Image: Medellín Museum of Modern Art, Medellin
Gala Porras-Kim’s first institutional individual exhibition in Colombia brings together eight works made between 2016 and 2026 and has been on view in Sala A since 10 September 2026.
Porras-Kim, a Colombian, Korean and American artist based in Los Angeles, examines how museums, archives and power structures construct the narratives surrounding cultural objects, including decisions about what is preserved, how it is interpreted and how museum narratives are developed and legitimized.
Her work encompasses drawing, installation, archives and institutional protocols in various places around the world, while generating material and discursive speculations about other possible lives for objects that Western museological tradition has classified as archaeological and ethnographic.
The exhibition takes its title from a central atmospheric installation that divides the gallery in two and, with four other works, belongs to research the artist developed at Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico, in 2023.
These works approach cyclical time in Maya cosmology and the ritual function of water and rain in the spiritual life of artefacts.
The three remaining works also relate to humidity through direct interventions in the water-collection system of the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín, observations of the organic character of the British Museum’s collection in London, and efflorescence as a method of architectural demolition in nineteenth-century Mexico.
Across her practice, Porras-Kim reviews museum conservation techniques such as temperature control, pest control, disinfection and general asepsis as a constant struggle against the passage of time, material deterioration and the natural organic processes of objects.
The project is situated within Colombia’s broader context, where state funding historically devoted to culture and heritage conservation has fluctuated in response to the internal armed conflict and other political circumstances.
