Arte Abierto Pedregal presents The Times of Air, the eighth exhibition in its program and a commissioned work by Colombian artist Cristina Umaña Durán. The exhibition opened to the public on May 10 and will remain on view through August 2026.

The exhibition reflects on concepts such as time, the body, air, memory, and fragility, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the artist’s personal universe: a space conceived for listening, perceiving, and contemplating the transcendence of the act of breathing itself. Seeing the invisible.

In this installation, air —an imperceptible, immaterial, and volatile element— emerges as the vital force that animates matter, while the body becomes a measure of time. For Cristina Umaña Durán, time is a central axis of exploration, approached through cyclical and repetitive biological processes such as breathing, swallowing, and digesting. From this perspective, the artist conceives the body as a mutable and unstable entity; a territory oscillating between the familiar and the foreign, vulnerability and control.

The exhibition materializes as an immersive installation composed of air-filled bodies inhabiting the exhibition space with a cadence that evokes vital pulsation. The artist’s multidisciplinary practice —which begins with drawing and writing before expanding into sculpture and performance— takes shape here through inflatable textile structures that, in the absence of air, remain inert matter. Once activated, these forms come to life, altering their scale and generating a plastic respiration that continuously transforms the perception of space.

Seams cease to function as simple joins and instead become boundaries, arteries, and veins traversing organic surfaces. Through a palette of reds, oranges, and wine tones, the artist reveals an interior universe where play, curiosity, and contemplation become paths toward self-discovery. Hands —a recurring element within her visual language— appear as symbols of contact, connection, and reach.

In a present saturated with stimuli and defined by immediacy, The Times of Air proposes a pause and an alternative rhythm. Amid contemporary chaos, breathing is reclaimed not only as a mechanism of survival, but as a profound act of contemplation, awareness, and emotion.