ASMA

ASMA is an artist duo formed by Matias Armendaris (b. 1990, Ecuador) and Hanya Beliá (b. 1994, Mexico), based in Mexico City. Working exclusively through active collaboration, the duo describes their practice as the collision of two universes that generates an intersectional area of exchange and syncretism, a third living space in which difference, democracy, and mutability are constant. Their sculptures, paintings, and installations move between painterly and sculptural registers, building allegorical figures and evocative architectural spaces in which forms of nature interweave with psychoaffective contemporary landscapes. Materials such as bronze, resin, velvet, sand, and organic matter carry fictional narratives of transformation, as in Blossoming Carcass, where the metaphor of an exoskeleton and the process of molting spoke to letting go, mourning, and reviving.

Both artists received MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) with full merit scholarships. Armendaris holds a BFA from Emily Carr University, Vancouver; Beliá holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the Facultad de Artes y Diseño, UNAM, Mexico City. Solo exhibitions include Wander + Pursuit, House of Gaga, Los Angeles; Vain Kisses to the Source, Deli Gallery, New York; Janus, Embajada, San Juan; Half Blood Princess, PEANA, Monterrey; and Blossoming Carcass, Make Room, Los Angeles (2019).

Institutional exhibitions include Ideal Space for Music at SculptureCenter, New York (2024–25), the duo's first institutional exhibition in the United States; Wander + Pursuit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; the Museo de Arte de Zapopan; Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail at the Denver Art Museum; OTRXS MUNDXS at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; and Manifesta 13, Marseille. ASMA received the Premio Brasil residency at Pivô Arte e Pesquisa, São Paulo, and the Colección CASA award at CHACO, Santiago. Their work has been featured in Art in America and ARTnews.