Nicole Chaput’s solo exhibition “Atomic Venus” convenes a boisterous ensemble of female characters (or, more fittingly, entities) performing impossible contortions. Their bones, veins, muscles, and viscera pulsate through their translucent flesh, yet there is no sense of violence. And while they may indulge in high fashion—painted nails, hair accessories, stilettos, and jewelry abound—these chimeric figurations seem alien to any normative notions of beauty.

The artist infuses her subjects with the spirit of popular culture (as reminiscent of French artist Orlan as of villains from a Disney animated film) but also endows them with a shared primal nature. Insoportablemente Bella (Unbearably Beautiful, all works cited, 2021) depicts a woman whose hair, threaded with red and blue veins, lifts into an antlerlike V-shape over her purple-toned face. The sculptural volume of the “stuffed” painting on boldly stitched polypropylene paper allows the rib cage to physically split, revealing a set of black pearls dangling from a silk thread. The womb and breasts—organs related to the creation of life—stand out in bright pink hues. This emphasis on reproductive capabilities carries over into Fósil de una señorita (Lady’s Fossil), which shows two small female figures emerging from a larger yellow being’s torso.

Chaput charges the gallery with baby blue wall paint and silver tin foil that covers the floor. The staging suggests a cenote, a water cave in which, according to Indigenous cosmogonies, life originates. However, there is no archaic nostalgia in the artist’s characters. Take the painting that gives the exhibition its name, Venus Atómica (Atomic Venus): The goddess unfurls her folded body between two halves of an eggshell that conspicuously resembles a mushroom cloud. Is this the bleak forecast of a future so apocalyptic that it becomes the ancient past?

— Fabiola Iza