Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Resident Artist Lecture 2025

Sandra Gamarra Heshiki gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her figurative paintings, drawings, and textiles where she also on occasion works with fabric and adds it to her paintings. For Gamarra Heshiki, she is interested in exploring the circulation of images and how to navigate information systems. Gamarra Heshiki creates visual exercises based on a critical approach to studying colonialism and questioning the established orders in the imaginaries of both Spanish and Peruvian societies with respect to the historical moment of which there are two stories combined. Gamarra Heshiki also explores the theme of neocolonialism which is still prevalent in Spain and related to many Latin American cultures with a focus on the Indian Context. Gamarra Heshiki speaks about how she built a project on a conflict space, showing how the region of Latin American nations is intimately linked to the birth of Spain and Europe itself and how a critical look of these two legacies is key to building other forms of coexistence. Gamarra Heshiki speaks about the importance of exploring symbols and metaphors that have a connection between Latin America and the Western world. One such symbol is the mask: which conceals identity as a tool of otherness and otherness intrinsic to the self. For Gamarra Heshiki, the mask is the instrument for knowing the stranger within. Gamarra Heshiki ends her lecture by stating that she believes in the ability of art to create safe spaces to harbour difference, contradictions, and even conflict.