By combining found iron tools with blown glass, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman transforms objects associated with labor, control, and animal management into sculptures that question power, history, material, and the possibility of change.
The Whitney Biennial 2026 repeatedly asks viewers to reconsider familiar forms.
At the Whitney Museum of American Art, objects, materials, and systems are rarely presented as neutral. They carry histories. They reflect power. And in the hands of artists, they can be transformed into something entirely different.
Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the Biennial brings together artists whose work engages with social, ecological, historical, and material systems. Rather than organizing the exhibition around one fixed narrative, meaning often emerges through atmosphere, contrast, and subtle shifts in the way familiar things are seen.
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman’s sculptures embody that transformation with striking clarity.
Familiar Objects, Altered Meaning
At first glance, many of Bermúdez-Silverman’s forms are recognizable.
Horse stirrups.
Traps.
A bull nose puller.
These are objects connected to labor, agriculture, domestication, restraint, and the control of animal bodies.
They were designed to serve practical purposes.
But Bermúdez-Silverman changes their meaning by introducing a radically different material: blown glass.
Glass expands within the iron forms, filling them, pushing against their boundaries, and sometimes distorting their original structures.
The result is something hybrid.
Part industrial object.
Part organic form.
Part tool.
Part sculpture.
That transformation shifts the viewer’s relationship to the object completely.
Hardness Meets Fragility
The contrast between iron and glass is central to the work.
Iron suggests weight, durability, utility, and control.
Glass suggests fragility, transparency, light, and vulnerability.
When the two materials meet, those associations begin to collide.
The functional object no longer behaves as expected.
A tool once designed to restrain or direct movement is altered by a material that seems to resist containment.
The glass pushes outward.
It occupies space.
It disrupts the original logic of the form.
That tension creates the feeling that each sculpture is holding its own contradiction.
Objects With Histories
By working with found tools, Bermúdez-Silverman also draws attention to the histories embedded within everyday objects.
These forms are not empty.
They carry associations with labor, agriculture, land, domestication, and systems of power.
Their original purposes shape the way we read them, even after they are transformed.
But that transformation opens up another possibility.
The work becomes less about preserving what an object once was and more about asking what it can become.
That shift matters.
The past is not erased.
It remains visible.
But it is reinterpreted through material.
Glass as Resistance
There is something almost bodily about the way the glass occupies the iron.
It appears contained, but not passive.
It presses against the structure.
It swells into spaces that were never meant to hold it.
It changes the balance of the object.
That physical relationship can be read as a challenge to systems built around control.
The iron establishes a boundary.
The glass complicates it.
The original function of the tool begins to break down, and in that breakdown, another meaning emerges.
Light Changes the Work
The sculptures also transform as viewers move around them.
Glass catches light.
Transparency shifts.
Reflections change.
What appears opaque from one angle may become open from another.
The interior of the object becomes visible in ways that would not be possible with iron alone.
That responsiveness gives the work a sense of movement even when it remains physically still.
The sculptures change with the environment.
And the viewer’s position becomes part of the experience.
Material and System
Within the broader Whitney Biennial 2026, Bermúdez-Silverman’s work connects to larger questions about how systems shape daily life.
Other artists in the exhibition examine technological, ecological, or social systems.
Bermúdez-Silverman focuses on the system embedded within the object itself.
What was this tool made to do?
Who used it?
What kind of relationship between humans, animals, labor, and land does it represent?
And what happens when its original function is disrupted?
By transforming these forms, she reveals that objects can carry histories long after their practical use has ended.
The Whitney as Part of the Experience
The Whitney’s architecture reinforces the material tension of the sculptures.
The industrial quality of the building echoes the iron and structural weight of the objects.
At the same time, the light-filled galleries activate the glass.
Reflections and transparency shift throughout the day, producing a changing relationship between sculpture and space.
The work never feels entirely fixed.
That instability becomes part of its meaning.
Looking Again
What makes Bermúdez-Silverman’s work so compelling is the way it encourages a second look.
An object you recognize becomes unfamiliar.
A tool becomes a sculpture.
A structure associated with control becomes something more vulnerable, unstable, and open.
History remains present, but it is no longer sealed.
It can be reconsidered.
Reframed.
Transformed.
Within the Whitney Biennial 2026, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman’s work becomes a quiet but powerful reminder that familiar objects are never only what they appear to be.
They carry histories.
And through material, form, and artistic intervention, those histories can be made visible in entirely new ways.
Explore the Complete Tarik Talk Whitney Biennial 2026 Series
Tarik Talk created dedicated coverage of every artist featured in the Whitney Biennial 2026, with individual episodes exploring the artists, artworks, ideas, and perspectives shaping this edition of the Biennial.
Watch and listen to the complete series across Tarik Talk’s podcast streaming platforms and social media platforms, and explore the full Whitney Biennial 2026 series on TarikTalk.com.