Nicolás Lamas

(b. 1980, Lima, Peru) Nicolás Lamas’ work occupies a threshold where objects, images, and systems of knowledge intertwine within a constantly shifting web of meaning. Through sculpture, installation, photography, and other media, his practice challenges established categories and questions the hierarchies between the organic and the artificial, the individual and the collective, the human and the non-human. His practice proposes a relational ontology in which everyday objects, industrial remnants, and natural elements are reconfigured to expose the fragility of the systems that shape our understanding of reality. This perspective aligns with posthumanist thought, situating the human within a broader network of biological and technological agents that co-evolve in radical interdependence. In his most recent projects, Lamas explores concepts such as swarm intelligence and the extended mind, suggesting that cognition and the production of meaning are not confined to the individual but emerge through interactions with environments and systems of information. Archaeology and technology play a central role in his understanding of time, conceived not as a linear progression but as a stratified and entangled field in which temporal layers coexist and interfere. Within this framework, objects are not passive remnants of a collapsing world but active participants in the production of memory, thought, and agency. Lamas’ practice unfolds as an ongoing inquiry into the entanglement of matter, information, time, and space, inviting a critical rethinking of perception and opening speculative possibilities for forms of coexistence grounded in interdependence and transformation. His most relevant solo exhibitions include Scenarios for Coexistence at Cukrarna, Fluid Minds at Max Goelitz, Assemblage and Circulation at S.M.A.K., Times in Collapse at CCC OD, Archaeology of Darkness at Meessen De Clercq, Liminality at Sabot, Against the Boundary of Its Own Definition at Ladera Oeste, The Form of Decay at P/////AKT, Todo objeto es un espacio temporal at Fundació Joan Miró, and Ocaso at Galería Lucía de la Puente. He has also participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including Mixed Up with Others Before We Even Begin at MUMOK, non-human-matters at Aldea, Finis Terrae at Museum Plantin-Moretus, Beneath the Skin, Between the Machines at HOW Art Museum, the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 at MAK, Beaufort 21, Permafrost: Forms of Disaster at MO.CO., An Exhibition with Works by… at Witte de With, The Penumbral Age: Art in the Time of Planetary Change at Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Something Happened at CCCC, Drowning in a Sea of Data at La Casa Encendida, Des attentions at Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Ivry, The Intention of Things at Trafó Gallery, Notes on Our Equilibrium at CAB Foundation, Du Verbe à la Communication at Musée Carré d’Art, Presque la même chose at Kunsthalle Mulhouse, and Fotografía después de la fotografía at the Bienal de Fotografía de Lima at MAC.