For this year’s presentation at Zona MACO, N.A.S.A.L. gathers works that probe the complexity of desire. Three Latin American artists examine the dynamics of wanting and yearning that shape life on Earth, mapping an erotic, multidimensional assemblage—the will that mobilizes all conscious beings. Their works draw on historical, esoteric, and organic references to reveal how desire is constructed, constrained, and reimagined.
Luis Enrique Zela-Koort’s paintings and glass sculptures explore life and desire as intertwined forces, envisioning alternative bodies and realities beyond modernity. Primal Desire—a glass hybrid containing a synthesis of primordial soup—signals shared origins and the enduring potential of pleasure. Their cosmic landscapes dissolve boundaries between interior and exterior, imagining worlds where life-forms coexist beyond anthropocentric desire. Through a framework of “Queer Metaphysics,” difference emerges as universal, diverse, and sacred.
Alejandro García-Contreras’s reliefs depict mythic scenes in which desire appears as a force of possession. Sphincters—thresholds between pleasure and excretion—are shown open or activated, casting the body as the meeting point of the “authentic” and the “constructed.” Through metallic surfaces and symbolic forms, the works expose desire’s volatility and proximity to violence, prompting viewers to confront their impulses and the binaries of masculinity and femininity that inform these esoteric realms.
Chavis Mármol’s sculptures operate as charged constructions of bodily energy. A large chain and shackle intertwine historical weight with his sexual biography, evoking restriction, fetish, and potential liberation. Here, personal revolution suggests a path toward collective freedom. Two metallic window grills extend the work into open political confrontation, revealing how conflict, capital, and domestic power relations shape desire—and how trauma, queerness, and resistance circulate within these structures.
Together, the artists urge us to confront the limits placed on our bodies and sexualities. Each revelation carries the promise of transformation: new bodies, new pleasures, new freedoms. While desire exceeds any individual, these works examine the structures of embodiment and offer glimpses of worlds where flows and potentials move without restraint.
