Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma, 2025
Mara Espinosa Erda’s Vamos al Mercado is an immersive and visceral exploration of the traditional Latin American market, where culture, chaos, and commodification intertwine. Through a multidisciplinary approach, encompassing paintings, prints, videos, and installations, the exhibition constructs a raw and textured landscape that is both intimate and universal, a site of tradition, transformation, and survival.
Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma, 2025
Espinosa Erda presents markets as more than mere spaces of commerce; they are dynamic environments where abundance and scarcity, beauty and grotesqueness collide.
Her oil paintings of markets and dead animals offer an unfiltered gaze into the raw materiality of commerce, capturing the grotesque beauty of meat in its most primal form. The intricate details and textures evoke both fascination and discomfort, prompting viewers to reconsider their relationship with consumption and the aesthetics of decay.
Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma, 2025
Complementing these works, prints of Peruvian dishes bridge the gap between raw ingredients and culinary tradition, juxtaposing the crude realities of market transactions with the warmth of identity found in food culture.
Video works further expand this dialogue by documenting the daily rhythms of markets in Peru, revealing the energy, resilience, and social exchanges that define these spaces.
Video works further expand this dialogue by documenting the daily rhythms of markets in Peru, revealing the energy, resilience, and social exchanges that define these spaces.
Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma, 2025
Sculptural depictions of hanging meat extend the physicality of the exhibition, immersing viewers in a tactile confrontation with the commodification of life itself.
At the heart of the exhibition, the central installation, Commodification of Beauty, delivers a poignant critique of objectification. A female body wrapped in plastic, presented as supermarket meat, becomes a stark metaphor for the dehumanization and consumption of femininity in contemporary society.
At the heart of the exhibition, the central installation, Commodification of Beauty, delivers a poignant critique of objectification. A female body wrapped in plastic, presented as supermarket meat, becomes a stark metaphor for the dehumanization and consumption of femininity in contemporary society.
Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma, 2025
Meat, 2024 |Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma
Pollo abierto, 2025 | Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma
This unsettling imagery extends beyond market spaces, pointing to global structures of consumerism where bodies—especially those of women—are subjected to the same principles of value, packaging, and consumption. By placing the visitor within this hyper-sensory environment, Vamos al Mercado forces a confrontation with the raw materiality of culture itself.
Installation view ‘Vamos al Mercado’, Roma, 2025
Espinosa Erda portrays the market as a paradox—both a sanctuary of tradition and a battleground for survival. The omnipresence of raw meat—heads, tongues, flesh—evokes a primal discomfort, recalling the artist’s own childhood experiences in market spaces where her mother used to take her. Yet, through her lens, this discomfort transforms into an aesthetic and conceptual inquiry into the commodification of both products and people.
Curated by
Ayda Ozcan
Noor Fatima
Victoria Frob
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