The Peruvian Sandra Gamarra Heshiki is the first foreign artist to represent Spain at the Biennale, with a project that addresses the consequences of Spanish colonization in Latin America, questioning its historical narrative methods. The project transforms the Pavilion into a historic gallery of Western art that centers on the notion of “migration” in its many facets. The Western concept of an art gallery, exported to the former colonies, is inverted here, showing a series of historically altered or silenced narratives. Divided into five rooms that lead to an outdoor garden, Gamarra Heshiki’s works combine various elements that evoke the open colonial wound. The exhibition combines figurative art with elements such as quotes from ecofeminist writers and thinkers, facsimiles of illustrations, and variations on classical paintings of still lifes. The five rooms finally lead to the Migrant Garden, inhabited by representations of alien or invasive plants that allude to the impact of colonizers on indigenous populations. But the final stage of this symbolic journey, that seems to foreshadow the extinction of civilization, offers a glimmer of hope: the non-native plants have found a place to thrive, and the alteration of ecosystems can be evaluated and measured from a perspective in which all species coexist in harmony without hierarchies.

Featured image: Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia – Photo Matteo de Mayda