Our Place in These Worlds
Esvin Alarcón Lam, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, and Simón Vega
21st August – 27th September 2026
Private View: 20th August 2026
Our Place in These Worlds, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, is an artist-led touring exhibition featuring works by Esvin Alarcón Lam, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, and Simón Vega. Curated by Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes, the show is shaped through non-hierarchical collaboration and takes a collective, non-authoritarian approach centred on exchange. Challenging dominant Eurocentric ideas of belonging, Our Place in These Worlds engages with histories of colonisation and migration while resisting exoticisation and fixed notions of identity, opening space for shifting perspectives. The show considers how ideologies shape the ways worlds—and the lives within them—are imagined. In the context of ongoing debates around migration and cultural polarisation, Our Place in These Worlds advocates for more nuanced and relational approaches to identity. While some works have been part of the project since its first iteration in 2023, others are presented here for the first time.
The touring project is conceived by the three participating artists, whose continued dialogue forms its conceptual framework as it moves between contexts. Previously, the exhibition included a curatorial essay by María Jacinta Xón Riquiac, a Maya K’iche’ anthropologist and Indigenous rights activist. Our Place in These Worlds at Elizabeth Xi Bauer has been developed by curator Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes, marking further evolution through the introduction of her curatorial perspective. Additional reading will include a newly commissioned conversation between the three artists and de Pontes.
Esvin Alarcón Lam’s multidisciplinary practice examines mobility and cultural inheritance through the movement of symbols across geographies, with a particular focus on the Chinese diaspora in Central America, which he traces through his maternal grandfather. Working across performance, video, textile, and sculpture, Alarcón Lam brings together personal memory and ancestral stories to explore how they shift across generations. His works trace how motifs circulate and accrue layered associations as they move across settings, challenging fixed definitions of selfhood. Through this framework, Alarcón Lam foregrounds hybridity as a state shaped through encounters and continual negotiation.
Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín’s textile-based practice draws on Indigenous epistemologies and craft lineages that carry meaning through making. Working with woven structures, he draws on his Tz’utujil Maya heritage to reflect cosmological understandings embedded in cloth and process. His works treat textiles as living systems that hold knowledge and encode ways of relating to land and community. Pichillá draws attention to Western hierarchies that separate art from craft, presenting weaving as a site of reclamation and contemporary expression.
Simón Vega’s practice draws on constructed environments shaped by speculation and displacement, using sculpture, installation, and drawing to reflect on postcolonial conditions. His works often bring together seemingly incompatible references, pairing everyday materials with DIY technologies to question prevailing notions of progress and aspiration. Through these juxtapositions, Vega addresses how futures are envisioned from the margins and how global power orders continue to influence such projections. His contribution to the exhibition positions humour and critique as tools for rethinking inherited narratives.
Previous versions of Our Place in These Worlds were presented at Sol del Río Gallery, Guatemala City (2023) and Liliana Bloch Gallery, Dallas (2025).
Notes to Editors
Esvin Alarcón Lam (born 1988, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala). Lives and works in Guatemala.
Alarcón Lam graduated with a bachelor’s in communication sciences from Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala in 2014. The same year, he was a finalist for the David Rockefeller Atrium Art Commission by The Americas Society in New York, and recently received the Foundation for Arts Initiatives grant. A participant in numerous international residencies, including Art Omi, New York (2021); Masaha, Misk Art Institute, Saudi Arabia (2021); ARAMAUCA, Chiapas, Mexico (2019); Residencia de Al Lado, Lima, Perú (2018); Hidrante, Puerto Rico. (2018); Casa de las Américas, Havana, Cuba (2018); and OCA/CAL (Office for Contemporary Art Norway with Centro de Artes University of Brazil), Brazil (2017). Between 2023 and 2024, Alarcón Lam was based in Berlin, where he was an artist-in-residence at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme. In 2018, Alarcón Lam founded Pagoda Imaginaria, an independent artist residency programme and research platform based in Guatemala City. Pagoda Imaginaria provides space for international exchange, critical artistic experimentation, and social research.
Exhibiting worldwide, Alarcón Lam has presented his work at various institutions and galleries, including Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Osage Foundation, Hong Kong, China; The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; IFA Gallery Stuttgart, Germany; the Biennale für Freiburg 3, Germany; Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain; The Americas Society, New York, USA; MoMA PS1, New York, USA; Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Puerto Rico; Casa de Cultura do Parque, São Paulo, Brazil; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá, Panama; Universidade de Brasília, Brazil; Bienal en Resistencia, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala, among others.
Alarcón Lam’s works are held in private and public collections worldwide, including the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico and the SPACE collection, Irvine, California, USA. His works are also featured in publications, including Remains-Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, published by Hatje Cantz, edited by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, and The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean, published by The Americas Society, New York, USA.
Presenting solo exhibitions since 2016, Alarcón Lam debuted his first solo exhibition in Europe in 2025, entitled Intuitive Porosity, at daadgalerie, Berlin, Germany, and the same year exhibited The Practical Guide to Gardening, a solo exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany. Our Place in These Worlds, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, London, will be the artist’s first presentation of works in the UK.
Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín (born 1982 in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala). Lives and works in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.
Pichillá studied at the Rafael Rodríguez Padilla Art School in Guatemala City. In 2017, Pichillá received the Juannio Award, a prestigious accolade for Guatemalan artists. As a participant in the 2002, 2010, and 2014 editions of the Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala, Pichillá’s works were additionally showcased at the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2020.
Among his recent international museum shows, Pichillá’s work was presented in Inherited Threads at Tate Modern, London, in 2022. In 2024, his work was included in the travelling exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Barbican Centre, London, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The same year, Pichillá’s works were included in a group exhibition at The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York City, USA, titled Threads of The South. Subsequently, his works were acquired by the institution. Further in 2024, Pichillá presented a solo exhibition, The Offering, at the MGLC, International Centre for Graphic Arts, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Pichillá has presented works worldwide, including exhibitions at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany; Para Site, Hong Kong; the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, New York, USA; and Galeria Luciana Brito, São Paulo, Brazil, among others.
Earlier this year, Geometría Intercultural opened at Luciana Brito Galeria, the artist’s first solo exhibition in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2023, Pichillá’s first solo exhibition in Europe, In front of the lake, was held at Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London. Recently, Pichillá participated in the artist-in-residency at dc art foundation, Miami, USA.
Pichillá has been featured in several publications including, Latin American Artists: From 1785 to Now, published by Phaidon Press in 2023; Remains–Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, in 2022; Who tells a tale adds a tail: Latin America and Contemporary Art, by Denver Art Museum, in 2022; Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art Exhibition Catalogue, published by the Barbican Centre, and Prestel Publishing, in 2024, among others. In 2025, Pichillá published the monograph Ombligo-Tierra (Naval-Earth), offering an in-depth exploration of his oeuvre to date and featuring contributions from leading voices in art and anthropology.
In addition to the Tate Modern, and ISLAA, Pichillá’s work is acquired by worldwide collections, including Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Collection Luiz Chrysóstomo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; IL POSTO Collection, Santiago, Chille; Collection Quinto Lojo, Guatemala City, Guatemala; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Banco de España Collection, Spain; Denver Art Museum, Colorado, USA; Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, USA; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, USA; Space Collection, Irvine, California, USA; Poma Family Collection, Miami, USA; Jorge M.Perez Collection, Miami; Juan Carlos Maldonado Collection (JCMC), Miami, and the D+C Family Collection & Foundation, Miami, among other private collections.
Simón Vega (born 1972 in El Salvador). Lives and works in La Libertad, El Salvador.
In 2000, Vega graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Veracruz in Mexico, and in 2006, received a master’s degree in Contemporary Art from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. Vega’s international residency experience includes Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2011); Fountainhead, Miami (2014); Casa Tlaloc, San Pablo Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico (2022), and Ma’s House, Shinnecock Indian Reservation, Long Island, New York (2024).
Over the past two decades Vega has presented works at major institutions and biennials, including Museo de Arte de Antigua MUNAG, Antigua, Guatemala, (2025); Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, (2023); Oku Noto Triennale, Suzu, Ishikawa Préfecture, Japan, (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, (2019); Bronx Museum for the Arts, New York, USA, (2019); Museo Marte, San Salvador, El Salvador, (2019); Pérez Art Museum of Miami, USA, (2014); 55th Venice Biennale, Latin American Pavillion, Arsenale, Venice, Italy, (2013); and in multiple editions of the Central American Biennial, (2002, 2004 and 2010).
With solo exhibitions across Europe, the United States and Central America, recent exhibitions include La Última Estación Tropical at Matia Borgonovo, San Salvador, El Salvador; Tropical Space Castaways at Parrish Art Museum, Long Island, USA; The Return of Prospero, Tales of the Crypto Colonized at Liliana bloch Gallery, Dallas, Texas, USA; Futuros Pasados at Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna, Austria; Third World Spaceships, Galerie Hilger Next, Brot Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria.
Alongside his artistic practice, Vega has also curated numerous exhibitions, including recently DISOBEDIENCES at Matia Borgonovo, San Salvador, El Salvador, and Monstruo Centroamericano at Museum MARTE, El Salvador. In 2016, Vega co-curated the 10th Central American Biennial in El Salvador. In 2018, Vega created a monumental sculptural installation for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Vega’s work is held in public and private collections worldwide, including Sanziany Collection, Palais Rasumofsky, Vienna, Austria; Hilger Collection, Vienna; Philein Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo de Costa Rica (MADC), San José, Costa Rica; Fundación López Gurdián, León, Nicaragua; Parrish Art Museum, Long Island, New York, USA; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, USA; Pérez Art Museum of Miami (PAMM), Miami, USA; Mario Cader & Robert Wennett Foundation, Miami; Dan & Kathryn Mikesell, Miami; Eduardo Poma Collection, Miami; and recently the The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC, USA.
Our Place in These Worlds will run from 21st August – 27th September 2026, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s Exmouth Market location, open Wednesday through to Sunday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 20th August 2026, 6 – 8 pm.
