Wynnie Mynerva

For their first solo museum exhibition in the United States, artist Wynnie Mynerva (b. 1992, Lima, Peru; lives and works in Lima) will premiere a body of work in the New Museum’s Lobby Gallery asserting radical mythologies capable of inspiring gender exploration and sexual liberation. Born in Villa El Salvador on the outskirts of Lima, Mynerva grew up in an environment where violence based on gender, sexuality, race, and social class was extremely prevalent. Responding to both their traumas and desires, Mynerva creates cathartic visions of revenge and emancipation—representations of a future where sexual dissidence would be praised as powerful political action. Their large-scale, colorful paintings depict bodies that hover on the edge of abstraction, refusing to be defined, consumed, or controlled, and their radical performances and body modifications posit sexual transgression as a path to social transformation. For their New Museum exhibition, Mynerva will continue these explorations through a newly commissioned installation composed of large-scale paintings and an experimental archive of body modifications.

This exhibition is curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, ISLAA Curatorial Fellow.