Opaque Spirits
With Claudia Martínez Garay
March 7–May 26, 2024
Maastricht 6211 RT
The Netherlands
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 12–5pm
T +31 43 327 0207
info@marres.org
“Why do we pretend to have a state?” —José Ignacio Cabrujas, 1987
The Venezuelan playwright Cabrujas once compared the nation to a hotel, a temporary place that doesn’t belong to its inhabitants and thus doesn’t require upkeep. In this hotel, the state plays the manager role but fails to cover even the most basic needs of its guests.
Peruvian artist Arturo Kameya has transformed Marres into a hotel where the ghosts of the failed Peruvian state have taken up residence. The building’s facade will feature massive paintings showing contemporary Messianic imagery. Inside, visitors can find various scenes, such as a tiled bathhouse that functions as a restaurant, a multi-armed beer fountain, and a large upstairs room with mechanical fish. The hotel’s interior is an allegory of the Peruvian state, reflecting a world of appearances in which truth is less important than what is evoked out of sheer necessity.
The exhibition is made in collaboration with the artist Claudia Martínez Garay.
Arturo Kameya
Bringing together a range of visual cultural languages, the multidisciplinary works of Arturo Kameya (Peru, 1984) connect diverse stories, popular myths, historical events of his native land. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam.
Kameya attended the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima, Peru and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 2019 through 2021. His work was presented at Memory is an Editing Station, the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil in São Paulo in 2023; We, on the Rising Wave, the Busan Biennale, South Korea in 2022; and Soft Water Hard Stone, the fifth New Museum Triennial, New York in 2021.
His solo exhibitons include, Los Ovnis, GRIMM, New York; En esa pulga se mezcla nuestra sangre / In that flea, our blood mixes, GRIMM, New York; Drylands, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht; Grandma’s Cooking Recipes, GRIMM, Amsterdam; Depósito de Sombras, Alliance Française, Lima, Peru; Allá en el Caserío, Acá en el Matorral (with Claudia Martínez Garay) Ginsberg Galeria, Lima, Peru; Ghosts Don’t Care if You Believe in Them, Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn; Ghost Stories, Alliance Française, Lima, Peru; Ciencia Ficción, Wu Gallery, Lima, Peru; and Land at the End of the Sea (with Claudia Martínez Garay), Galería del Centro Cultural Británico de San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima, Peru.
His work is part of many collections including the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, the ING Collection, and the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru, and the Saastamoinen Foundation, Helsinki.
Arturo Kameya and Claudia Martínez Garay are represented by GRIMM, Amsterdam / London / New York.
