Tú eres mi otro yo: Mundos, Mundo, Worlds, solo exhibition
July 4, 2026 - October 3, 2026
Tom Thomson Gallery, Owen Sound
Curating and Writing by Shannon Bingeman
Documentation by John White
Tú eres mi otro yo: Mundos, Mundo, Worlds presents new works by Michelle Peraza, a second-generation Latin American Canadian of Cuban and Costa Rican descent whose practice explores postcolonial identity, interconnection, and transformation. Developed during a two-year period of recovery following a serious car accident, the works emerge from Peraza’s personal journey of healing and draw on Curanderismo, a traditional healing approach that blends Indigenous Mesoamerican, African, and European medicinal knowledge with spiritual beliefs and ceremonial practices.
Using amate paper, medicinal plants, precious metals, hand-dyed textiles, and hand-stitched fibres, Peraza creates intricate works that speak to repair, resilience, and care. Guided by Mesoamerican worldviews and a deep reverence for celestial and earthly rhythms, she approaches artmaking as a process of re-worlding—extending personal healing into a broader consideration of how individuals, communities, and the natural world might heal, reconnect, and flourish together.
Writing about each work below.
Implictus and Incognitus Inter-Cosmologies
For four hundred and twenty uninterrupted days, Michelle Peraza meditated at the centre of this monumental work, orienting herself toward the rising sun. At its centre, 23-carat gold leaf represents the sun as a point of concentration and renewal, while surrounding bands of gold trace the eight phases of the moon. Twenty geometric forms inspired by Mesoamerican spindle whorls reference calendrical systems and the interconnectedness between individual bodies and larger cosmic structures. Encircling the work is a forty-two-foot double-headed braided serpent dyed with medicinal plants including chamomile, calendula, roses, coffee, and cochineal. Emerging between forms, the serpent symbolizes healing, protection, transformation, and movement between worlds. Crocodile forms positioned along an East–West axis reference a Pre-Columbian Costa Rican origin story in which the world rests upon a primordial crocodile, grounding the work in acts of remembrance and reciprocal relationships with the cosmos.
Cosmography
Created collaboratively through a series of workshops during Michelle Peraza’s 2024 residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cosmography engages with geological strata, colonial systems of mapping, the movement of plants, and processes of banning and erasure. The work incorporates amate/amatl paper—a traditional Mesoamerican bark paper historically used for ceremonial purposes that was banned during Spanish colonization—alongside braided forms naturally dyed with materials including hibiscus, chamomile, turmeric, coffee, cacao, clay, and wild blueberries. Throughout the work, braids act as symbols of interconnectedness, repair, and the weaving together of relationships between people, plants, bodies, and land.
Olga I and Olga II
Suspended from the ceiling, Olga I and Olga II are non-representational fractured self-portraits intended to be viewed in the round. Constructed through cut paper, fragmentation, and stitching, the works explore processes of rupture, reconstruction, and transformation. Rather than concealing breaks or absences, Peraza emphasizes them—using cut-outs and stitched forms to suggest that identity, memory, and healing are ongoing processes of gathering fragments and creating new relationships between them.
Luna y sangre
Luna y sangre is a site-specific installation representing the blood moon using copper leaf and bole—a fine clay traditionally applied beneath metal leaf—creates depth, warmth, and richness while referencing the material histories of gilding and devotional practices. Together, these materials transform the wall into a meditative surface that connects celestial phenomena with material process and ritual.