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veronica pesantes vallejo

@thedecolonizingproject

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art, culture, fashion ➕environmental 🦥activism through a decolonial lense🇪🇨#thatssocolonial follow @vero_santes

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Felicitaciones! Texas-based, Chicano visual artist Vincent Valdez was just awarded a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. I love this painting of his immigrant grandparents:
“It speaks about the labor and the toil and the determination of creating that better life and situation in America, so that your offspring have a better way forward.” @vincentvaldez77 photo caption: Vincent Valdez, “People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana),” 2018, oil on canvas by @thedecolonizingproject

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9 days ago

My recent article about the art of the Amazon is on the importance of agency and representation at the Venice Biennale, aka the Olympics of the art world. (Full article linked in stories) 🦜🦥🇵🇪🇪🇨
“Venice is sinking. The Amazon is burning. Both are casualties of the same socio-political cycle of domination and extraction. In contrast, the art of the Amazon river basin currently on view in Venice at the Ecuadorian and Peruvian pavilions speak about reciprocity, deep ecology, and the persistence of non-Western knowledge systems despite years of resource extraction.
🦥Amazonian cosmologies, though diverse, are rooted in a belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of life, a relational vision that contests the economic drive to exploit resources and turn the sacred into a commodity. The art market risks repeating this very logic: rather than celebrate higher prices for the art of the Amazon, we need to question the extractive habits of the art world and its penchant for ‘discovering’ undervalued art, because this a language of discovery sounds colonial by insinuating that these artists and traditions did not exist until the market’s gaze fell upon them…” (Images: Tawna Collective and Sara Flores) by @thedecolonizingproject

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a month ago

Venice is sinking. The Amazon is burning. Both are casualties of the same socio-political cycle of domination and extraction. In contrast, the art of the Amazon river basin currently on view in Venice at the Ecuadorian and Peruvian pavilions speak about reciprocity, deep ecology, and the persistence of non-Western knowledge systems despite years of resource extraction. Amazonian cosmologies, though diverse, are rooted in a belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of life, a relational vision that contests the economic drive to exploit resources and turn the sacred into a commodity. The art market risks repeating this very logic: rather than celebrate higher prices for the art of the Amazon, we need to question the extractive habits of the art world and its penchant for ‘discovering’ undervalued art, because this a language of discovery sounds colonial by insinuating that these artists and traditions did not exist until the market’s gaze fell upon them. *link to full article in stories* (Photo caption: TAWNA collective, LLAKI, 2025, video frame 001 ©️TAWNA) taken in Miami, Florida by @thedecolonizingproject

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2 months ago

Peru’s pavilion at this year’s @labiennale features Sara Flores (age 75), an artist from the Shipibo-Konibo community whose rise within the international art world has been rapid. Before she entered the upper echelons of the art world, she was selling Shipibo-Konibo textiles and crafts in local markets and traveling between communities to make ends meet. Now she represented by White Cube Gallery and her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, Tate London, the Hammer Museum, etc. Her practice centres on kené, a geometric, relational design system passed down through Shipibo-Konibo women that has been described as a form of transmitting ancestral knowledge through rhythm and repetition. In a recent New York Times interview co-curator of the Peruvian pavilion Matteo Norzi said “Historically there was a barrier like a form of apartheid: Indigenous people were placed in natural history museums, and white artists in the fine art museum. But now that’s changing.” @matteonorzi @sarafloresvalera taken in Perú by @thedecolonizingproject

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3 months ago

Huge congrats to Ecuadorian artist @pamecevalloss for being among the 50 artists included in “I Follow Rivers: Indigenous Worlds in Latin America” opening this fall @denverartmuseum curated by Raphael Fonseca. I am a huge fan, and I recently placed several of her works in the collection of some of my favorite clients. (Slide three is now in my collection!) Cevallos has an interdisciplinary, research-based practice that critiques museums and the art world as intrinsically colonial institutions. She examines how cultural artifacts in institutional collections are acquired, classified, and stripped of their original meaning. Slide one is a sketch I photographed during a recent studio visit- I love seeing her process first hand. It shows the level of research and care that goes into her work. Looking forward to sharing a project we have been working on soon. #latinamericanart by @thedecolonizingproject

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3 months ago

“Agency in the face of a more and more militarized, economically stratified, ideologically totalitarian world feels harder and harder to come by. Textile-based legacies contain the traces of human will, the human hand, a person’s personal choices.”
-ELLEN LESPERANCE @ellenlesperance

Come check out Miami’s women textile artists with @miamiarthang on Saturday as we tour the exhibition Piecework Legacies with artist/activist/curator @pangeakalivirga

Photo caption: Ellen Lesperance, Ellen Lesperance
Q of Hearts, 2019
gouache and graphite on tea stained paper
44h x 29 1/2w in
111.76h x 74.93w cm
@miamiarthang #allartnopretense #miamiartevents taken in Miami, Florida by @thedecolonizingproject

