The weight of a gaze (is to listen to the sound of a kilogram)

Currents 125: Blas Isasi
Curated by Simon Kelly
Saint Louis Art Museum
Saint Louis, 2026
Photography: Courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum

Currents 125 offers a meditated interrogation of Peru’s complex and layered history. Isasi does not romanticize Andean culture but rather suggests that it might offer alternative models for a troubled present. The exhibition’s central installation consists of two large, angular steel sculptures animated by rocklike shapes coated with sand; carved bones with hair extensions; and small, highly detailed, and colorful forms. The installation embodies the cultural hybridity resulting from the encounter between Andean and European cultures. The presence of hair and bone, with their sacred meanings in Andean culture, suggests that objects can be vessels for spirits. The second space features a Chincha Inka balance from the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection, which was used to weigh objects in a pre-Hispanic barter economy. It is surrounded by sandstone sculptures with aluminum foil pieces, which resemble Andean metal artifacts and, again, suggest a spiritual presence. Across the gallery is another scale; on one side are mutilated aluminum fingers, embodying colonial violence and on the other is a balancing weight of one kilogram, a reference to the metric system as an archetypal symbol of science in the Western Enlightenment.