Connection times

Connection times, 2025

Between outer space and the inner darkness of an anthill, we erect the barrier of the immeasurable.
The myths of different human groups have always built bridges between the cosmic and the earthly. These myths have sustained communal life, for their narratives about nature and humanity’s presence within it have functioned as powerful social binders: they explain the why of existence.

A secular and specialized sphere like ours—at all levels of the social order—is founded on knowledge, which may become highly sophisticated and therefore rewarding. Yet it lacks symbols for healing rituals and is poor in concrete signs that point us toward an understanding of the world.

The visual arc delineated by Lorena Noblecilla in this exhibition is decidedly broader and more encompassing than her previous reflections on nature in her solo show Lección de Historia Natural (2023). Whereas much of her earlier focus lay powerfully on matter, it is now centered on energy, particularly light. The proposal is visually marked by the predominance of green: on one hand, the fluorescent paint she uses sparingly in a small number of pictorial works, and on the other, her vision of the Amazon forest in her photography—an evident testimony to the kingdom of chlorophyll, which captures light and transforms it into nourishment, thus forming the foundation of the food chain.

From matter to energy in an unexpected turn, and likewise, from the life cycle of a solitary hunter such as the spider—reborn alone with each shedding of its skin—to the life of an entire ecosystem: the dense and labyrinthine sum of countless individual life cycles, whose wealth lies largely in the green canopy formed by the treetops and everything that exists at that height. Yet, Lorena Noblecilla has turned her gaze and her recording camera to the forest floor, discovering it crisscrossed by ants. Organized in the ranks of an army, these warriors—essentially a legion of clones—carry, by collective mandate, fragments of leaves they have cut: an act of collective organizational labor. In one of the artist’s new moving-image works, we witness how this march culminates in the entry of the green bounty into the underground anthill, where the plant matter is used to feed the larvae. Another continuously projected work frames the observation of a termite nest—a structure built by these winged insects as the basis of social organization, existing by biological imperative.

A third moving-image work presents a fixed shot of the night sky, captured by pushing the camera to the limits of its functions and then selectively manipulated to the very edge of what is known as “noise,” where visuality becomes disordered and incomprehensible. Every so often, a firefly leaps into view, manifesting as a spark that stirs us in the deepest sense of vitality.

The artist has also drawn upon astronomical imagery, situating us within the galaxy. With these inclusions arise further questions, which each viewer must carry and attempt to answer:

What came first, time or matter? Was it space or light?

These are times not only to carefully weigh the difference between states of matter and the distance between things and their duration in time, but also to attempt to understand the very reason for that distance—between them and us, and among ourselves. For what purpose? To reinvent ourselves through imagination and spirit, to move from numen to symbol. To attempt this, within and for the brief span of each one’s existence on this planet’s face.

To reposition our place within the galaxy and assume responsibility for the lasting impact of our greed to degrade and exploit everything within reach, we must begin to look and to project in the opposite direction of destruction and annihilation. To recenter the intentionality of human agency in the world can only begin as a mental movement, an imaginary projection. Yet it holds the power to redeem the agon and illuminate the ethos.

Jorge Villacorta Chávez, Lima, July 2025