Andrea Ferrero (b. Lima, 1991) is a visual artist who lives and works in Mexico City. She participated in the SOMA Academic Program in Mexico City 2019-2021 and has been part of artist residencies at Pivô arte e pesquisa, Sao Paulo; HANGAR, Lisbon; FLORA ars+natura, Bogotá; MANA Contemporary, New Jersey, among others. She was awarded the Hopper Prize in 2021, the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award 2019 and was a finalist in the Taoyuan International Art Award 2023. Her most recent solo show, All My Life I’ve Been Afraid Of Power was presented at Swivel Gallery, New York and Gallery Shilla, Seoul in 2023. Her work has been shown in spaces such as Museo Jumex (Mexico City), MACQ (Querétaro), TMOFA (Taoyuan), PS122 Gallery (New York); SOMA (Mexico City) and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Lima). Among her upcoming projects for 2024 is the Malta Biennale in Valletta and residencies at Mass Moca, Massachusetts and Fountainhead Arts, Miami.
Through the study of monuments and architecture, Ferrero’s work critically considers iconographies of power and our relationship with them. Through the staging of fictional reali- ties, it playfully encourages new ways in which we can re- appropriate and resignify symbols of power and domination that have been inserted into built space and embedded into collective consciousness. Recently focused on researching food as spectacle, eating rituals as stagings of power and their relation to architecture and ceremonial aesthetics, it seeks to challenge colonial legacies through strategies of humor and fiction. Using archival material, photogrammetry, moulds, imprints and 3d prints as raw material, her recent work unfolds in edible pieces that focus on the process of eating, digesting, metabolizing and excreting, often involving the audience in ephemeral sweet bacchanalia.
Her recent body of work examines the dynamics of colonial domination using edible architectural fragments as a metaphor for troubling symbols of power and deep-rooted systematical behaviors. It investigates operatic spectacles staged around food in European courts, where feasting represented aggressive displays of political power and resources and opulent banquets were hosted to show off pre- cious foods extracted from newly controlled colonies. These demonstrations of decadence that enacted power strategies similar to the imposition of western-inspired architecture in America are the starting point for her latest research, in which she adopts eating rituals to expose persisting dynamics of power and exploitation. Through the creation of edible facsimiles and ornamental architecture replicated in ingredients such as chocolate, sugar, gelatin and cake, her work proposes a re-enactment of symbols of power, stripping them of their permanence and playing with their meanings in an attempt to resignify these symbols whilst reflecting on the way public space is marked by symbols of power and domination. The works reflect on how in architecture and ceremony alike, excessive opulence became a display of political control and a strategical power play. Confronting these manifestations of colonial ideology in Latin America with ephemeral sweet bacchanalia, it seeks to orchestrate a re-enactment of history, playing with notions of counter-memorv and counter-history. The staging of these fictional realities aims to playfully encourage new ways in which we can challenge, reappropriate, and resignify these symbols, inviting the viewers to actively participate in the destruction, consumption and digestion of architectural pieces in an effort to collectively metabolize rooted legacies of colonialism.