PRESENTATION: Streams Of Dragonflies

The exhibition “Streams Of Dragonflies” presents the work of seven artists amd exhibition addresses themes such as territory, culture, and the body. Although their approaches differ in form and technique, they share an interest in revisiting established narratives and, through their artistic practice, proposing new conversations that emerge from both materiality and concept.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Livia Benavides Gallery Archive

The exhibition “Streams Of Dragonflies” includes a curatorial text that links the works to excerpts by writers from diverse literary and academic contexts, creating a dialogue between image and word. From there, the works explore memory and the connections between the personal and the collective. Landscape painting has determined the way Sandra Gamarra Heshiki see the space that surrounds us, separating from the frame itself, like a cutout, placing us behind a window looking outside. The interior as culture and the exterior as a territory to be organized. This idea of space repeats and refects on itself, creating an idea of truth that has nothing to do with other ways of understanding the environment. By placing this truth over the other forms of life, the “sense” that these could have is subverted, inscribing them in the past, the backwardness, the savage, the barbaric. In her painting it is the western vision that loses its logical sense, its refection becomes to reveal the economic value we give to the environment and the text that is inscribed is a trompe l’oeil where we read both foreign landscape and foreign country.  This idyllic and immovable landscape is also an idyllic and immovable country that is turned upside down.The series of works  “Modulations” continue the Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s  exploration of the role of copper in Peru’s economy, where this natural resource is exported as a raw material for its use in tech industries. In many of her other works, Garrido-Lecca brings industrialized copper materials back into artisanal practices, refecting on the inherent erasure of traditional cultures, which are often triggered by extractivist policies. These new works integrate a series of abstract symbols. These woven symbols are based on different modernist corporate logos used by diverse industries and corporate entities. By using these geometric symbols in a traditional woven form, she questions the relation between these modern images, tied to the engines of modernization and the global economy, and their links to pre-Columbian abstraction.  The work also highlights the demand for accelerated growth and modernization in the context of a growing economy, under unregulated natural resource extraction, which often does not generate investment in local infrastructure and social welfare, but favours corporate gain. Rita Ponce de León recently graduated from a study program on psycho-corporal techniques proposed by the Argentinean organization Río Abierto. Rita understands her work as a way to get involved in situations that through a focus on learning and participation, lead her to the recognition of a substantially “bond-centering” world, where even ephemeral encounters are potentially meaningful. For this, the intuitive approach that the body provides clears her path. She keeps close to practices such as butoh dance and Aikido and she often participates in workshops that promote the movement of the body to give rise to a certain type of wisdom and collective knowledge. She pours this diversity of experiences into drawings to share them in the form of visual essays. Elena Tejada-Herrera is an interdisciplinary artist who seeks to facilitate cultural exchanges and empower people through her work. Her practice involves cultural exchanges, where conversations and interactions for creative experiences feed into the artwork. The resulting objects or the materialization for the communication of these creative processes are photographs, installations, paintings, drawings, videos, and internet publications. Elena builds hybrid forms of art while cultivating a passion for drawing. In Peru, she presented risky and disruptive performances to protest against Fujimori’s dictatorship. Her work has been included in “Dissident Fictions in the Land of Misogyny” by author Miguel López, among others.

María José Murillo is a textile artist and researcher, co-founder and member of art collective Noqanchis. Murillo holds a BFA in Painting form Pontifcia Universidad Católica del Perú – PUCP (2006-2011) and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Studiothrough the Fiber and Material Studies department at the school of th Art Institute of Chicago – SAIC (2017-2019). Upon fnishing her graduate studies, she moved to the Andes to work under the guidance of Nilda Callañaupa, founder of the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco – CTTC and was entrusted with the institution’s Deoartment of Education. In 2022, she took part in the WIELS contemporary art residency in Brussels (Belgium) after landing the ICPNA Artus WIELS scholarship. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Textile Society of America – TSA Board of Directors, where she is part of the Committe for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Cristina Flores Pescorán’s  work arises from a dialogue between her body, healing processes, medical ex- periences, family memory, and feminism. She employs textile practices, performance, video art, photogra- phy, ceramics, installation, and actions in public spaces. Elena Damiani’s “Unfoldings” is a series of rectangular boxes suspended on the wall that contain a stone relief and mirrored copper plates arranged at an oblique angle. A single opening invites viewers to peer inside, concealing the back of the relief from view. However, the refection on the sloping copper planes allows the complete sha- pe of the piece to be reconstructed. The dialogue between the mirrored surfaces and the travertine boxes explores the notion of interiority, while the light, as it flters through, illuminates the matte surface of the stone and is projected onto the copper. Hand-carved, the travertine evokes arid mountainous landscapes that unfold in two planes: a three-dimen- sional representation in stone and its two-dimensional projection on polished copper. The copper mirrors alter the perception of depth, expanding the sculpture beyond its physical limits. The series establishes a subtle echo with Donald Judd’s geometric sculptures, revisiting his interest in modular form and seriali- zation, as well as the use of color and refections within his pieces to transform the relationship between object, light, and space. In “Unfoldings”, this principle is reinterpreted through polished copper, which casts an orange glow on the stone, integrating the carved landscape with its refection and multiplying its planes of perception.

Participating Artists: Elena Damiani, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Ximena Garrido Lecca, María José Murillo, Rita Ponce de León, and Elena Tejada-Herrera.

Photo: Rita Ponce de Leon, Un mundo hecho pedazos, un mundo uno I A shattered world, a world one I. 2025, Ink collage on paper, 136 x 210 cm, © Rita Ponce de Leon, Courtesy the artist and Livia Benavides Gallery

Info: Livia Benavides Gallery, Malecón Pazos 252m Barranco – Lima, Perú, Duration: 13/8-13/9/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://liviabenavides.com/