Instagram story viewer> @fabiola.alondra> Posts

FABIOLA ☾

@fabiola.alondra

44.4K

followers

3966

following

Assetto Fellow 2026 @the_warburg_institute

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

What an honor and thrill to be a 2026 Assetto Fellow @the_warburg_institute ✨

The Warburg Institute is delighted to announce the names of the creative practitioners selected for its second cohort of the annual Assetto Fellowships: Fabiola Alondra, Matheus Rocha Pita and James Wilkes.
. taken in The Warburg Institute by @fabiola.alondra

3

71

6 months ago

Tomorrow 🔖
.
As part of the exhibition, 𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 at Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts & Media @yaleccam I had the pleasure of selecting a group of historical objects from the very special Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. For a few hours tomorrow only,* Friday, Oct 24th, from 2 pm - 4:30pm, these objects will be displayed at the @beineckelibrary Rooms 38-39. 📖 Special thanks to Beinecke curators Shannon Supple & Michelle Al-Ferzly for this wonderful collaboration.
.
The opening of 𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 will follow @yaleccam
Friday, October 24: 6 pm-8 pm
YALE CCAM ISOVIST GALLERY
149 York Street, New Haven, CT
.
Exhibition dates: October 24-December 5, 2025
.
Images from @beineckelibrary collection:
.
1. Allen Hutchinson plaster cast of the hand of Stevenson, undated. Edwin J. Beinecke Collection of Robert Louis Stevenson, General Collection.
3. Detail from Hartmann Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.
4. Carl Van Vechten, Dame Alicia Markova, her hands, 1941, photographic print. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature.
5. Titus Maccius Plautus, ,Stichus,’ ca. 1510, Italy. Manuscript with numerous pointing hands with exaggeratedly long forefingers.
.
.
#YaleUniversity #beineckerarebookandmanuscriptlibrary #yaleccam taken in Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library by @fabiola.alondra

3

6

a year ago

𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 @yaleccam is on view by appointment through December 5th. Link in bio for more exhibition details.

Thank you @yaleccam for the invitation to curate a group exhibition at ISOVIST Gallery. The process of shaping this exhibition was enriching and inspiring, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media team and the artists, current Yale students and alumni.
.
Alvin Ashiatey & Mianwei Wang
Felipe Baeza
Siyu Chen
Ann Burke Daly & Marion Belanger
Shiyun Deng
Vignesh Hari Krishnan & Nirmal Kumarasamy
Ris Igrec
David Wonsik Jung
Joy Li
edd ravn
Olivia Reavey
Montana Simone
Yuwei Tu
Ann Weathersby
Jeff Whetstone
.
𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 takes its title from John Keats’s short poem, ‘This Living Hand’ (c. 1820). The poem’s final line, 𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 holds tension in a single gesture. Here is the poet’s hand extended towards the future reader, as if across time and space, life, and death. Here, the hand is a conduit, a relic, and an invocation.

Through our hands, we understand the world. In matter, in image, in spirit. From prehistoric cave paintings and ritual gestures to acts of making and unmaking, the hand holds the threshold between the physical and the immaterial, the ancestral and the technological. 𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 explores the enduring power of hands through a selection of objects, images, and practices that draw on art history, anthropology, archaeology, spiritual traditions, and material culture. The exhibition presents only a glimpse of an otherwise boundless world. In 𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶, artists from diverse disciplines reflect on this intimate yet vast subject. A visual research presentation of relevant material from Yale’s collections, including the @beineckelibrary,
@yalepeabodymuseum, @yaleartgallery, @yalemedhistlib @yalehaasartslib, are featured to anchor a dialogue between past and present.
.
Photos @c_badach taken in Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale by @fabiola.alondra

3

19

a year ago

Method of applying rubber surgical gloves, 1908 —— and a film still from Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (1950). by @fabiola.alondra

3

2

21 days ago

2.5 million years of volcanic history, 2,000 years of pre-Hispanic mining, family stories passed down from my grandmother and the birthplace of a mirror that ended up in 16th century London, in the hands of John Dee.
.
Field research visit to Sierra de las Navajas (Mountain of Knives), Hidalgo, Mexico, listening to the crystalline whispers of green and golden obsidian underfoot and above towards the sun.
.
Warmest thanks to archaeologist Gerardo Orozco and master artisan Don Pablo López of El Nopalillo for their generous guidance through the pre-hispanic mines and obsidian workshops where obsidian mirrors and other objects continue to be made.
.
The first image is a photo of the sun as seen through an obsidian mirror made by Don Pablo.
.
@the_warburg_institute taken in Sierra De Las Navajas by @fabiola.alondra

