YOU COULD DIE AT ANY AGE

A Raquel Albarran Solo Exhibition 
June 30 — July 31, 2022
Opening Party: June 30, 6 — 8PM

Raquel Albarran collects toes. Amputated toes. Caterpillar hot dog toes. Big fat french fry toes. She catalogs these nubs with devotion and fascination, lining them up five at a time and labeling them with eagle-eyed descriptions. Milky snail toes. Dead mummy toes. The toe is but one subject of Raquel’s upcoming exhibition at Summertime, You Could Die at Any Age, and far from the creepiest. 

Currently based in Puerto Rico, Raquel was Summertime’s first virtual artist–in–residence, working from January to June. During this time she took her love of all things “creepy and cute” to terrifying yet irresistible heights. 

You perhaps have wondered, in those hazy moments just before drifting off to sleep, how you will someday meet your mortal end: by illness, old age, or freak accident. Raquel pushes this morbid curiosity to hallucinatory heights, and in doing so, makes carnage look finger-licking good. 

Raquel is interested in bodies—human, horse, rooster, and easter bunny. The way they grow in other bodies’ bellies. The way their little parts come together, looking so silly when mixed and matched. The ways they break and bleed and suffer, glorious in their disfigurement. Food is another common theme. Mouth-watering tropical fruits mingle with corn cobs and hamburgers. Their appeal is mischievous. One minute you are ogling a papaya; the next, a severed foot.

Jaw-dropping gore punctuates the sugary sweet in Raquel’s world. In one drawing, she depicts a beloved friend being decapitated with a chainsaw as blood gushes from her teeth. In another, a horse with human feet swings an enormous “ding-a-ling.” A human-rooster hybrid grows a rooster fetus in utero. In others, more toes. Raquel conjures a level of horror that surpasses “The Human Centipede” in Candyland-colored language that’s not just digestible, but delicious. Her work toys with the proximity of terror and delight, how a lump in your stomach can shapeshift into a cluster of butterflies. 

In Raquel’s world, pain is cute and suffering is absolutely scrumptious. Her bold and irreverent perspective dares you to giggle in the face of fear—and perhaps nibble on its tasty toe for dessert.