Sandra Gamarra is the first Latin American to represent Spain at the Venice Biennale. The Peruvian artist reinterprets historical works by Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán to reveal the colonial bias that hides Spanish heritage.

Her project, Pinacoteca migrante, revisits around fifty historical paintings from Spanish collections, from the period of the Empire to the Enlightenment. The project opposes the idea of Spain as a nation of artists, says the artist, who was born in Peru 52 years ago and has lived in Madrid for two decades. She says: "If there is something that has radicalized me, it is having a child. The ability of our generation to invent solutions is extinct, says the artist. She is based in Madrid and lives in Lima, Peru, with her husband and two children, and works in Spain and the Canary Islands, among other places. She has just inaugurated an alternative museum in the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which is open to the public. The exhibition aims to “put its finger on the sore spot, as Pérez Rubio acknowledges. The titles of the rooms, such as the “cabinet of illustrated racism” or the “altarpiece of dying nature” also leave no room for doubt. The tour ends with a “migrant garden,’ illuminated by the natural light that infiltrates through the roof from the Venetian lagoon. A postcolonial oasis that replaces the monuments in honor of the conquerors with others that honor the indigenous leaders who died for the emancipation of their countries. “Museums must be decolonized, but it will be of no use if we do not also do it with the school, with the historical narrative, and with our own minds, says the curator of the pavilion, Agustn Péz Rubio, who is also the director of the Spanish Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Madrid.