Lita Albuquerque

Book excerpt: The first monograph on the acclaimed American environmental artist Lita Albuquerque, whose works belong to the Land Art generation, alongside James Turrell, Christo, Robert Smithson, and others. Known internationally for her temporary and ephemeral installations, paintings, and sculptures, Lita Albuquerque uses the most unusual and challenging of Earth’s surfaces as a canvas: Antarctica, the Arctic, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert, and South Dakota’s Badlands. She "paints" with a variety of mediums, including brightly clad humans or fabricated spheres, which form patterns over vast, wide-open spaces. This beautifully designed survey of her career highlights Stellar Axis, for which Albuquerque led an expedition to the South Pole to create the first installment of a groundbreaking global project. In addition to essays placing the artist’s works in the broader contexts of environmental art and science, Albuquerque provides personal reflections on her life’s work.