ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Jimena Velarde-Alvarez (b. 2001, Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian artist based in New York. She received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Emerging from attention—to and over time—Velarde-Alvarez’s work develops through a process of accumulation and return. Working primarily across painting, drawing, and sculpture, she approaches image-making as a practice of sustained attention, returning to an image as it gradually emerges and evolves. Through repeated encounters, her work follows the echoes of time as they surface and recede.
In her paintings, carefully considered compositions and an atmosphere of restraint allow light, shadow, and architecture to emerge in quiet relation to one another. Spacious interiors, recurring windows, doorways, and thresholds create spaces where atmosphere becomes an active presence within the image. Through translucent figures, shadows, and layered surfaces, Velarde-Alvarez traces the subtle ways time gradually reveals the contours of things.
Across painting and writing, layering becomes both material and metaphor. The accumulation of paint and language mirrors the ways memory, attention, and time are sedimented within the self: how the past accumulates and is continually rewritten, and how these layers can only be accessed through stillness, yet never be fully recovered.
Parallel to her painting practice, Velarde-Alvarez’s writing opens another point of entry into the work. Through poetry, diary fragments, and text-based pieces, language serves as both companion and counterpart—a space for reflection and self-examination that deepens and expands the questions posed by the paintings rather than explaining them.
Deeply rooted in personal experience, Velarde-Alvarez’s practice continues to evolve alongside her, unfolding through and remaining open to the questions that emerge over time.
Velarde-Alvarez’s work has been exhibited in the United States and Peru. She is currently presenting her first solo exhibition, La sombra del tiempo, at Margot Samel, New York.
Jimena Velarde-Alvarez Autopsia I, 2026 Graphite and dried pedals on board 13 x 15 in | 33 x 38.1 cm (framed) | 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in | 19.1 x 24.1 cm (unframed) Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez El peso de las cosas al caer, 2026 Oil on canvas 92 x 68 in | 233.7 x 172.7 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez Puente, 2026 Oil on canvas 38 x 30 in | 96.5 x 76.2 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez Adentro, 2026 Walnut, found keyhole, graphite, paper, light 10 x 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 in | 25.4 x 16.5 x 16.5 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman.
