In January, Antonio Pocar won the Arts Mundi Prize. His work has been exhibited in many venues in Wales. That same month, Andrea Canepa wrapped Madrid’s Cristal Palace, part of the Reina Sofía Museum, with an installation that will remain in place until 2026. In February, Grimanesa Amoros unveiled two major commissions – one at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the other in New York’s Wall Street District – while Ximena Garrido Lecca opened a major solo exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio. In March, Sandra Gamarra Hishiki, who represented Spain at the last Venice Biennale, opened her first retrospective at the São Paulo Art Museum, directed by Adriano Pedrosa.
None of it is new on the international scene, but the presence of so many awards, exhibitions and institutional projects involving Peruvian contemporary art and artists occurring in such a short time is astonishing and indicates the increasing visibility of Peruvian talent and Andean cosmology. Drawing on indigenous knowledges and ancestral worldviews, these perspectives highlight the relationship between environment, territory, and colonial memory through contemporary artistic practices.
Many contemporary Peruvian artists live and work abroad, in Berlin, New York, Madrid or Mexico City, while maintaining strong ties to Lima and other parts of Peru. Some also move between Peru and these international contexts. Born in Huancayo, Paucar developed his practice between Peru and Germany. “My work comes from the Andes, and is connected to my Andean reality, my worldview, my region, and my people,” Pucar told Observer. During his formative years in Germany, “folk art was marginalized and had no place.” However, this distance allowed him to see his work more clearly. “It helped me understand my roots and shape my work from that perspective.”
This work, recently shown as part of the ‘Artes Mundi 11 Finalists’ exhibition at the National Gallery in Cardiff and Arts Center Wales Quarterly, speaks to themes that are both global and regional. In his video performance El Corazon de la Montanacreated on the Huaytapalana mountain range, the artist writes a phrase in his native language, Quechua WancaUsing his blood, while his body remains exposed to the extreme cold in an area threatened by significant glacial retreat, and loss
Is the wave of recognition a real boom?
Amoros, a multimedia artist known for her large-scale light installations that combine technology, architecture and public spaces, sees the recent surge in interest as “just a coincidence. Peruvian artists have always been producing work. There might have been more interest in Mexican, Brazilian or Argentinian artists. I think the contemporary art scene in Peru was one of the last to take off in the region.” It was revealed recently Sparklean installation created in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra that illuminated the Walt Disney Concert Hall. “Being Peruvian gave me a strong connection to history, ritual and symbolism, but living in New York taught me to think globally and work broadly,” she told Observer. For her, “what has changed is the digital sphere, which has increased visibility.”
Gamarra Hishiki, who was born in Lima but has lived in Madrid for years, shares this view: “I think that, slowly and somewhat belatedly, there has been a greater visibility of Peruvian artists from the Andes and the Amazon. I am not sure if there has been a structural change in the international art system, but I think the reception of these works has shifted because of social media… There was no strong structure to support circulation from within Peru, let alone internationally. Instead, the emergence of new information networks has brought greater visibility to a wide range of artists from different generations, many of whom have developed a strong body of work over time.
Peru has a relatively limited institutional infrastructure for contemporary art compared to other countries in the region, and there has been persistent political instability. The country has had eight presidents in the past decade. None of them since 2016 have completed a full term. In early March, Qamar Hashiki opened her first retrospective exhibition “Réplica,” which revisits images from Western heritage to question the hierarchies and narratives upheld by traditional museums. In contrast, Canepa, born in Lima, turns to the structures that support him Vardoan installation covering the entirety of the Crystal Palace in Madrid, part of the Reina Sofía Museum, is currently under restoration in El Retiro Park.
To do this, she wrapped the iron-and-glass structure with a printed surface inspired by pre-Columbian funerary textiles from the Paracas culture, where bodies were covered with multiple layers of fabric. “The work enters into dialogue with a system of knowledge that has often been displaced or misunderstood within Western institutions,” Canepa told the Observer, adding that presenting the project at the Crystal Palace allows it to exist within the very structures that have previously displayed and categorized other cultures. But, as she points out, international attention often moves in cycles across the Global South, and Peru is likely to be part of this dynamic.
At the same time, institutions are under increasing pressure to reconsider how they position themselves in relation to histories and other forms of knowledge, although whether this will lead to lasting change remains uncertain. At the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, Garrido Leca’s exhibition “Seeds” brings together installations containing seeds, plants, and fibers to compare ancestral agricultural knowledge with contemporary extraction and production systems. “I don’t see my work as representing Andean or Central American knowledge,” Garrido Leca told the Observer. “Instead, I place this knowledge and its symbolism in contrast to modern infrastructures and colonial systems, to create a space for reflection.”
For her, what has changed most is how the work is received globally. But she cautions that Andean cosmology should not be treated as an aesthetic resource, but rather as a worldview shaped by material histories of extraction, labor, and resistance. I also wondered whether this moment signaled a deeper shift in the international artistic system. “I would hesitate to call this a structural change,” she said. “When this change happens, I hope it will not be measured by the number of Peruvian artists showing their work abroad, but by a real redistribution of value, authorship and knowledge.”
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