Gala Porras-Kim

Gala Porras-Kim, La Mojarra Stela, Installation view at the Whitney Biennial, 2019 graphite on paper and mixed media Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo by Ron Amstutz

Gala Porras-Kim, Precipitation for an arid landscape, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo by Levi Fanan - Fundaçao Bienal de São Paulo

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Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984, Bogotá, Colombia) investigates institutional and linguistic frameworks that define, legitimise and preserve cultural heritage. Considering how oral traditions or archaeological remains of Mesoamerica are represented and exhibited, the artist underscores history’s methodological and ideological tools to analyse and ultimately control narratives and access to knowledge. Her work questions the ethical principles of museological conservation while also functioning as an invitation to imagine stories and invest new meanings to artefacts displayed inside museum vitrines or assembled in its storages.

Her work has been exhibited at: Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2022); Gasworks, London (2022); Amant Foundation/Kadist, NY (2021); Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2021); São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2021); MOCA Los Angeles (2019); Whitney Biennial, NY (2019); Ural Industrial Biennial (2019); and the Made in LA Biennial, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016).Forthcoming solo exhibitions in 2023 include Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville, MUAC, Mexico City, Fowler Museum, Los Angeles.

She has received awards including Art Matters (2019), Artadia (2017), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2016), Creative Capital (2015) and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2015). She was a David and Roberta Logie Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2019), and the artist-in-residence at The Getty Research Institute (2020-2022).