For a new project at the Renaissance Society, Germinations, Ximena Garrido-Lecca continues her research into plants originally domesticated by Andean and Mesoamerican cultures and their subsequent global dissemination. Taking center stage here is Solanum tuberosum, also known as the potato. Domesticated more than 8,000 years ago in the Altiplano region, the potato has been a pillar in the lives of Andean communities, where it is grown as a source of sustenance and attributed symbolic and spiritual value. Today, more than 4,000 potato varieties have been adapted to different altitudes and climatic conditions around the world.

In Chicago, Garrido-Lecca unveils a large-scale installation that features a huge rectangular section of bare earth covered with sprouting potatoes and two observatory platforms, along with other elements. Across its interrelated parts, the exhibition is inspired by Andean cosmovision, the planting and harvesting of potatoes as ritual events, and a traditional unit of measurement known as the papacancha, which unites space, time, and climate. Throughout Germinations, Garrido-Lecca draws on the Andean concept of Pacha, a word with diverse interrelated meanings, which evokes, among other things, a cyclical and simultaneous dimension in which past, present, and future occur.

In multiple ways, Garrido-Lecca also accentuates how the exhibition itself exists within time. The potatoes in the central papacancha field change over the passing weeks. And each day within the exhibition potatoes are boiled, one by one, and then dried, recreating a pre-Hispanic custom of measuring time using the cooking of potatoes as a reference. The resulting potato pulp is then carried to a workstation within the show, where it is mixed with plaster and molded into new forms, which the artist likens to canopas — offerings to the earth like those used for abundance rituals in Andean communities.

Curated by Karsten Lund. 

About the Artist

Ximena Garrido-Lecca (b. Lima, 1980) lives and works between Mexico City and Lima. Originating in extensive research and culminating in material sculptures or installations, her work foregrounds indigenous knowledge systems and artisanal traditions along with modern technological infrastructures. Often grounded in the specific histories of Peru, her body of work also tracks how extractive industry and related economic paradigms have taken on increasingly global dimensions. In recent years she has produced other solo exhibitions that explore the unfolding histories of certain plants from the Andes and Mesoamerica, including Reverse Engineering at CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Switzerland (2023), and Inflorescence at Portikus, Frankfurt (2022). Her works have been featured in major international exhibitions such as the 2025 Sharjah Biennial; the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India, and the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, and are included in public collections such as Tate Modern, London; Boros Collection, Berlin, Germany; Kadist Foundation, Paris/ San Francisco; The Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Argentina; and Museo de Arte de Lima, among others.

Credits

Ximena Garrido-Lecca: Germinations is supported by the Marshall B. Front Family Charitable Foundation, Marshall B. Front and Laura De Ferrari Front.

Major annual support for the Renaissance Society is provided by the Mellon Foundation. All programs are supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Annual support is provided by The Provost’s Discretionary Fund at the University of Chicago. 

The 2024–2025 Music Series is generously sponsored by a grant from the University of Chicago Women’s Board.

All Renaissance Society publications are made possible by The Mansueto Foundation Publications Program.

Events

Opening Reception 

Sat, May 17, 4-7pm with artist talk at 4pm

Notes on Space-Time

Discussion and exhibition walk-through 

with curator Karsten Lund and physicist Daniel Holz

Wed, May 21, 6pm

As the exhibition draws on different concepts of space-time, Germinations explores the relation of Andean and ancestral knowledge and contemporary scientific knowledge. For this casual talk and exhibition tour, curator Karsten Lund is joined by physicist and cosmologist Daniel Holz, from the University of Chicago. Holz is a leading researcher into gravitational waves, studying how ripples in space-time reveal the hidden lives of black holes and an expanding universe.

Public Reading: 

Myths from the Huarochirí Manuscript

Thu, Jun 12, 7pm

Taking place within the exhibition Germinations, this public reading in English and Spanish presents excerpts from the Huarochirí Manuscript, one of the few surviving records of Quechua worldviews from the Andean region. The lively myths in this a 17^th-century text feature tricksters, grieving mothers, fire gods, and elemental spirits, who embody the struggle for cosmic balance and other aspects of the underlying cosmology.

Performance: Lia Kohl

Sun, Jul 13, 7pm

For this live performance within the exhibition, Ximena Garrido-Lecca has invited Lia Kohl, a sound artist and musician in Chicago, to occupy this corner of space-time. A nimble performer and composer with a wide-ranging experimental practice, Kohl explores experiences of simultaneity here, as it connects to sound and music, while incorporating recordings of gravitational waves and other sources.

Visit renaissancesociety.org for more information.