World-renowned artist recreates her acclaimed Malibu artwork • The Malibu Times

‘Malibu Line’ is reborn for Lita Albuquerque

Internationally acclaimed artist Lita Albuquerque is revisiting one of her very first land art installations in Malibu, a place she’s called home for decades. 

The expansive body of artworks, sculptures, and installations created by Albuquerque — one of the preeminent land artists of our time and a self-described futurist and humanist — can be found in museums across the globe, including the Whitney, the Getty, LACMA, and MOCA. Her Celestial Disk star map is featured at the entrance to Los Angeles’Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Known as a land artist coming out of California’s Light and Space Movement, Albuquerque sees her unique and groundbreaking art as “the evolution of the human being and what is needed to be able to essentially connect with ourselves into the earth and into the cosmos. I call myself a humanist because the human being is always part of my intention … doing things that through alignments, through simplicity, through geometry, through color affect a perspective inside of ourselves.”

She’s also a futurist “because I have a very interesting thing about time.” A colleague has called her the “queen of the now, of the moment.” She demonstrated over a minute how she practices a way to position the self in what she calls a“cosmic address.” Beginning with her specific location on earth, she systematically expands her focus and calls out successively expanding perspectives as to her location in the cosmos at a precise moment of time. She started this practice decades ago and sees it both as a way of reorienting and re-centering perspective and as a mnemonic tool, enabling her to recall specific moments like being on a donkey in the Valley of the Kings. 

Born in the U.S., Albuquerque was raised in Tunisia and France, but “Malibu has always been really important,” the artist said. She moved to Malibu at age 13 not speaking English at the time and lived on the beach near Decker Canyon.She remembers a quieter Malibu where “big sea lions washed up on shore.” She lived next to actor James Arness, but television to her seemed foreign.  Later she moved to what was known as the “Other Colony,” a 132-acre area between Tuna Canyon and Big Rock. It was the site of the Coffee House Positano, which she described as having a “beatnik” vibe. The area transformed into an artists’ colony that filled with creatives, including the poet and painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti, actors, writers, and filmmakers who lived a bohemian lifestyle in bungalows on the site. The young Albuquerque worked there and then flourished as an abstract painter.

The “Other Colony” was destroyed in the 1993 Old Topanga Fire, but Albuquerque’s time there probably served as an impetus for her transition from painting to becoming a land artist. Working at her own Malibu studio in 1978, she decided to “make a break” from painting, calling her work “too personal.” Now, instead of using cloth canvas, the earth became Albuquerque’s canvas with three initial works all sited in Malibu. The first was “Malibu Line,” a vivid blue trough running perpendicular out to the horizon where it met the ocean. As described by the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), “Malibu Line” was “a direct mark on the land that connects the viewer to the earth and to the horizon. By virtue of a slight optical illusion, the line both spatially and symbolically links land to sky, and sky to the ocean horizon beyond.”  

“They were really about the land,” the UCLA-educated artist described of her initial works, each utilizing her signature Albuquerque blue, a striking aquamarine pigment. “For me it was about light and about the land.” By nature, land works are ephemeral. All three of the original Malibu land works are gone, weathered away by wind, rain, and fire.

In June, Albuquerque revisited her career-defining “Malibu Line” at her longtime residence in Decker Canyon, which was consumed in the Woolsey Fire. She dug a 68-foot long trench, 14 to 17 inches across and filled it with her signature blue pigment. The public was invited for free viewings with tickets snapped up immediately online through LAND, a site-specific free-arts program that sponsored the viewing.

This new iteration of the piece will be a companion to another installation the artist will create in Tunisia, where the Pacific will be replaced by the Mediterranean Sea. The public will be able to view her stunning work again this fall when Albuquerque has two exhibits of new works opening as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.“Earth Skin” premieres Sept. 11 at Michael Kohn Gallery. She’ll cover the gallery floor with a granite composite so thin it will appear flush with the ground. Her other work debuting at Cal Tech Sept. 27 titled “This Moment in Time” will feature a gold-leafed walking bridge.

Check nomadicdivision.org for future “Malibu Line” viewings.