Gathering London is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Wynnie Mynerva (b. 1993, Lima, Peru; they/them), on view from 4 October - 9 November 2024. Encompassing installation, sculpture and painting, the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery reconsiders established narratives around the body and chronic illness.

Installation Views (8 images)

In recent months, a dialogue has emerged that was initially centred around painting, but has quickly transcended the artistic realm to evolve into a broader, more personal reflection on our bodies, now understood as organic wholes, as well as intimate spaces and political territories. These conversations have given rise to essential questions about how we inhabit these bodies, along with all the tensions, stigmatisation, transformations and resistance that come with them.

Having sparked profound examinations of vulnerability, resilience and the signals bodies transmit—suffering, relief, desire, transformation— these discussions have been laden with a constant questioning of the meanings bodies acquire based on gender, within medical, social, and political contexts. These are bodies in a perpetual state of tension, discovering their ability to resist, both individually and collectively.

Selected Works (10 images)

Through monumental paintings that stretch across the exhibition space, inhabiting the gallery like skins peeling off the walls, and a sculpture that extends from one floor to another, Mynerva seeks, as they express, “a personal writing of HIV in my body,” to “name where I am and where I am not, in the dimensions of mental and physical space.” This theme becomes the core of their artistic exploration, which sees the presence of the virus transformed into a language, and the body into a platform that reveals illness, but also uncovers the political and social tensions shaping the experience of disease and its mental and social repercussions. “To be HIV positive is to be sick with meanings, infected by the assumptions society projects onto my body”, Mynerva notes. Through biopolitics, systems of power oppress HIV positive bodies, assigning the disease a specific meaning that results in the biological being used as a tool for social management.

Drawing on their personal experience, Mynerva’s practice challenges dominant narratives about health and normalcy, creating a space where vulnerability turns into an act of defiance. In this process, the HIV-positive body becomes a territory demanding to be acknowledged and named, transcending the prejudices and stigmas surrounding it. As Silvia Federici clearly states: “Our bodies bear the marks of the pains and joys we have experienced, of the struggles we have fought. Like an open book, bodies speak of oppression and revolt,” becoming places where the forces of social control intersect with individual resistance.

Mynerva’s work highlights how these structures of power not only discipline and marginalise, but also serve to reinforce the hierarchies that shape our lives.

Reflecting on epidemics and health crises, not merely as medical phenomena but as expressions of dominant forms of control and social exclusion inscribed on bodies, is a critical urgency that Paul Preciado has explored deeply in his writings. Revealing the immunitary fantasies of societies—who is protected, who is marginalised, and who is sacrificed—Wynnie Mynerva’s work crafts a poetic space where the intimate and political converge, offering a tool to dismantle the narratives of oppression and stigmatisation.