The works in Carmen Argote’s first gallery show in New York are unified by her use of cochineal, a deep red dye harvested from insects, whose usage dates back to the Mayans and Aztecs. When mixed with lemon juice, the dye shifts to vibrant orange, scarlet, gray, and violet, a viscerally intense palette with associations of sun, blood, passion, and death. Argote references fire, a force of nature both destructive and sanctifying. Her sculptures suggest chemical transformation, nodding to the 2025 wildfires that forever changed the landscape of Los Angeles, where she has lived since moving from Guadalajara at age five. Their compacted and enclosed forms will be the containment of a force that resists it.

Cochineal, itself derived from a non-human body, constitutes the corporeal throughline of Soft Perimeter. Argote imagines the dye as “almost like a body,” behaving similarly to “all kinds of secretions, like hormones and different chemicals, which shift and change our mood.” 

Argote’s linen works—cut and sewn by her mother, her frequent collaborator—suggest holding, harboring, and keeping; but sometimes what is meant to be carried cannot be contained, instead seeping outward, inward, and through, changing everything in its path. 

Words by Andrea Gyorody

Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA) Argote's installations—including her Searching For The Willow Pattern series and Comforting Object—investigate inherited histories through domestic material and architectural form. Her work draws connections between personal memory and the cultural migration of objects and motifs, particularly those marked by colonial trade. Argote’s work has been in several recent exhibitions, including Flow States– LA TRIENAL 2024, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2024); Holding, Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, CA (2024); Experimentations: The Art of Controlled Procedures, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, CA (2024); I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2023); and La Vida Secreta de las piedras, Commonwealth and Council, Mexico City, Mexico (2023).