I’ve often found myself wondering whether it would really be such a radical gesture to show a majority of work by women without bracketing it as women’s work. What would it be like to experience a city filled with exhibitions that weren’t reinforcing the patriarchal tendencies of the art world? In Lima this possibility came true. It’s unclear if these exhibitions were coordinated to coincide with the #NiUnaMenos (NotOneLess) demonstration that drew more than 200,000 people to march on Lima to protest violence against women on August 13. Despite being an international movement, Ni Una Menos’s “cry against impunity” seems to have struck a particularly resonant chord in Peru where, according to Ana María Romero-Lozada, the country’s Minister for Women and Vulnerable Persons, ten women are murdered every month and twenty more are victims of attempted femicide, amounting to “about one [attack] per day.” For a city of ten million people, Lima’s art scene is small, with few progressive contemporary art galleries. As often happens elsewhere, Lima’s most experimental exhibition programs are found either in alternative spaces or galleries that started as alternative spaces, and curiously all of them were showing solo exhibitions by women. “Body Moves,” at Garúa, is named after Pamela Arce’s …

“Angel, is it you?” is the second solo show in Lima by David Zink Yi, the Berlin-based Peruvian artist. Although his work has been shown in small group exhibitions since 2008, Zink Yi’s practice was virtually unknown in Lima, given that his artistic production and training happened abroad. It was only nine months ago that he was properly introduced to the Peruvian art scene through the exhibition “Oxidación/Reducción” [Oxidation/Reduction] at the Lima Art Museum – MALI. It’s a detail that is relevant as Zink Yi’s show signals the gradual transformations in Peru’s cultural infrastructure and art-market dynamics after two decades of violence and dictatorship. Exhibitions of artists such as Fernando Bryce (Lima, 1965) and Milagros de la Torre (Lima, 1965) are clear indicators that local institutions and galleries are increasingly willing to actively participate in the contemporary art scene. Zink Yi’s MALI exhibition featured older pieces, but for his show at 80m2 Livia Benavides Gallery, the artist has not only produced new work (which departs from his usual investigations centered on music and the body) but also made an architectural intervention on the second floor of the gallery. The exhibition takes its title from the eponymous series of photographs produced by …