Within the field of contemporary Colombian art, Claudia Hakim’s trajectory embodies a singular paradox. An artist of extraordinary formal sophistication, she has chosen, for long periods, to keep her work in a sphere of voluntary discretion. Dedicated to her roles as a cultural leader of NC-Arte and director of MAMBO, Hakim has often placed her own productions in the background. At times, she seems to act from unwarranted modesty; at others, from the ethical rigor she brings to her practice. Consequently, her work, though expansive over more than three decades, has appeared only sporadically.

This exhibition marks a decisive moment: it is her first solo exhibition in over fifteen years and brings together the most comprehensive body of her work shown to date. Featuring several of her most emblematic series, The Universe of the Multiple offers insight into the evolution of her artistic research. In particular, it highlights the incorporation of her woven metal structures into her formal vocabulary, here presented fully articulated for the first time.

Trained in textile design at the Universidad de los Andes, Hakim developed an early sensitivity to material—not as passive support, but as a field of tension, structure, and possibility. Textile thinking, rooted in warp and weft, repetition, and pattern, soon became a logic that transcended fiber. Until 1998, she worked mainly with textile materials. After a period in Oxford and upon returning to Bogotá, she moved into her current studio, where she began working with industrial metal remnants from her surroundings. This encounter radically transformed her language.

The shift to metal was not a rupture, but a conceptual translation. Hakim does not weld metal traditionally; she weaves it. She approaches steel with a textile gaze: interlacing, assembling, and repeating modules as if they were threads. This creates a perceptual short circuit. The structures, though heavy and dense, appear visually soft, almost organic. What seems light is monumental; what appears flexible is extremely resistant. This tension between perception and material reality forms a central core of her practice.

Over time, her work has grown in scale, progressively expanding into installation and environment. Instead of simply occupying space, her sculptures configure it. Engaging light and casting shifting shadows, they transform the viewer’s spatial experience. This process activates a dynamic relationship between body, volume, and site.

In this exhibition, industrial steel is transformed from waste into new forms, memories, and possibilities. Wheel rims, clutch components, and automotive elements are assembled into bodies that blend function with poetry. This is not only recycling; it is a deep reflection on how art reimagines the future of materials. Where consumption produces excess and discards, the artist finds opportunities for invention and new meaning.

These fragments of mechanical memory, once interwoven, become vibrant surfaces that capture light and reveal unexpected textures. The work is fundamentally modular: patterns that repeat, networks that expand, structures composed of recurring elements that, when articulated together, generate new unities. Each module retains its identity, yet upon integration into a larger structure, relinquishes its autonomy to become part of a complex organism.

The Universe of the Multiple refers to this logic of expansion. Hakim’s work explores how the singular forms are created through reiteration. Diversity arises from the accumulation of the seemingly identical. Here, multiplicity is not chaos, but system—not dispersion, but network. In each piece, the artist balances order and variation, structural calculation and organic sensibility.

Design thus becomes language. Pattern becomes thought. From the accumulation of modules, shifting volumes arise. These sculptures demonstrate how a single unit can give rise to an infinite number of configurations. In Claudia Hakim’s work, industrial matter becomes textile, weight turns into perceptual lightness, and multiplicity reveals a poetic order that binds memory, structure, and transformation.

Ultimately, this exhibition presents a body of work and an ethics of form, guided by the belief that every structure is built of interdependent parts. Their interrelation brings both strength and fragility. Hakim constructs a universe in which the multiple cohere rather than fragment. Every element, however small, belongs to a dynamic, ever-evolving whole.

Eugenio Viola