SPAIN HONORS SANDRA GAMARRA HESHIKI WITH ITS MOST PRESTIGOUS CULTURAL AWARD
The Lima-born, Madrid-based artist received the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts from King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia at a ceremony in Toledo.
The Spanish government has distinguished Sandra Gamarra Heshiki (Lima, Peru, 1972) with the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts, the country's highest state recognition in culture. The ceremony took place on May 27, 2026, at the Teatro Rojas in Toledo, where King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia presented the award to 38 artists, writers, and cultural institutions included in the 2024 edition of the distinction. The award was approved by Spain's Council of Ministers in December 2024, at the proposal of Minister of Culture Ernest Urtasun.
Gamarra Heshiki was recognized in the category of visual arts and cultural heritage for a body of work that dismantles the notion of modernity — in both its artistic and political dimensions — through appropriation, archival research, and the critical examination of colonial history. Her practice spans painting, sculpture, video, and installation, and uses the language of Western art institutions — the museum, the gallery, the painted canon — as both subject and instrument of critique, exposing the historical role of the West in colonial exploitation and the silencing of non-European narratives.
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Sandra Gamarra. Foto: Germán Saiz
The artist studied Fine Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and completed her PhD at the University of Cuenca, Spain, where she has lived for over two decades.
The award follows one of the most prominent moments of her career: in 2024, her project Pinacoteca Migrante was presented at the Spanish Pavilion of the 60th Venice Biennale, making her the first migrant artist ever chosen to represent Spain at the world's most important contemporary art event. The project transformed the pavilion into a reimagined Western art gallery in which migration — of people, plants, and resources — occupied center stage.
Gamarra Heshiki's work is held in major international collections and has been exhibited at institutions including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), the Bass Museum of Art (Florida), the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), and the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago de Compostela). She is represented by Galeria Leme (São Paulo) and Livia Benavides Galería (Lima).
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