3

26

2 months ago

Silvia Gruner (México City, 1959)
Sin titulo (Untitled), 1990
Photo by Eugenia Vargas-Pereyra.
.
Beginning in the second half of the 1980s, pollution became a daily reality in Mexico City, shaping urban life and the collective imagination. Between 1986 and 1987, thousands of birds were found dead in parks, streets, and sidewalks, causing widespread public alarm. Medical studies detected the presence of heavy metals, such as lead and cadmium, in the tissues of some of the birds and pointed to the posible combination of photochemical smog, high ozone levels, and the specific atmospheric conditions of the Valley of Mexico as factors associated with the phenomenon.
.
The image of the dead birds thus became an emblem of a city shrouded in a dense layer of smog, where eye and throat irritation, as well as constant air quality alerts, were a daily reality. In this context, pollution ceased to be an environmental phenomenon and became a cultural and historical condition, a sign of the fragility of the body and the urban space that is present in much of the artistic practice of the late 1980s, in which waste, vulnerability, and deterioration funcion as metaphors for a modernity in crisis.
.
- Text & image from the exhibition, “Ante el eclipse. Arqueologías del arte en México,” curated by Maco Sánchez Blanco and Andrea Torreblanca @eneltamayo by @fabiola.alondra

3

7

2 months ago

Photographs of fruits and flowers by botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science, Luther Burbank (1849-1926). 🍒
.
Final slide is Frida Kahlo’s 1931 painting of Luther Burbank.
. by @fabiola.alondra

3

13

3 months ago

I recently spent several days @casaseminario12 , a 17th-century colonial house built atop the remains of the temple dedicated to the god Tezcatlipoca, the “Smoking Mirror,” within the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan, in what is today Mexico City’s Centro Histórico. Lying quietly on the courtyard’s volcanic stone floor, near the remains of a tzompantli sculpture that still stands watch, I closed my eyes, and the city seemed to collapse into a single soundscape: vendors calling from the streets, the scent of copal burning, butterflies rustling in the bougainvillea, distant music, cheers from the World Cup rising from the vicinity of the former juego de pelota, the wind moving through the corridors and somewhere between them, the eerie resonance of conch shells, drums, and dancing vibrations. The sounds layered until they were no longer distinguishable. For a moment, I imagined the sounds of Tenochtitlan were not too dissimilar.

In the introduction to the book “La casa que ve pasar el tiempo,” historian Dr. Salvador Ávila writes that “a material construction is a text, a historical document.” During my stay, I kept returning to that idea. This house is more than a colonial residence; it is an archive of stone where Mexica and colonial histories continue to inhabit the same space.

At Casa Seminario 12, my research was to sit still long enough to let the place speak, to read the house by listening, smelling, walking, and touching. This lived experience is part of the preliminary field research for my upcoming fellowship at @the_warburg_institute . My project, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘖𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯, has begun here, in Tenochtitlan.
.
With gratitude to @carolinacoppel @cesarlopeznegrete @sabinalnz and Porfirio Sánchez, and to the memory of conservator, Monica Bautista, whose care enables this house to continue speaking.
.
Slide 17: For reference, Number 7 on the scale model is the Temple to Tezcatlipoca. Model was made by Mexican architect and archaeologist, Ignacio Marquina for the inauguration of the National Museum of Anthropology in 1964. taken in Seminario 12 by @fabiola.alondra

3

27

3 months ago

Thinking about these two images: Antonio M. Ruiz’s The Lottery Ticket Seller (La Billetera, 1932) and a Mexica basalt shell (1486–1502) found beside an altar at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. The first resonance is visual: the striped rebozo (shawl) cradling the woman’s child echoes the shell’s sinuous carved bands. From there, other associations begin to unfold. The shell carries life within it; the woman carries her child; the lottery ticket carries the possibility of fortune; even the electrical switch contains an unseen force.
.
“…they move, or remain still, within the atmosphere of our everyday life.” - Arqueles Vela, 1937
. by @fabiola.alondra

