The New York Times
Art Gallery Shows to See in June
By Seph Rodney, Andrew Russeth, and Will Heinrich
Published June 4, 2026 Updated June 18, 2026
This week in Newly Reviewed, Seph Rodney covers Melanie Elyse Brewster’s Wolfmotherhood, Marela Zacarías’s undulations and Gabriela Vainsencher’s disquieting wombs.
Tribeca
Gabriela Vainsencher
With her “Night Visions,” Gabriela Vainsencher presents an image of impending motherhood that exists in a parallel timeline, one in which ultrasounds are displayed on television screens. The glazed porcelain piece depicts a skewed, trapezoidal screen within a brown and white casing that sprouts two curled antennae.
Swimming in the screen’s black void are various white limbs or appendages of an alien creature not yet fully formed. For Vainsencher the womb is a space not only of hope, but also of disquietude.
This unease morphs into outright distress in pieces such as “Small Hope,” in which an adult woman is contorted and stuffed into a jar, with only her hand grasping a tool thrust through a bottleneck in attempted escape, suggesting that for the mother the womb can also constitute a kind of confinement.
And Vainsencher is also playful. Each work in this show is an asymmetric, off kilter and stylized take on the traditional forms of amphorae and cameo miniature relief carving. “Early Morning Devotion,” made on a flattened vase shape, shows two hands almost lost from view in a mass of soapy hair. In “Basis 2,” the subject is the child, now outside of the womb in a whimsical pose, peeking out from beneath her skirt at the viewer behind her.
“The Lesson (White Rug)” unifies the entire show. It’s a mosaic, depicting a mother crawling along hands and knees, her child lying back on her back, three of her four arms gesticulating wildly at something only she can see.
Vainsencher hints that even after the child has been born, even when capable of their own locomotion, the mother will continue to carry them. SEPH RODNEY