Follow Up: Ramiro Wong

Ramiro Wong’s artistic approach is interested in translation, representation and the politics of invisibilisation as an integral part and narrative of installations and performances. Both in its temporal iteration and in its object-based effects, Wong’s work is not intended to illustrate circumstances but to stimulate actions that lead to a conversation in which participants witness each other’s experiences.

Dear Ramiro, tell us briefly what you have been working on?

During the residency I was working in a new body of work which I titled Sonnet as it is intended to consist of 14 different parts which will compose an installation.

How is the project progressing now?

The project has since taken two routes, on the first I am on a research travel to find out more about the impact of that particular period of time on the people that survived the internal armed conflict in Peru and on the other hand I have been developing new pieces that can bring forward the concept.

What has changed over the course of the residency, what process has been influenced, where has it developed or not and why?

During the residency I was able to work on the physical ‘drafts’ of all the pieces at once and see how they can relate to each and create a narrative in terms of materials, illumination, dimensions, etc. 

In your work, the use of found and reused materials such as recycled car batteries is a metaphor for resilience and survival in broken systems. At the same time, the invisible plays a central role, especially in the political-social context. How do you manage to combine the material and the immaterial in your installations – or even bring them into a productive contradiction?

What interests me is precisely the tension between the visible and the invisible, the tangible object and the immaterial force it represents. A recycled car battery is heavy, toxic, and unmistakably physical, yet when connected to a light it becomes a channel for something unseen: electricity, memory, history. In my installations, this tension mirrors how political and social realities operate. Violence, fear, resilience – these are rarely visible on the surface, yet they shape how people live their everyday lives. By working with found and reused materials, I anchor the work in the real, in what you can touch and recognize. But the light they generate, the sounds that emerge, the absences they mark – these open a space for the immaterial: memory, trauma, hope. The contradiction is productive because it forces the audience to confront both dimensions at once: the material traces of survival, and the invisible systems – political, social, emotional – that are subjacent. 

What does interdisciplinary work mean to you? To what extent does it come into play in your work, why?

More than interdisciplinarity, I think of my work as transdisciplinary, meaning that at the beginning I try to create a coherent narrative by bringing in different sources of knowledge as addressed from the point of view of various disciplines but I contrast them with real experiences from the communities and peoples about whom I am talking with the intention of showcasing problems that are as contemporary as perennial and  have become invisible or ‘acceptable’ to the broader of society.