La Cosecha
at A.I.R. Gallery, 2026
Brooklyn, NY USA
A pre-Hispanic funerary cloak poses an unanswered question. A hand holding an unidentified plant, three figures characterized as women, repeated supernatural faces, a.multi-species crowd sticking out their tongues, and bean-like shapes are among the imagery that remain a mystery to this day. La Cosecha is a playful interpretation of the iconography of a Nasca textile dated 100-300 C.E., found in the Peruvian coastal desert and currently located in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. The textile portrays Nasca agriculture; a knitted procession celebrating the harvest decorates its border. Resembling a placenta, the Nasca mantle was found wrapped around a corpse placed in fetal position, perhaps impregnated with the seeds for future plants. It’s an ode to fertility, to the interconnection of birth and death.
Utilizing material languages and allegory, Chuls reconsiders and repositions the industrial and procedural elements of reproductive care, combining allusions to medical technologies with forms inspired by the Nasca mantle. Knitted pieces such as Eucaristía (2025) or Las tres Marías (2026) invoke the textile’s opaque presence, while evoking Chuls’ own ceramic embryo-like shapes through black- thread details. Aluminum details resemble needles. Elongated hands become tools for midwifery, conjuring the caring touch of past and present doulas, mediators of the communion between life and death. Vases, ceramic appendages, knitted petals, and latex hoses stained with iron oxide intertwine to form a network of shared gestation.
In La Cosecha, Chuls knits a tale of a cycle of reproduction, punctuated by grief and pleasure. The work unfolds as a queer, feminist landscape, nourished by the mantle’s multi-species characters and the bond between an aborted embryo and a blooming flower. Gestation becomes a process that may begin, shift, and end multiple times. In this world, abortion does not mean no to life. It means yes to other life forms, other timings, other expressions. The body that aborts does not exist in isolation. It is a node in an ecosystemic dance.
Photography by Matthew Sherman, courtesy of A.I.R. Gallery
Parir los pétalos
at Real Art Ways, 2023
Hartford, CT USA
In the exhibition Parir los pétalos (translating to ‘give birth to the petals’), Chuls imagines a ceremony of physical, emotional and spiritual abortions defined by interdependencies and pleasure. A recent sculptural series of ceramics and textiles represents vestiges of past and future abortion practices, augmented by cross-knit looping relating to a Nasca mantle dated 100 – 300 CE (currently in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum). The graphite drawings of Embriones Huaco similarly reference the forms from Nasca and Mochica huacos, with cross-knit looping puncturing the paper surface. Informed by her study of pre-Hispanic textiles and ceramics archives, Chuls articulates an understanding of abortion as part of a collective and more-than-human fertility cycle. (Text by Cody Boyce)
Photos by John Groo, courtesy of Real Art Ways
Parirme Clandestina
at Corriente Alterna, 2020
Lima, Perú
Parirme Clandestina addressed the emotional aspect of carrying an unwanted pregnancy and the decision to interrupt it in a context where abortion is criminalized by law. The exhibition included works from the projects "Clandestinas" and "Qué rico menstruo". It was installed in March 2020, weeks before the Peruvian Government ordered a mandatory lock down due to Covid-19. The exhibition never opened to the public.
Photos and video by Juan Pablo Murrugarra
Clandestinas
at Galería Forum, 2020
Lima, Perú
Clandestinas portrays the emotional stage of being pregnant with an unwanted being in an environment like Lima, Perú, where abortion is illegal.
Two materials resist each other in a moment of tension and overwhelming weight. The fabrics, the fiber works, simulate bodies that reappropriate their uterus. The ceramic pieces appear as alien embryos that become stone, unrelated to the fabrics.
En la Garganta, la Pena (In the throat, the pain) exposes the sorrow of hiding the procedure in a context where abortion is stigmatized.
Atrazo Menstrual (Menstrual Delai) imagines the precariousness of back-alley and low-cost surgical interventions, from the incorrect spelling of its title to the size, thickness and fragility of the ceramic knitting rods.
The project ended with Virgencita Abortera. Virgin Mary is an important symbol in Latin-American culture. She is an icon that has defined the notion of motherhood as the sacrificed mother, delivered to her children. A new figure of her becomes our guardian, identifying my story and the stories from all women and non-gender-conforming bodies that are secluded to resist in illegality.
Tierra Incógnita
at Fundación Euroidiomas, 2017
Lima, Perú
The exhibition presents works in various formats and media: ceramics, threads, fabrics and ink. It proposes a reconstruction [or recovery] of the artist's perception of her female ancestry: aunts, great-grandmothers, grandmothers and mother.
Terra incognita was the Latin term used in the representation of maps to refer to the unexplored territory, those lands unknown to the western white man. Following this metaphor, the artist proposes that the memory of her female ancestry is conditioned. Information transferred only from a particular gaze, inherited from patriarchy, drags gaps, voids, ignored terrains. “Much of my [our] history is marked under that denomination, that of terra incognita,” the artist points out.
It should be noted that Chuls' work focuses on the study of gender, with femininity and women being the protagonists of her plastic investigations. (translated from TV Robles)
