Copper, one of the pillars of the Peruvian economy, is the starting point for the investigations of Ximena Garrido-Lecca. In the series Shape Memory Alloys, the artist reinterprets this material in dialogue with traditional Andean techniques such as weaving. The work evokes a mat, replacing threads with copper wires, creating tensions between craftsmanship and industrial extraction. It alludes to Cerro de Pasco — a mining city marked by extreme pollution — reflecting on the social impacts of mineral exploitation and Peru’s place in the global economy.

This series is emblematic of Garrido-Lecca’s investigation into the role of copper in Peru’s economy, where this natural resource is extracted and exported as raw material for the technology industry. The works incorporate abstract symbols based on modernist corporate logos used by various industrial sectors and corporate entities. By applying these geometric elements to a traditional weaving technique, Garrido-Lecca questions the relationship between these images — associated with the engines of modernization and the global economy — and their possible connections to pre-Columbian abstraction.

“O que me levou a fazer a série Cerimônia do adeus foi minha própria lembrança das documentações de casais de noivos, ao sair da igreja. Muitos álbuns familiares tinham uma fotografia dos noivos dentro do carro, como a última imagem da cerimônia. Meu pai, por exemplo, fotografou uma das minhas tias dentro do carro agitando a mão ao dizer adeus pela janela em meados da década de 1950 e usei essa imagem pela primeira vez em 1988. Esta última foto simboliza de alguma forma, o fim do ritual de passagem e ocorre em quase toda documentação de casamento no Brasil e em Cuba, principalmente após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Pelo menos em nossos respectivos países, os carros sempre representaram vidas novas e prósperas, relacionadas com a maneira de viver americana. Quando fui a Cuba pela primeira vez, em 1994, para participar da 5a Bienal de Havana, visitei um estúdio fotográfico e recebi quilos de negativos de séries de retratos de casamento. Todo o ritual foi documentado exatamente da mesma maneira – na frente do espelho, no sofá, o casal que assina o livro, o adeus dentro do carro. A repetição das poses me surpreendeu muito e eu decidi fazer uma série de retratos de casais dentro do carro, que eu finalmente apresentei na seguinte Bienal de Havana, em 1997. O que também me interessou era algo que era muito maior do que a cena enquadrada: ninguém pode escapar de uma ilha usando um carro. A representação simbólica do adeus ao antigo e consequente acolhimento do novo parece ser quebrado ou estranho. Além disso, esses carros específicos — modelos americanos da década de 1950, reminiscência da era pré-Revolução — significavam tudo o que o sistema político cubano queria negar ou combater, mesmo assim, eles permaneceram fortes símbolos de uma mudança de vida.”

– Rosângela Rennó, 1997

“What motivated me were my own memories of seeing wedding couples inside cars, as the last photograph of the ceremony. Many family albums had one. This last shot somehow symbolizes the end of the passage ritual and occurs in almost all-wedding documentation in Brazil and in Cuba, mostly after the Second World War. My father, for example, photographed one of my aunts inside the car agitating the hand as saying goodbye through the window in the mid-1950s and I used this image for the first time in 1988. At least in our respective countries, cars always represented new and prosperous lives, connected with the American way of living. When I went to Cuba for the V Havana Biennial, in 1994, I visited a photo studio and got kilos of negatives of wedding series of portraits. The whole ritual was documented exactly the same way – in front of the mirror, on the sofa, the couple signing the book, the farewell inside the car. The repetition of the poses amazed me a lot and I decided to do a series on portraits of couples inside the car, which I finally presented in the next Havana Biennial, in 1997. What also interested me was something that was much further of the framed scene: no one can escape from an island using a car. The symbolic representation of the farewell to the old and consequently the welcoming of the new seems to be broken or awkward. In addition, those specific cars — American models from the 1950s, reminiscence of the pre-Revolution era — meant everything that the Cuban political system wanted to deny or combat but, even so, they remained strong symbols of a life changing.”

– Rosângela Rennó, 1997

Nuptias consists of photo-paintings and collages made by Rennó based on wedding photographs. The artists alterations are made with paint, objects, cuttings and recompositions. Besides referring to the plurality of affective unions without regard to belief, race, sexual orientation or any other convention, the artist revisits various icons of the culture of visuality, in both the Occident and the Orient. The photo-paintings and their titles make reference to the ceremonial, the pop culture, recent politics, religion and social inequality.

Iván Argote’s work examines our intimate relationships with others, institutions, power, and belief systems. Through affection and humor, he proposes critical perspectives on dominant historical narratives.

The fragmented words in his paintings evoke an iconoclastic gesture aimed at political slogans, which have often incited anger and resentment but here, conversely, suggest union, hope, and tenderness.

This work is part of a research by Longo Bahia focused on the relationship between the image of communism as a political utopia and images of ruins from a “real” communism, such as the monuments built in the Republic of Yugoslavia between the 1960s and 1980s. The research of the Concrete Communism cycle began to be developed during an artist residency at the Hestia Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau in Belgrade, Serbia.

“Niemeyer” is part of a series of paintings on art transport crates, based on images of Brazilian brutalist buildings and Yugoslav monuments. The wooden crates are dismantled and then reassembled as planned constructions. The figures are painted in colors ranging from black to white, and the compositions between figure and background.

Entangled Roots is a new series of embroidered textile works that explore the hidden architectures of connection beneath the earth’s surface. Each piece captures the moment when two root systems intersect—whether by chance, intention, or necessity—forming layered compositions of encounter and interdependence.

Through the act of embroidery on cotton canvas, Tania Candiani renders these subterranean networks as a tactile cartography of entanglement. Thread becomes both material and metaphor: a human gesture that echoes the intricate exchanges among plants, fungi, and soil. These works visualize communication beyond language, mapping a living web where natural, non-human, and sonic systems intertwine.

In Entangled Roots, the root becomes a line, a stitch, a signal—quietly articulating the profound interconnectedness of all life.

Edgard de Souza’s doodles record the artist’s body movements. They started as pen on paper drawings made during simple challenges like drawing while dancing, while talking on the phone, using two hands at the same time, using the pen until it runs out of ink, being symmetric or avoiding symmetry. Each of these tasks gave rise to graphically or materially different drawings that were imposed on the paper in various ways. They were nevertheless struggles with, or analyses of his body. In his new series, de Souza brings those somehow imprecise drawings to a planned construction, using embroidery on vintage linen. The same sort of “action doodle” is visible, but now they are created in a diametrically opposite manner, bringing a friction between spontaneous and plotted conductions to the works.