Signals

If one could glance at the production of any given artist and zoom out to see all their work, the result would be a granular texture. While this is true for all authors, something peculiar would emerge from gathering the "textures" of four Peruvian visual artists whose works engage in decolonization projects. The "signals" that an archeologist would find in granular stratum would take us, in this case, to not only extract rich data about the cultural exchange between different environments but also to consider the kind of existence that very scientific research has in postcolonial places like Peru. Perhaps the exact opposite of white noise, the voice of an Other for whom science is itself inherently foreign, might only be perceivable through art. So, if we are to imagine art as a granular, postcolonial space nonetheless populated by dissenting voices, our proposal includes works from four Peruvian artists whose practice involves the description of such an atmosphere, as well as the dissatisfaction with merging in an interesting but still distant background. Ximena Garrido-Lecca's work hints at the power of rather precarious local economies, expressed in traditional manufacturing devices. The historical reverberance of these materials coincide with Sandra Gamarra’s decolonization processes focused on the museographic realm, pointing out at specific narratives found in museums. The historical takes a political and whimsical edge with Fernando Bryce's drawings —often elegant references to rather dark chapters of the colonial past. Finally, Rita Ponce de León's pieces remind us that all of this will keep making sense as long as viscerality is turned towards the social. Indeed, her drawings could be taken as a metaphor for the whole group, for once you zoom out of a small, seemingly erotic ink on paper of hers, you are able to see the vibrant texture of an oeuvre concerned with the actual people forming a society. Knowing the precariousness in which the coronavirus crisis has put us in, our gallery upholds the fragility of subtle discourses. It is precisely in these times that we must defend subtlety from power-driven pyrotechnics.