DOCUMENT and Ackerman Clarke are pleased to announce Trophic, a collaborative exhibition featuring works by Noelle Africh, Katelyn Eichwald, Will Gabaldón, Laura Letinsky, Faheem Majeed, Duncan McGillivray-Smith, Soumya Netrabile, and William J. O’Brien. Opening on May 29, 2026, the exhibition at DOCUMENT Lisbon coincides with the galleries’ shared presentation at ARCOlisboa.

Trophic celebrates a growing network of emerging and established artists based in Chicago. For many in the group, this is their first showing in Portugal. The display reflects on artistic ecosystems, and the steady nutrition they require, specifically the nourishment necessary to thrive. A number of the involved artists support, advocate for, or live with each other’s work, offering an antidote to competition in the field. The grouped opportunity demonstrates an ethos which recognizes that achievement often depends on others.

Noelle Africh (b. 1992, Chicago, IL) generates ambient compositions in nuanced color across canvas, panel, and paper utilizing unpredictable materials and methods. The fields and atmospheres serve as relics of time, a sum of sedimentary layers outlined by swift decisions and chance results. Africh currently works and teaches in Chicago at The School of the Art Institute and recently completed the 2026 Artist in Residence program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Africh’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Twelve Ten, Chicago (2026), Slow Dance, Chicago (2024), and SHED Projects, Cleveland (2023). Paintings have been included in group presentations at Galerie Gisela Clement, Bonn, Germany (2022), the Hyde Park Art Center (2022), and The Green Gallery-West (2022), among others.

Katelyn Eichwald (b. 1987, Chicago, IL) employs an intimate format to render dislocated subjects in gossamer layering. The surfaces, often thickly woven canvas or burlap, modify the painted images, nudging familiar compositions toward reverie and another realm. Eichwald’s paintings have recently been exhibited in solo formats at Nina Johnson, Miami (2026); Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2026); and Cob Gallery, London (2025). Her work has been featured in multiple group exhibitions domestically and abroad, perhaps most notably at Pangée, Montreal (2024); Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2022); and Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia (2021).

Will Gabaldón (b. 1978, Belen, NM) summons memories from daily activities in and around nature to structure his recent alla-prima oil paintings. The scenes have obvious art historical precedent, though Gabaldón offers his current view, often abstracting the familiar subjects to yield buttery objects where texture, material, and deft brushwork usher beauty and reflection. Gabaldón has exhibited his work in the US and abroad in group and solo scenarios, with one-person endeavors most recently at Ackerman Clarke (2026, 2023), Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco (2025), Union Pacific, London (2024), The Journal Gallery, New York (2023), and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles and Seoul (both in 2022).

Laura Letinsky (b. 1962, Winnipeg, Canada) received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 1986 and MFA from Yale University’s School of Art in 1991. Since 1994, she has been a Professor in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago. Throughout her career, Letinsky has engaged with the fundamental question of what precisely constitutes a photograph. Her carefully crafted still-life scenes often focus on the remnants of a meal or party, as she plays with ideas about perception and the transformative qualities of the photograph. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at FOAM, Amsterdam; PhotoEspaña, Madrid; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Denver Art Museum; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Renaissance Society, Chicago. Public collections featuring Letinsky’s work include the Art Institute of Chicago; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yale University Art Gallery. She has received numerous awards, including the Canada Council International Residency (2014); Richard Driehaus Foundation Award (2003); Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2002) and the Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2000).

Faheem Majeed (b. 1976, Chicago, IL) is an artist, curator, educator, and non-profit administrator whose work focuses on institutional critique and centers collaboration as a tool to engage communities in meaningful dialogue. He received his BFA from Howard University and an MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Art. He is the recipient of the Field and MacArthur Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago Award, the Joyce Foundation Award, and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, and has been recognized as a Harpo Foundation Awardee. Majeed served as the Executive Director of the South Side Community Art Center from 2005 to 2011 and currently serves as the Co-Director and Founder of the Floating Museum, an arts collective and non-profit that creates new models to explore relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Centre Pompidou, High Line Art, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Majeed’s sculpture highlights marginalized objects, histories, people, and places into powerful narratives that challenge and recontextualize their value, fostering dialogue and broader social change.

Duncan McGillivray-Smith (b. 1998, New Haven, CT) stitches together aspects of American sporting and leisure activities with historical painting references to realize his brightly colored non-narrative compositions. Figures, animals, or anthropomorphized objects rendered in pastels or oil paint depict frozen moments in crowds or everyday contemplations injecting them with equal parts splendor and drama. McGillivray-Smith completed his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2026 and has been featured in solo exhibitions during The Barely Fair, Chicago (2026) and at Ackerman Clarke (2025). This will be McGillivray-Smith’s international debut.

Soumya Netrabile (b. 1966, Bangalore, India) takes cues from frequent walks and hikes, translating these processed experiences into drawings, paintings, and ceramic sculptures. Whole worlds and exclusive bodies of work stem from the everyday practice of looking. Each composition possesses its own dynamism buttressed by high-key or complementary color. The shifting landscape and its inhabitants are a bundled theme however pronounced or highly abstracted. Netrabile will have a forthcoming solo exhibition with Anat Egbi in New York this Fall (2026). Her work has been presented in one-person shows at Union Pacific, London (2026); Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2024;, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2024); and The Journal, New York (2022). Other pieces have been featured in group formats at Trinta Gallery, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2021); and Karma, New York (2020).

William J. O’Brien (b. 1975, Eastlake, OH) maintains a diverse practice working in ceramics, drawing, painting, fabric assemblage, installation, and text. For over twenty years, O’Brien has made wall-based pieces using both wet and dry materials. Inspired by mid-20th century abstraction, decoration, and self-taught artists, O’Brien’s work expands on geometries found in nature and studied in mathematics. Each intuitive composition’s palette disrupts a planned outcome given that color combinations are often selected at random. O’Brien is a major fixture in the Chicago visual arts community and holds a tenured faculty position in the Ceramics Department at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been the subject of multiple solo museum shows including, but not limited to, those at KMAC, Louisville (2026, 2017), The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (2018), The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2014), and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2011).