Isabel Gómez Liebre. Albino, of all the Terrors, the Terrible Whiteness

From 8 July to 30 August, the CentroCentro cultural centre is hosting a site-specific installation by the artist Isabel Gómez Liebre in the building’s former trading hall known as the Patio de Operaciones (Level 2). The piece reflects on albinism as a terrain of symbolic, political and physical tension

This new installation, entitled Albino, of all the Terrors, the Terrible Whiteness, is part of the EPICENTRO ‘guest artist’ programme, created as a dynamic space for visibility and opportunity. An initiative that supports mid-career artists, recognising the quality of their work, their professional trajectory and their contribution to the current artistic landscape.

This project by Isabel Gómez Liebre is based on a pictorial exploration of albinism, which is treated as a space of symbolic, political and physical tension. Far from interpreting this transformation as a documentary or biological motif, the artist engages with those bodies that culture has historically placed on the margins of representation: bodies that are hyper-visible, ambiguous and difficult to classify, viewed with a mixture of fascination and fear.

The proposal engages with Michel Foucault’s ideas on bodies regarded as anomalous, with the aim of creating a space for questioning what culture highlights, marginalises or labels as an anomaly. The title of the project, ‘Albino, of all the Terrors, the Terrible Whiteness’, references Chapter 42 of the novel Moby Dick (Herman Melville, 1851), introducing the central theme of the exhibition: whiteness not as a symbol of purity, but as a disturbing, excessive presence that transcends meaning.

The artwork presents the audience with the image of an albino elephant on a 2×3-metre sheet of pale pink mirrored methacrylate. This stand is an essential part of the visual installation, as its reflective surface draws the viewer into the artwork. By forcing the observer to share the animal’s field of vision, the gaze ceases to be external or innocent, and the observer is also laid bare.

Image credits:

Promotional image of ‘Albino, of all the Terrors, the Terrible Whiteness’ ©Isabel Gómez Liebre