OtherNetwork: Los límites del afuera

Connecting two sides of the Caribbean Sea, OtherNetwork is proud to present Los límites del afuera (The Outer Limits), an exhibition guest curated by experimental Colombian arts space La Casa de Meira from Barranquilla, opening at Beta–Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico on November 22.

In the ongoing search for a way to record the immaterial, curators Ana Ruiz Valencia and María Isabel Rueda look to another dimension: a pulse, a lifeline that precedes language as we know it. The exhibition foregrounds the insular Caribbean, the continental Caribbean, the Pacific region and the Darién jungle as an oscillating territory, articulating the aural as a dimension for communication between humans and spectres. Within this context, listening is used as a tool to develop intuition, and mediumship as a possibility for collective liberation. Who are we listening to, and who is listening to us? How and when should we listen? What sounds or silences are we reproducing, amplifying, accompanying and expanding?

The exhibition brings together works by artists across Puerto Rico, Colombia and the wider Caribbean region, including Ser del Cosmos, Awilda Sterling-Duprey, Simón Vega, Maritza Sánchez Hernández, La Vulcanizadora (María Rojas Arias & Andrés Jurado) and Tony Cruz Pabón. The invited artists work from different conceptual, disciplinary, and geographic shores through processes where history, memory, gossip and pleasure converge. They land in the exhibition space of Beta–Local from a number of sites of investigation, including beaches colonised by tourists across the Caribbean to a jungle used for astronaut training during the Cold War. Here, the electromagnetic field is a communication battlefield occupied by the living and the dead, and we listen to the sounds traveling around outer space in satellites and golden records.

The Cold War is hotter and louder than ever, and in the meantime, our alliances touch down through dance. Los límites del afuera seeks to invoke, stir up, ‘sandunguear’ (move with rhythm) and animate the ghosts that accompany and protect us. As such, the space of Beta–Local is conceived as one where the present can converge with other temporalities.

After a successful run of Transmigração at Pivô Salvador, Los límites del afuera will be the fifth iteration of OtherNetwork’s experimental curatorial project conceptualised in the form of a relay. The exhibition series is a project by ifa – Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, and contributes to OtherNetwork’s ongoing mission to foster transnational collaboration between independent art spaces. In 2025 it runs in parallel to a public program of OtherNetwork local productions in Kumasi, Johannesburg, Santiago, São Paulo and San Juan, among others.

OtherNetwork is a non-profit foundation, initiated by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziegungen in collaboration with Cookies Architecture.