Allyson Vieira
Born 1979, lives and works in New York.
Allyson Vieira is an American sculptor and draughtswoman whose work engages deeply with the legacies of classical antiquity, architecture, and labor. Her large-scale sculptures and intricate drawings reflect a sustained inquiry into materiality, construction, and decay—often juxtaposing the permanence of ancient forms with the impermanence of contemporary structures and systems.
Rooted in the formal language of classical architecture, Vieira’s work references columns, entablatures, and other architectural fragments. Yet these forms are never static; they appear partially built, crumbling, or precariously assembled, suggesting processes of collapse and transformation. In this way, Vieira’s sculptures function as metaphors for societal and political instability, as well as the cyclical nature of history.
Material is central to her practice. Working with gypsum, concrete, plaster, and other construction-grade materials, she draws attention to the physical labor embedded in the making of things. Her studio practice is itself a kind of excavation—unearthing lost meanings and remaking them for the present. Her use of raw and industrial materials echoes both the grandeur of ancient monuments and the fragility of modern infrastructure.
Vieira’s drawings, often rendered in meticulous graphite, reflect a similarly rigorous approach. These works extend her sculptural concerns onto the page, serving as both studies and independent explorations of structure, tension, and form. Whether monumental or intimate, Vieira’s work embodies a powerful tension between order and entropy, endurance and ruin.
She has exhibited at institutions including Kunsthalle Basel, the Swiss Institute (New York), PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv), and Storm King Art Center. Through her practice, Vieira probes the enduring question of how civilizations build, remember, and fall apart—offering both a critique and an homage to the past as it echoes into the future.
