerque at the Anderson Collection
In 2006, artist Lita Albuquerque led an expedition to the farthest reaches of Antarctica near the South Pole to create Stellar Axis: Antarctica. This journey included a team of experts, researchers, and artists with Albuquerque at the helm. The resulting installation consisted of an array of 99 fabricated blue spheres, with each placement corresponding to the location of one of 99 specific stars in the Antarctic sky above, creating an earthly constellation at the earth’s pole.
Producer: Taylor Jones
In 2006, artist Lita Albuquerque led an expedition to the farthest reaches of Antarctica near the South Pole to create Stellar Axis: Antarctica. This journey included a team of experts, researchers, and artists with Albuquerque at the helm. The resulting installation consisted of an array of 99 fabricated blue spheres, with each placement corresponding to the location of one of 99 specific stars in the Antarctic sky above, creating an earthly constellation at the earth’s pole.
Producer: Taylor Jones

Co-organized by MOCA and East of Borneo, this panel discussion focused on the formation of the city’s vibrant art scene as it existed through artists, their networks and relationships, and their social spaces and hangouts. Artists and writers will revisit the studio spaces and other social hubs and as the birthplace of the friendships and artistic collaborations that made up the city’s rich social fabric.
Moderated by exhibiting artist Thomas Lawson, the panel is organized in conjunction with Mapping An Art World: Los Angeles in the 1970s-80s. Lawson is joined by exhibiting artist Allen Ruppersberg; writer Susan Morgan; Stanley Grinstein, founding partner of Gemini G.E.L. Artist Editions; architect Elyse Grinstein; artist Lita Albuquerque and artist Bruce Yonemoto.
Moderated by exhibiting artist Thomas Lawson, the panel is organized in conjunction with Mapping An Art World: Los Angeles in the 1970s-80s. Lawson is joined by exhibiting artist Allen Ruppersberg; writer Susan Morgan; Stanley Grinstein, founding partner of Gemini G.E.L. Artist Editions; architect Elyse Grinstein; artist Lita Albuquerque and artist Bruce Yonemoto.

Interview with Lita Albuquerque for the Louisiana Channel in Denmark, on the occasion of 'Light & Space' opening at Copenhagen Contemporary, December 2021.

An interview with Lita Albuquerque conducted 2020 August 12, by Matthew Simms, for the Archives of American Art's Pandemic Oral History Project at Albuquerque's studio in Santa Monica, California.

Lita Albuquerque speaks at Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, with lecture titled, "Light in Sacred Space".

Lita Albuquerque reads her Automatic Writings for the first time in public at the Philosophical Research Society.

In 2014, Albuquerque held a major exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, that showcased photographs, drawings, sculptures, and videos of from the archive of "Stellar Axis: Antarctica", which is in the collection of the Nevada Museum of Art, Center for Art + Environment.
Video narrated by William L. Fox, Peter E. Pool Director, Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.
Video narrated by William L. Fox, Peter E. Pool Director, Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.

Restoring the 1984 commissioned mural by Ian Robertson-Salt at the 101 Freeway, Los Angeles.

Wind tunnel testing for Stellar Axis: Antarctica, 2006.
photo credit: Sophie Pegrum

Sol Star is First Prize Winner, Cairo Biennale.
AP Report from Cairo, Egypt

Excerpt of Spine of the Earth from "Artworks: Earthworks", a KCET Documentary
Featuring Lita Albuquerque, Christo, Thom Mayne, Rachel Rosenthal and Richard Misrach

Albuquerque teaching at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA.

MOCA at the Beginning: Albuquerque Endorses
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