Aurora Noreña uses a wide variety of media to connect heritage forms with contemporary expressions, giving rise to projects that integrate artistic practices (such as collage and installation) with craftsmanship and traditional skills, such as tapestry and weaving. Her work revitalises the relationship between the material expressions of the peoples of the past and the vernacular practices of the present; at the same time, it questions the discrepancy between the aesthetic and intellectual fascination aroused by ancestry and the widespread disinterest in the peoples who today inherit and sustain these traditions.
 

Based on her research into the Patterson collection, a sizable collection of artifacts plundered from Latin American territory, Aurora unfolds and reconfigures its objects, articulating new readings that shift the discussion on restitution towards areas that have been historically ignored by states and institutions. In her work, stones cease to be inert and untouchable relics that saturate landscapes and museums and become part of a material ecology that recognises their geographies, their peoples and their lineages.

​

-David Ayala-Alfonso