Cosmos refers to the universe understood as an ordered whole, a system in which different elements are interconnected and acquire meaning through their relationships. The word derives from the Greek kósmos, which encompassed the ideas of order and harmonious arrangement. Embedded in the term is a particular way of understanding the world: the belief that, amid the diversity of its elements, an underlying structure can be observed, interpreted and understood.

In the nineteenth century, Alexander von Humboldt adopted this concept as the title of his work Cosmos, published in five volumes between 1845 and 1862. Drawing on decades of research and exploration, including his travels across the Americas, Humboldt sought to bring together knowledge of celestial and terrestrial phenomena within an interconnected vision of nature. For him, understanding the universe meant attending to the relationships between its elements, from geological formations and plant life to the stars and the forces shaping the natural world.

Humboldt’s project reflected an ambition to understand the world through observation, classification and scientific inquiry, finding connections across an immense diversity of phenomena. Yet the desire to gather and organise knowledge also raises questions about who establishes the categories through which reality is understood, and which forms of knowledge remain outside them.

In the context of the conquest and colonisation of the Americas, naming territories, species and peoples became part of a process of appropriation, incorporating existing realities into European linguistic, scientific and cultural systems. Naming made these places and beings legible within a new order, often displacing the names, narratives and knowledge of the communities that had inhabited them for generations. The title Cosmos draws on this tension between the desire to understand the universe and the impulse to organise it according to a particular system of knowledge.

From this perspective, the exhibition brings together the practices of Samuel Sarmiento, Luis Rentería and Emilia Estrada. Working across distinct materials and artistic languages, the three artists explore the ways in which knowledge is constructed, transmitted and legitimised. Their practices engage with mythology, memory, cultural traditions and systems of representation, examining how these shape our perception of the world and our relationship with what remains unknown.

Samuel Sarmiento, a Venezuelan artist based in Aruba, works primarily with ceramic sculpture. Drawing on local mythologies, Caribbean oral traditions and narratives shaped by colonial history, extractivism and migration, he creates allegorical objects in which human and animal figures coexist with fantastical elements. His sculptures sustain stories and forms of knowledge passed down through generations, drawing on imaginaries connected to diverse territories and identities. In his practice, mythology becomes a way of exploring how communities interpret their surroundings and develop their own narratives about the world.

Luis Rentería, a Mexican artist who lives and works between Barcelona and Guadalajara, develops a practice that combines textile art, traditional techniques and references to folk art. His woven works incorporate materials, stories and symbols drawn from different cultural traditions, creating a language in which fiction, fantasy and memory connect territories and temporalities. Through these associations, Rentería explores how objects and images transmit knowledge, and how cultural imaginaries evolve as they move between contexts. His works open up a space in which symbols, narratives and materials contribute to alternative ways of understanding reality.

Emilia Estrada, an Argentine artist and researcher based in Rio de Janeiro, works with drawing, installation and archival research. Her practice examines terrestrial and celestial cartography as systems of representation shaped by power, occupation and territorial appropriation. In her recent work, the Moon and the mapping of the cosmos become points of departure for questioning how historical narratives are constructed, and how science, mythology and colonial imagination intersect. Her works investigate the instruments and frameworks through which the universe is observed, measured and represented, considering the forms of knowledge they produce and the limits they establish around what can be understood.

Through these practices, Cosmos reflects on the ways in which we name, classify and represent the world. The exhibition considers how systems of knowledge shape our relationship with the unknown, and how certain interpretations of reality have acquired authority over time. Rather than seeking to contain the universe within a single order, the works make room for other ways of knowing, in which memory, imagination, oral traditions and relationships with the land create different connections between the beings and worlds we inhabit.