SANDRA GAMARRA HESHIKI CONNECTS CIVIC PROTEST AND COLONIAL HISTORY IN HER NEW SHOW IN LIMA

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima (MAC Lima) presents Construction of Events, a new exhibition by Sandra Gamarra Heshiki (Lima, Peru, 1972). The show connects the civic protests that took place between 2022 and 2025 — in which fifty people lost their lives in Lima and the southern Andes — with other historical events spanning more than four centuries, including the death of Inca Atahualpa in November 1532 and genre scenes by painter Pancho Fierro.

As curator Augusto del Valle Cárdenas notes, Gamarra Heshiki's work "is emblematic for approaching Peruvian and global contemporary art," functioning as "a lens through which to observe the global transformations of the concept of art that have taken place so far in the 21st century." In Construction of Events, the artist employs archival material, references, and the appropriation of historical and artistic sources to reveal their surprising relevance today, transforming the poetic into the historical and the visual into the political.

The working process required collaboration with photographers, painters, and videomakers, as well as the participation of Rosalía Tíneo and Edwin Límaco, renowned ceramic artists from the southern Andes, who fired clay pieces in kilns according to their tradition, guided by iconic photographs of the civic protests. The resulting pieces were then subjected by the artist and her team to a process of appropriation, fragmentation, recycling, and assembly. The exhibition includes an installation, a mural painted with clay, and audiovisual materials documenting the working process, together constructing a memorial that illustrates the ongoing tension between past and present.

Construction of Events is on view at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, Lima, Peru.