International Artist in Residence:Jul 22 – Sep 12, 2025
Exhibition:Sep 11, 2025 – Jan 18, 2026
More information here.
Detailed images of individual sculptures are below. Click to enlarge them.
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
23” x 23” x 18.5”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
17.5” x 18” x 11”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
17.5” x 17” x 7”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
18” x 18” x 14”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
15.5” x 15.5” x 8”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
17” x 17” x 13”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
17” x 14.5” x 15”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
12” x 12’ x 15”
UV Reactive Borosilicate Glass
11” x 19.5” x 15”
Goldie Poblador’s Artpace exhibition, The Rise of Medusa, is a descent into a subaquatic realm where light, scent, glass, and sound merge to form an environment that is at once fragile, haunting, and resilient. At the heart of the work is Medusa: a stage in the jellyfish’s life cycle as well as the mythic figure. From a goddess of power to a monstrous symbol rewritten by patriarchal voices, Medusa’s evolution echoes the ways bodies, ecosystems, and stories adapt, endure, and reclaim power. By entwining mythology with marine science, Poblador invites Artpace visitors to consider how transformation lies at the core of survival.
The gallery is bathed in a deep celestial blue, a color chosen to echo the vast skies of Texas and to evoke the sensation of plunging into oceanic darkness. Within this immersive atmosphere, nine glass sculptures stand and hang as if suspended in water, reminiscent of coral reefs and jellyfish. These works, made through lampworking, bear extraordinary detail despite their small scale. As light transforms them, they embody the monstrous feminine, a quiet force that grows larger than life through shadowy projection. Sound work by composer Ben Richter adds another layer, resonating with tones derived from instruments shaped to accompany the glass forms, amplifying the sensation of inhabiting a marine environment.
Equally transformative are the scents that permeate the exhibition, developed in collaboration with perfumer and artist M. Dougherty. Together, they evoke both ecological devastation and the persistence of life. The first impression, Oil Slick, rises with metallic sharpness, acrid smoke, and the faintly decaying sweetness of contaminated waters. It clings to the air as oil clings to the sea; its suffocating presence recalling disasters that have scarred marine habitats.
Dead Coral follows with a mineralic, saline austerity. It’s acrid dryness mimics the earth’s bleaching reefs, a ghostly monument to climate change. Yet the experience culminates in Verde, a lush composition that carries the freshness of tropical florals and the brightness of citrus, mingling the imagined blossom of green mango flower with ylang-ylang and elemi. Their inclusion is not incidental: ylang-ylang, with its rich floral sweetness, and elemi, with its bright, resinous lift, have long held cultural and spiritual significance for Filipinos. In bringing these native materials into the gallery, Poblador anchors the work in Filipino identity, linking ecological resilience to cultural heritage and honoring the biodiversity of the Verde Island Passage, which scientists have called a global “hope spot.”
Through these layered experiences, The Rise of Medusa reframes fragility as strength. What may seem small (a jellyfish polyp, a coral colony, a drop of oil, or a single flower) is revealed as essential, resilient, and interconnected with human survival. By placing myth beside science, and letting scent, shadow, and sound magnify delicate forms into monumental presences, Goldie Poblador’s Artpace installation calls visitors to recognize that in the smallest creatures and the most overlooked systems lies a power that is not only enduring but vital to our own.
— Ada Smith Genitempo
Manager of Residencies and Exhibitions
Artpace
Curated by Regine Basha
Sound Composed by Ben Richter
Scent created by M Dougherty
Performed on Sept 10, 2025 in collaboration with Justin Boyd and Justo Cisneros
Installation and Sculpture Images by Elena Peña
Performance documentation by Cleo Diwata and Elena Peña
top photo by JL Javier, 2024
bottom photo by
Anna Frumenti, 2021
︎︎︎Curriculum Vitae
︎︎︎Artist Statement
︎︎︎ Instagram
Email goldiepoblador@gmail.com for inquiries
Goldie Poblador is a visual artist who merges glass sculpture, performance, and video into multi-sensory installations that address themes of climate change and the emancipation of the female body.
Artist Biography
Goldie Poblador is a Filipina visual artist who creates multi-sensory installations that merge glass scent, sound and performance that address themes of ecology and decolonization as it relates to the emancipation of the female body.
Her work has been exhibited and performed internationally at such institutions as Artpace, The Corning Museum of Glass, Urban Glass, 601Artspace, The Knockdown Center, Saudi National Museum, The Rubin Museum, Singapore Art Museum, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Fine Art Museum of Hanoi, Lopez Memorial Museum, Art Fair Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, The National Museum of the Filipino People and The Cultural Center of the Philippines.
She is the first Filipino artist to be acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass. She has received grants from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the University of the Philippines, the Puffin Foundation and a President’s Scholarship from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has completed residencies at Artpace, the Corning Museum of Glass, Oakspring Garden Foundation, MASS MoCa, and the Cité International des Arts. She received her BFA in Studio Arts from the University of the Philippines in 2009. In 2015, she obtained her MFA in Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Registered as Goldieland Studio / New York, NY