Alixe Turner, Maria Trabulo

What Remains

Towards is pleased to present What Remains, a two-person exhibition of work by Alixe Turner and
Maria Trabulo. 

Working across painting, sculpture, film, and installation, the two artists explore themes of memory, forgotten histories, and the ways in which we render the invisible, visible. 

Alixe Turner’s practice examines cultural memory and personal indexes of her past experiences, interrogating the ideological frameworks that render people and landscapes invisible. Drawing upon her previous experience as a field researcher, she explores how mapping, archiving, and image-making are used to impose a sense of order and structure on an otherwise chaotic world – often at the expense of marginalized bodies and geographies. Turner’s large-scale paintings are reminiscent of topography – evoking fractured landscapes and dispersed memories while occupying spaces both real and imagined. 

Working intuitively, she slowly builds up the surface of her canvases to create densely layered, textural works imbued with their own ongoing sense of transformation. Turner uses the grid as both a compositional and conceptual structure, invoking the visual authority of maps while simultaneously undermining their claim to objectivity. The resulting work resists easy categorization, instead embracing rupture, residue, and material instability as strategies to challenge dominant narratives and make visible what is often left unseen.

Maria Trabulo’s multi-disciplinary practice explores the role that images and artifacts play in shaping both our personal and collective memory. Her work examines the ways in which artifacts accrue meaning, and the ways in which that meaning is in a continuous state of flux. 

Trabulo’s works in What Remains were initiated as part of a residency at the Bode Museum, Berlin in 2024. Working alongside museum conservators and staff, Trabulo documented and catalogued various artifacts that were either damaged or disappeared as a result of the second world war.

The last known images of many of these artworks and artifacts date to the 1920’s, when the museum undertook a cataloguing of the collection. Statues, coins, and artworks spanning from the 7th century BCE through the Byzantine Empire, the Renaissance into the 18th century were photographed for records to be made.

Today, the photo negatives for the over 700 works from the Bode Museum that were either destroyed or disappeared during the second world war are all that remains. Despite having survived the many horrors of the 20th century, the photo negatives have not been able to defy the passage of time. 100 years after their creation, many are fractured, discoloured and slowly disintegrating. With their disappearance, so goes any remaining trace that these artworks and artifacts ever existed.

Maria Trabulo, The Spared Museum (Schutzmantelmadonna aus Ravensburg, Wood Statuette - Inv. No. 421), 2024 , 2024

Giclée print on Gold Fibre Gloss 310

Maria Trabulo, The Spared Museum (Madonna mit dem stehenden Kinde - Inv. No. 2015), 2024

Giclée print on Glass

Alixe Turner, Coordinate Bilingualism, 2025

Oil and carbon on canvas

Maria Trabulo, The Spared Museum (Maria mit dem Kinde, Alabaster Statuette - Inv. No. 34), 2024

Giclée print on Glass

Alixe Turner, Hysteric’s riddle I , 2025

Oil on linen, 2025 Oil in linen, carbon, aluminum, LED

Maria Trabulo, The Spared Museum (Schmerzensmann, Carrara Marble - Inv. No. 32), 2024

Giclée print on Glass

Alixe Turner, Hysteric’s riddle III, 2025

Oil on linen, carbon, aluminum, LED

Artists

Alixe Turner’s mark-making operates as cultural memory and personal indexes of her experiences. Her practice is a continuous dance between rich material exploration and gestures of erasure. She is interested in how a painting can address the body and sociopolitical events. Often using carbon paper, her marks are a record that…

Alixe Turner’s mark-making operates as cultural memory and personal indexes of her experiences. Her practice is a continuous dance between rich material exploration and gestures of erasure. She is interested in how a painting can address the body and sociopolitical events. Often using carbon paper, her marks are a record that not only plays with the hierarchies in painting but also with the paradoxes of national consciousness and historical facts. 

Turner received her BA in International Development at McGill University. She is  a current MFA candidate in the Yale School of Art Painting and Printmaking program and is attending Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture this summer (2025).

Maria Trabulo (b. Porto, 1989) is a visual artist and researcher who works between Porto (PT) and Berlin (DE). Her multi-disciplinary practice examines the role that images and artefacts play in shaping both personal and collective histories as well as the alteration and restitution of political images. Trabulo holds an MFA…

Maria Trabulo (b. Porto, 1989) is a visual artist and researcher who works between Porto (PT) and Berlin (DE). Her multi-disciplinary practice examines the role that images and artefacts play in shaping both personal and collective histories as well as the alteration and restitution of political images. Trabulo holds an MFA from the The University of Applied Arts Vienna (AUT) and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the School of the Arts – Universidade Católica in Porto, Portugal. Trabulo has exhibited extensively, and since 2012, has participated in artist residencies in Austria, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal as well as Iran.

Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Frieze London (2024);  Fragile Stones, Galeria Presença, Porto PT (2023); MAAT Museum, Lisbon, PT, (2022); Towards Gallery, Toronto (2021); CAA - Águeda Cultural Centre, (2021): Porto Municipal Gallery, Porto (2019); Deegar Platform, Tehran (2019); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (2018); Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology, (MAAT) Lisbon, (2017); Neue Gallery - TirolerKunstlerschaft, Innsbruck (2017); Galerie UngArt, Vienna (2015); Nuno Centeno Gallery, Porto (2015); KARAT, Cologne (2013); and Super Tokonoma, Kassel (2012).