Daniel De La Barra

Last weeks to visit “No saben el camino” at the Malta Biennale. Malta Maritime Museum, Birgu, until May 29. @maltabiennale.art . . . #oilpainting #mediterranean #inferno #malta

Burning landscape Oil on linen 2026 . . . @liviabenavidesgaleria . #oilpainting #landscape

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Art Basel Hong Kong @artbasel is now open and I am presenting new works with @morcharpentier , focuses on the progressive desertification of underwater macroalgae forests along the southern coast of Peru, particularly in the Paracas Reserve. Driven by the global demand for alginate, used across pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries, these ecosystems are being intensively extracted, shifting from dense, living environments into fragmented, almost mineral surfaces. What interests me is that this process unfolds beneath the threshold of visibility, escaping the familiar imagery of ecological disaster. Rather than documenting, the paintings engage with the conditions of representation, asking how to approach a landscape whose disappearance is not immediately visible. The works draw on the legacy of romantic landscape painting and the visual language of 19th-century travelling painters in Latin America, introducing a tension between image and extraction. Light becomes a central element, not as atmosphere but as a filtered, almost forensic device that traverses the vegetal mass and suggests regimes of observation and control. . . . #artbasel #artbaselhongkong #oilpainting #landscape #algae

Some details of “No saben el camino”. On view untill 29 May at Malta Maritime Museum. @maltabiennale.art . . Photos: @briangrech . . . #oilpainting #mediterranean #landscapepainting

Discover the monumental painting by Daniel de la Barra @danieldelabarra , presented at the Malta Biennial and titled No saben el camino. @maltabiennale.art On view until 29 May at the Maritime Museum of Birgu, Malta. Do not miss it! Curatorial team @alexia.medici @toni_masu under the direction of Rosa Martínez @rosamartinezcurator Photos: @briangrech — Daniel de la Barra is a Peruvian-Spanish artist who explores the infinite potential of fiction and political imagination as regenerative forces for dismantling power structures that have been repeated throughout history. Drawing on painting, video, and installation, his work speaks about the global implications of extractive models and the power hierarchies that reproduce the colonial model in all territories and times. Through his interventions, he proposes spaces of transformation that dismantle the dynamics and structures that subject certain territories as subaltern spaces of exploitation and domination, as well as their material and human implications.

Next week at Art Basel Hong Kong @artbasel with @morcharpentier . 🌊🌊

I’m very happy to share views of my installation “No saben el camino”, currently featured in the second edition of the Malta Biennale. @maltabiennale.art On view until 29 May at the Maritime Museum of Birgu, Malta. “…For centuries, fleets departed from European ports driven by imperial ambition and returned with wealth extracted from colonized territories. Today, that same cartography of routes persists across the Mediterranean, where cargo ships transport fuels, minerals, raw materials, technology, industrial goods, and weapons—moving more than 90% of the goods that sustain the global economy while reproducing enduring power relations. Composed around the seven rings of Dante’s inferno, the painting imagines the Mediterranean as a fully illuminated hell: a sea exposed by the lights of propaganda, surveillance, and global commerce. Far from a romantic horizon, it appears instead as an amphitheater where power displays its brilliance while rendering other lights invisible.” Special thanks to the curatorial team @alexia.medici @toni_masu under the direction of Rosa Martínez @rosamartinezcurator and to @morcharpentier and @liviabenavidesgaleria who supported the production of this work. Photos: @briangrech . . . . . #contemporaryart #malta #biennale #mediterranean #oilpainting

Este año en @feriaarco con @morcharpentier en el Booth 9C06 y @liviabenavidesgaleria en el booth 9A06.

Next week Malta Biennale ’26 opens. Here some photos of the process for ‘They Don’t Know the Way’. Maritime blindness is a cultural and political device that has historically reduced the sea to a romantic backdrop or an operational void. It is not an innocent gaze: it has served corporations and states in sustaining the rhetoric of the free market, rendering invisible the layers of exploitation and domination that traverse its waters. Under this blindness, fleets and goods circulate, extractive economies are concealed, and a touristic narrative erases traces of violence and displacement. The large-scale painting is part of this contradiction. It stages a great storm that parodies the codes of corporate marketing while engaging with the romantic tradition of sublime seas. Both forms of representation share a gesture of exaltation that conceals the material: commerce, colonization, and war. I want to thank everyone who supported me throughout the process of this complex production❤️. @krizialeonporta @emanuele_quartarone @morcharpentier @liviabenavidesgaleria @alexia.medici @rosamartinezcurator See you from March 11 at the Malta Maritime Museum! @maltabiennale.art

Coast Guards Oil on linen 2026 Des chemins sur la Mer is now open at @morcharpentier Paris. On view útil March 5th, 2026. . Featuring works by Daniel de la Barra Bouchra Khalili, Carlos Motta, Alexander Apóstol, Rosella Biscotti, Charwei Tsai and Bianca Bondi. Drawn from a poem by the Spanish writer Antonio Machado, the exhibition title, Paths upon the Sea, invites us to consider the sea as a space of multiple layers. A land of legends and mysteries, a thriving ecosystem, it is also the stage for migratory and commercial routes, for relations of domination, power, and disappearance. The sea emerges as an unstable and elusive elsewhere, both a source of fascination and of tension. This political dimension of the sea finds critical resonance in the concept of “maritime blindness” developed by Daniel de la Barra. The artist examines how the sea has historically been reduced to a romantic backdrop or a neutral space, concealing the economic, military, and migratory flows that traverse it. Today, the Mediterranean functions as a militarized border: while goods circulate freely, thousands of lives are placed at risk. Photos :Haifa Lhachmi. . . . . #oilpainting #contemporaryart #paris #morcharpentier #danieldelabarra

Des Chemins sur la mer- Mor Charpentier , Paris @morcharpentier Opening this Saturday, 31st. Very happy to share my first collaboration with the gallery ❤️ . . . #oilpainting #contemporaryart #paris