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4 months ago

Textiles have been used as a means of communication for centuries; the word “text” comes from the Latin textus, meaning “woven.” Covering us from birth to death, textiles have conveyed symbolic, political, and spiritual messages across cultures from the Incan empire to Gee Bends quilters. As evident in the multi dimensional work of Miami’s Fiber-based women artists, textiles intrinsically conveys both ideas of care and nurturing, as well as resistance and critical inquiry. Textiles made by women complicate the rigid, colonial division between “fine art” and “craft.” They refuse to be quiet in the traditionally male-dominated space of art history, where textiles have been gendered as women’s work and deemed less serious. The work of the incredible women featured in this essay (link in stories) is a testament to sustainability, communal care, and play. While digital screens and speed continue to dominate modern life, their textile art is earthy, tactile, and made at a slower pace. In an era of devastating ecological change, their fiber-based art is a powerful and healing tool for transformation, communication, hope and joy. #textile #fiberart #womenartists taken in Miami, Florida by @thedecolonizingproject

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5 months ago

A spirit of returning to magic frames the ethos of the recent opening of the 61st Venice Biennale, though it arrives under a shadow of loss. Its curator, Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), the first African woman to hold that role, passed away suddenly in May 2025.
According to the Observer “Kouoh envisioned a Biennale that would reject both the grandiosity of major global art events and society’s performative behaviors in favor of a call to slow down and ‘take a deep breath. Exhale. Drop your shoulders. And close your eyes.’ Rather than speed she was guided by poetry and literature.”
Photo: Rolf Blomberg, Shipibo Woman, 1961. Gelatin silver print. #rolfblomberg #venicebiennale #documentaryphotography @inti_projects by @thedecolonizingproject

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5 months ago

It’s really hard to choose 20 images from an art-filled week in NYC going to museums, gallery visits and taking in my old hometown in its Springtime glory. I ❤️🗽 and needed an injection of it’s contagious energy. #allartnopretense #diamundialdelarte #worldartday @intiprojects taken in New York City by @thedecolonizingproject

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6 months ago

I was lucky to attend the opening of the awe-inspiring @studio.sandyrodriguez exhibition “Tierra Insurgente” @hispanic_society. According to the curatorial statement it “positions the land as an active force. Here, earth is not property but a witness and participant in rebellion. Soil carries grief and care; rivers, plants, and winds remember what modern systems seek to erase.” Concurrently, I just turned in my third draft of my essay on Rodriguez’s work for @uslaforum today! And, I am honored to be speaking on a panel at the Hispanic Society on June 24th at 6 pm- NYC friends pull up! And do not snooze on this exhibition, I cannot wait to spend more time Rodriguez’s work in conversation with the stellar colonial maps in the Hispanic Society’s collection. taken in The Hispanic Society Museum & Library by @thedecolonizingproject

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6 months ago

A spirit of returning to magic frames the ethos of the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale, though it arrives under a shadow of loss. Its curator, Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), the first African woman to hold that role, passed away suddenly in May 2025.
According to the Observer “Kouoh envisioned a Biennale that would reject both the grandiosity of major global art events and society’s performative behaviors in favor of a call to slow down and “take a deep breath. Exhale. Drop your shoulders. And close your eyes.” Rather than speed she was guided by poetry and literature.✨
“I am tired. People are tired. We are all tired. The world is tired. Even art itself is tired..Perhaps the time has come. We need something else, we need to heal. We need to laugh. We need to be with beauty, and lots of it. We need to play, we need to be with poetry. We need to be with love again. We need to dance. We need to rest and restore. We need to breathe. We need the radicality of joy. The time has come.” - Koyo Kouoh (Photo caption: probably the best work I saw at last year’s #artbasel @robhuarcaya and @rember_yahuarcani @elespacio23) read my full essay via link in stories… #venicebiennale taken in El Espacio 23 by @thedecolonizingproject

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7 months ago

It is a real treat to see the work of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967–1999) who created her own visual universe in response to extremely difficult circumstances. To be a woman artist and educator during the repressive “periodo especial” in Cuba, an economic crisis that was brought on by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, meant scant art supplies and opportunities. Much like the current crisis the period was marked by energy shortages, food scarcity and collective distress. As a working artist and art teacher Ayón had limited supplies, in fact when she travelled overseas (aside from Havana she also showed in New York, Berlin, New Delhi, and Lima) she often brought materials back for her students. Despite these obstacles, the prints she made- large scale monochromatic collographs (a process where materials are glued to something like cardboard) depicting the mythical Afro-Cuban princess Sikán - a feminist icon for the ages- are pure magic. If. You are in Miami - @miamiarthang will host a tour of her most recent show this Saturday - DM to join. taken in Miami, Florida by @thedecolonizingproject

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