XXV DESIGN AUCTION - MALI 2020

In various heritage and intellectual areas, MALI is a pioneering museum in Peru. Through its art collections, it has become the repository of some key aspects of the country's visual memory, assuming the challenge of articulating and representing a very diverse and constantly building community. For this reason, beyond disseminating a historical heritage that summarizes nearly three thousand years of history in its exhibition rooms, the museum seeks to generate reflections around those narratives that emerge from genres and areas of artistic creation that allow citizens to rethink their links with contemporary culture and history.

On the threshold of a new decade, which promises both challenges and commitments, MALI offers the 25th edition of the MALI auction, which is inspired by the history of applied arts and Peruvian design. From a varied selection of works, which are presented here in seven sessions, the difficult task of encompassing and summarizing a complex genealogy of design is assumed, based on the great artistic and multicultural wealth of the last century. Likewise, the works gathered here invite you to participate in a collective reflection on those elements that define Peru, approaching it through the arts and the perspective of collecting.

The first session of this auction is dedicated to applied arts and regional traditions. There, works stand out that, leaving behind the anonymous character that usually characterizes many of these productions, allow us to recognize figures such as Eulogio Medina, Aquilino Ramos, Alfredo López, Alejandro Sejekam and Elvia Páucar. Their trajectories have transcended the limits of their localities, becoming some of the visual references of an identity that is built from multiple and diverse components.

In the second session, the works of Reynaldo Luza and Elena Izcue, pioneers of Peruvian design, represent what was a clear rapprochement between the forms and techniques of international design and the spirit of pre-Columbian traditions.

The third and fourth sessions bring together some of the most outstanding works by established artists who contributed to the formation and consolidation of illustration, print and commercial graphics, from founding figures such as Alberto Lynch and Julio Málaga Grenet to Sabino Springett. Likewise, a selection of posters reveals the visual keys that marked advertising, politics and mass culture from the second half of the 20th century, including works by Carlos González and Jesús Ruiz Durand as well as works by collectives and studios such as ADÑ (Association of Design Companies of Peru), La Perrera (Iguiñiz / Venturo) and vm & (Majluf / Bauer).

The fifth session brings together various contemporary artists, some of them exploring co-creation, making use of design tools, abstract languages ​​and, in some cases, millenary techniques to generate critical and, at the same time, playful discourses.

In the following session there is a large and heterogeneous selection of contemporary utilitarian design pieces, commissioned to designers, architects and artists who, committed to the spirit of the auction, offer through their creations the possibility of reconstructing and beautifying the everyday space.

Finally, the auction closes with a session dedicated to fashion design, a section that revisits regional artistic traditions and fabric textures as a means of critical expression and activism.

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