Luciana Abait was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is currently based in Los Angeles. Her multimedia works deal with climate change and environmental fragility, and their impacts on immigration in particular.

Abait’s artworks have been shown widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia in solo shows in galleries, museums and international art fairs. Selected solo exhibitions include On the Verge at Hilliard Art Museum in Louisiana; Escape-Route at Laguna Art Museum, Luciana Abait: On the Verge at Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University and A Letter to The Future at Los Angeles International Airport in California; Flow, Blue at Rockford College Art Museum and Luciana Abait at Jean Albano Gallery in Illinois; Nest at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania; and ARCO in Spain. She has completed numerous corporate and public art commissions, among them “Vistas”, a 24 feet mural commissioned by Miami- Dade Art in Public Places and “Hong Kong Windows”, commissioned by Swire Properties in Hong Kong.
Abait’s works and her focus on environmental activism have been featured in The Art Newspaper, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Aesthetica, and Stir World among others. This work has led to her invitation as a Guest Speaker at the Culture Summit 2024 in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Abait’s works are held in private, public and corporate collections from the United States, Europe, Latin America and East Asia. Among these collections are: Art in Embassies, US Department of State; The Related Group, Florida State University, Permanent Art Collection of Neiman Marcus, Miami-Dade Public Library System and Four Seasons in Florida; King and Spalding in Texas; Lehigh University Museum and West Collection in Pennsylvania; Sprint Corporation in Missouri; Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan; the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington D.C., and Freshfields and Swire Properties in Hong Kong. Abait is the recipient of the 2016 Santa Monica Individual Artist Fellowship Award, the 2022 “Art Lives Here” Award by the Geffen Playhouse and the 2024 LL Stewart Fellowship by the Oregon State University.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My art practice is informed by my immigration history from South America into the US in the 1990’s. Because of this, assimilation and adaptation are key elements of my work and over the last twenty years the main subjects of my work have been the resilient but malleable elements of nature: water, air, vegetation, fire, mountains and icebergs. Through manipulated photographic landscapes, installations, video and photo-sculptures, natural landscapes and human-made objects are impossibly adapted to new roles where they coexist in a magical reality.
My work critically reflects upon humans and their fraught relationship with the natural environment, portraying their aggressive intrusion nature while also imagining alternate (or future) realities. Icebergs represent me as a wanderer–¬shifting between oceans and continents. Mountains, in turn, are metaphors for the hurdles and obstacles I have had to climb along the way since I departed my native hometown. I frequently use color manipulation to achieve a surreal mood within the natural landscape to create a child-like sense of wonder for viewers of my artworks. The altered landscapes portray distortions that take the viewer on an out-of-this-world voyage that enables them to get lost, and to find a sense of possibility and freedom.
At the core of my works is a deep search to find a new place in the world to call home and to regain a sense of belonging amidst great challenge.