3

6

3 months ago

Delighted to be included in Chloe Wise’s beautiful new book, 𝘌𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘢 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘺, published by Hatje Cantz and Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G, on the occasion of Chloe Wise’s exhibition curated by Samuel Leuenberger.
.
It is an honor to be included alongside contributors whose work I admire, including Diana Walsh Pasulka, Tony Oursler, Jamieson Webster, Balarama Heller, Gideon Jacobs, and Eric Oglander, among many others.
.
An excerpt from my contribution, 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘍𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵:
.
This essay started with the question: Is seeing believing, or is belief seeing? The history of witches’ flight suggests that the question itself may be misleading. Seeing and believing are intertwined, each shaping the other in an endless cycle. The night sky remains the same, but what we perceive—our fears, desires, and visions—changes with each era. Perhaps these flights represent what Mircea Eliade described as the fundamental human drive “to recover the lost significance and beatitude of the ‘beginnings,’ with the hope of discovering a new and creative mode of existing in the world.”
.
The images endure because we need them to. They reflect not the world as it is, but the world as we imagine it must be. Perhaps what we desire is to let our spirits fly into the boundless night.
.
@chloewise_
@kbhgeiger
@samuel_leuenberger
@hatjecantzverlag
Graphic design @dansolbachstudio by @fabiola.alondra

3

19

3 months ago

In the early 16th century, primarily between 1501 and 1503, a series of unexplained phenomena known as the Kreuzwunder (cross miracles) caused widespread anxiety across German-speaking regions and the Netherlands. During this time, distinct, colorful symbols resembling crosses and other religious objects suddenly materialized on clothing, textiles, and human skin. Because the origin of these apparitions was unknown, the events triggered significant fear and concern throughout the affected populations.
.
1. German Practice [or Practical Almanac], 1502. Bavarian State Library.
2. Interpretation and meaning of the crosses that are currently falling, [printed in Augsburg], [around 1504]. Bavarian State Library.
3. Jakob Gretser, The Third Volume on the Cross of Christ: In Five Books... [Published in] Ingolstadt, 1605.
4. Cross-catchers in Konrad Wolffhart (called Lycosthenes) - A Chronicle of Prodigies and Portents. [Published in] Basel: by Henricum Petri, 1557. Libraries of Paris Cité University.
5. Interpretation and meaning of the crosses that are currently falling ..., [printed in Strasbourg], [around 1503]. Bavarian State Library.
6. “In the year 1503, small crosses of various colors fell upon the shirts of many people…” From the Augsburg Book of Miraculous Signs. Modern facsimile published by Taschen in 2013.
7. Johann Scheible, The Leap Year (Volume 3, “Miraculous Sign at Leidringen”), 1846. Google Books.
8. Joseph Grünpeck: Interpretation of Prodigies [Miraculous Signs], 1502. University Library of Innsbruck, Manuscript 314.
9. Pasted woodcut of the 1503 cross miracle in the Schweyger Chronicle of the City of Hall in Tirol, City Archives (dated after 1503).
10. Conrad Lycosthenes, A Chronicle of Prodigies and Portents, 1557.
.
Images and information via Wikipedia Commons (Joostik). by @fabiola.alondra

3

4

4 months ago

Feathered serpent pendant, Mexica, 1325–1521 CE.
.
I am drawn to the materiality of this object. Its intimate scale and rounded shell form are incredibly physical. You can almost trace the artist’s hand as it shaped and carved this shell into a pendant. The snake’s sinuous form evokes memories of the body moving with it, an extension of the hands that created it. To wear this pendant was perhaps a way to regenerate like a snake into movement.
.
“This pendant, which retains the shape of a cross-section of a conch shell, features delicately incised imagery of a feathered serpent on one side, and its coiled, rattlesnake-like tail on the other. Leonardo López Luján has identified the flower held in one hand as a huacalxóchitl, the Nahuatl name for Philodendron affine, a plant associated with sensuality and pleasure. (The other hand grasps what may be a knife).”
.
“This type of pendant is known as an ehecacozcatl or “wind jewel,” an ornament often associated with Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl, the creator and Wind God. This tiny, exquisitely carved ornament contains multiple, layered meanings, from the general associations of the very material from which it was carved—shell, with its connections to warriors, and, most importantly, water and fertility—to specific associations with deities such as Quetzalcoatl. What is clear is that such ornaments were highly esteemed in Aztec times. As Adrián Velazquez Castro has noted, shell workshops were likely located within royal palaces, and their use appears to have been reserved for the private ceremonies of the Mexica elite. Such an ornament speaks to an extraordinary control over access to resources, from the raw material itself—from far away and difficult to acquire—to access to the finest artists, individuals with the skill required to transform the material into works of great beauty and delicacy.” — Joanne Pillsbury Andrall E. Pearson Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas @metmuseum @joanne_pillsbury
.
Image 3: huacalxóchitl — from Codex Badiano, 1552.
Image 4: Star-shaped shell ornaments - Penn Museum. by @fabiola.alondra

3

3

5 months ago