INDEPENDENT: Booth 303 | Chakaia Booker • Miguel Rio Branco
At the Independent 2026 in New York, Almeida & Dale and David Nolan Gallery partner to present a duo exhibition of Miguel Rio Branco and Chakaia Booker, two masters in their respective media. While the pairing may initially seem unexpected, the presentation highlights how each artist mobilizes their practice with mastery—whether photography or sculpture—to create visually and symbolically impactful works deeply engaged with their settings.
Living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Miguel Rio Branco was born in Gran Canaria, Spain, to a diplomat father, and grew up between Brazil and several other countries. In this presentation, featuring works from 1985 to 2011, his painterly approach to photography, with deep concern for color, rhythm, and composition, comes to the fore. Through a sensual and lush use of color and shadow that evokes the Baroque, as well as the juxtaposition of subjects and scenes akin to Surrealism, Rio Branco constructs dense visual narratives.
The presentation offers a glimpse into the many facets of his long-standing practice, including works from his series made at the Santa Rosa Boxing Club in the 1990s, one of Rio de Janeiro’s distinctive boxing gyms. Known for its heterogeneous community that included sex workers, children in street situations, and other socially marginalized individuals, the club offered not only physical discipline but also a sense of belonging and mutual support. In these works, the artist focuses on the textures of the fighters’ skin, the chromatic compositions of the environment, and the boxers’ bodily movements, creating a cinematic portrait of the club’s atmosphere —surpassing a documentary purpose and capturing motion and physicality in ways that transform the fighters into almost mythical creatures.
Works such as Blue Klein (1993/2020), Hotel Monaco Falling (n.d.), and Pink and Black Chess (1988) reveal another recurrent interest in Rio Branco’s practice: the unveiling of a “mise-en-scène” of ordinary settings. In these works, the artist foregrounds the rich textures and tactility of decaying materials or the oneiric effect of mirrors reflecting checkered tiled walls. This more surreal approach is also evident in Yellow Shoes Thinking of Max Ernst (2007/2014), made while on a trip to Japan, where the yellow high heels of a walking woman are juxtaposed with the sensual image of mollusk interiors.
Composition and materiality also play a central role in Chakaia Booker’s work. The selection of her renowned sculptures made from repurposed black rubber tires spans her practice from 1996 to 2023, including works from a series currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Conceptually charged, this material is a hallmark of her practice: while its flexibility and structural resilience allow the sculptures to twist into intricate forms and reach large scales, it also evokes debates around environmental degradation, socioeconomic inequality, and the historical exploitation of marginalized communities in the various regions where the material was sourced.
Booker’s works are distinguished by surfaces densely composed of patterns, textures, movement, and layers, creating an immersive visual field oscillating between a call toward a mysterious, intangible experience and a critical engagement with the history of rubber and its ties to African American heritage and the African diaspora—a connection often emphasized by critics and curators.
Together, Booker and Rio Branco articulate a shared attentiveness to material, the body, and the environment as sites where histories of inequality—as well as forms of affirmation—are inscribed. Brought into dialogue at Independent 2026, their works foreground how lived experience is embedded in surfaces, gestures, and structures, whether through the chromatic density of Rio Branco’s images or the physical tension and elasticity of Booker’s sculptures.
