The Shape of Us
Q+A JANUARY 2026
Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile reimagines the idea of portraiture in Autorretrato (Self-Portrait), a monumental work that has found a permanent home in Doha
Traditional self-portraiture allows artists to capture their own likeness as a record of the self. Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile, however, expands the idea beyond the individual. His Autorretrato (Self-Portrait), 2022 – which has recently been acquired by Doha’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art – is a monumental clay work that acts as a vessel for ancestry and shared human experience.
“Autorretrato was inspired by the archaeological ceramics of northwestern Argentina,” Chaile says. “From the moment I first encountered them, I felt that connection. In the figurative and abstract volumes of those pieces, I see that they are observations of a single body – one similar to mine and to many others who share certain characteristics today. I call it 'genealogy of form'".
Like most of Chaile’s pieces – including The wind blows where it wishes, 2023, which was installed on New York’s High Line from May 2023 to February 2024 – the work is formed from a steel framework coated in layers of adobe made from clay and vegetable fibre. Its shape recalls an enormous clay pipe, with a “head” that evokes the artist’s own hair. The pipe form is representative of an object made by Indigenous communities that has survived through centuries of cultural transformation and resistance.
"This sculpture is like a being that is only beginning to exist... It feels like the number zero, a moment we all share as living beings”
Chaile was born in San Miguel de Tucumán and has Afro, Arab and Indigenous ancestry. For him, the use of red clay rich in iron oxide, drawn from the Iberian Peninsula where he now lives, is also key to the work. “I like it because its colour resembles my skin,” he says. “I’m interested in the fact that we resemble each other in such essential ways, in things that exist on the surface.”
Autorretrato was unveiled at Mathaf in October 2025. Before that, it was exhibited in Belgium at De Singel as part of a solo show titled Where are the Heirs of these Forms?, and travelled to Portugal’s BoCA Bienal, where it was paired with another work by Chaile titled Alcindo Monteiro, a sculptural portrait of a young man from Cape Verde who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in Lisbon in 1995.
In each context, the work explores ideas of ancestry, resistance and shared human experiences – concepts that Chaile also explores through his poetry. “‘And what if the autobiographical is nothing more than the story of others passing through us?’ is a line from one of my poems,” he says. “That is what a self-portrait means to me. This sculpture is like a being that is only beginning to exist – a giant, with only a few limbs and some hair. It feels like the number zero, a moment we all share as living beings.”
The artwork in detail
Title: Autorretrato, 2022
Dimensions: 271.8 × 702.3 × 281 cm
Weight: 1.5 tonnes
Fabrication time: One month of intense work by four people for the installation, clay application, and finishing details. Fifteen days for the metal fabrication.
Construction process: Chaile sketches the work in charcoal before his friend and collaborator Santiago Delfino refines the technical and structural design. A welder interprets the plan, then finally Chaile and his creative team clad the structure with adobe.
Logistics: The enormous size of Chaile’s sculptural works means they need to be transported in sections and reassembled on site, with his team filling in the joints with adobe for permanent display.
