Narcissister

Margot Samel is pleased to present Albert’s Paintings, Rachel’s Dress, a solo exhibition by Narcissister. Continuing her work with kinetic sculpture, Narcissister fills the gallery space with her latest chain-reaction machine and activates it with solo performance interventions. Embedded in the work are seascape paintings by Abraham “Albert” Benzaquen, the artist’s late uncle, an immigrant from Morocco, who sold his works on the Sheepshead Bay waterfront in Brooklyn.

By fusing her current work with these pieces of family history, Narcissister gives physical form to the otherwise intangible experience of memory and return—a shifting landscape where the past is actively rebuilt in the present. Albert’s seascapes appear as sites of transition and dislocation, just as immigrant family histories toggle between the recognizable public milestones of assimilation and the often unwritten, quiet traumas of displacement.

This cross-generational encounter with Albert’s work continues Narcissister’s collaboration with her family and her family’s past, most notably documented in the artist’s 2018 film, Organ Player. Narcissister approaches the family archive not as a stable record, but as something that can be set in motion and made to speak differently in the present.

Her performances in the gallery will stage a literal mechanical and physical chain reaction in tribute to the ways families and artists make and transmit meaning. In Narcissister’s presence, the thump and clang of the machine, paired with her silent, masked figure, interrupt and extend the undulating flow of Albert’s painted seas to create a newly punctuated sense of migratory memory. Still images acquire a rhythm; inherited objects become active participants in the telling of their own histories.

With legs spread and identity muted, Narcissister gives birth to the past. Her fleshly performance enters into tension with the quiet surface of Albert’s paintings, collapsing the distance between archival gathering and embodied memory. Albert’s Paintings, Rachel’s Dress leaves the gaps within family history unresolved, allowing what has been inherited to remain alive to transformation.

Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Masked and merkin-ed, she works at the intersection of visual art, dance, and activism in a range of media including live performance, sculpture, collage, film, and video. She presents work worldwide in museums, galleries, festivals, and nightclubs. Her first feature film, Narcissister Organ Player, a hybrid performance/doc about her complex family history, premiered at Sundance in 2018. Her activist short film Narcissister Breast Work premiered at Sundance in 2020 and won a Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short at Outfest in 2021. Following decades of presenting performance work across a wide range of contexts, she was commissioned by Pioneer Works to create Voyage Into Infinity, a large- scale performance that had its world premiere there in 2024. The work was subsequently presented in 2026 at NYU Skirball during the Under the Radar Festival, Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, and RISING in Melbourne. Narcissister received a BA in Afro-American Studies from Brown University and studied modern dance at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Solo exhibitions include: Albert’s Paintings, Rachel’s Dress, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2026); Margot Samel at Kendall Koppe, Glasgow, Scotland (2024); Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY (2024); Artpace, San Antonio, TX (2019); Participant Inc, New York, NY (2014); Petrella’s Imports, New York, NY (2013); and Envoy Enterprises, New York, NY (2013). Selected group exhibitions include: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (2026); Deitch Projects, New York, NY (2025, 2018); Kentucky College of Art and Design, Louisville, KY (2025); Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (2024); Sargent’s Daughters, New York, NY (2023); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2023); Wellcome Collection, London, UK (2023); Margot Samel, New York, NY (2023, 2022); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2022); Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria (2022); Magenta Plains, New York, NY (2021, 2019); Invisible Exports, New York, NY (2019); Deitch Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2019, 2018); Bodega, New York, NY (2018); Postmasters Gallery, New York, NY (2016); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2015, 2014); and Rhode Island School of Design, Memorial Hall, Providence, RI (2014). Her commissioned installation Almost All of My Dead Mother’s Beautiful Things is currently on display at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona as part of The Cult of Beauty, an exhibition that originated at the Wellcome Collection in London.