Historical Fictions, Future Myths
Álvaro Enrigue and Adrián Villar Rojas

Artist Adrián Villar Rojas and novelist Álvaro Enrigue manifest speculative fictions that reframe how we relate to objects, the environment, and the linear narratives we have constructed around time. In a dialogue moderated by theorist and writer Evan Calder Williams, historical events and temporal frameworks are open to interpretation, allowing audiences to envision new possibilities for the past, present, and future. 

Adrián Villar Rojas is an Argentine-Peruvian artist known for large-scale, site-specific sculptural installations concerned with time, memory, and the impact of human activity on the planet. Suggestive of both prehistoric and futuristic worlds, Villar Rojas’s fantastical installations often incorporate unfired clay, concrete, and other organic materials rooted in ancient history and intended to suggest a history of decay and collapse. To represent Argentina at the 54th Venice Biennale, Villar Rojas created a colossal clay forest in which towering fossilized forms seemed to represent relics of a forgotten or collapsed world. The Theater of Disappearance—a series of site-specific installations presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2017); NEON at the National Observatory of Athens (2017); and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles (2017-2018)—similarly transformed each site into a post apocalyptic landscape through fragmented clay sculptures that challenged contemporary notions of monuments and memorials. Other recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include The Murderer of Your Heritage, Copenhagen Contemporary (2026); The Language of the Enemy, Art Sonje, Seoul (2025); and The End of Imagination, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2022). Villar Rojas has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Konex Award (2022 and 2012), the 2015 Sharjah Biennial Prize, and the 9th Benesse Prize at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).

Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is the author of five novels, three books of short stories, and one book of literary criticism that have been translated into multiple languages. He received the Joaquín Mortiz prize for his debut novel, La muerte de un instalador (Editorial Joaquín Mortiz, 1996), and more recently was awarded the prestigious Herralde Prize in Spain, the Elena Poniatowska International Novel Award in Mexico, and the Barcelona Prize for Fiction for the novel Muerte súbita (Anagrama, 2013), about a fictitious tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo. Enrigue’s latest novel, You Dreamed of Empires (Riverhead, 2024), an inventive retelling of conquistador Hernán Cortés’s arrival in Tenochtitlan, was selected as a top ten book of the year by The New York Times and the New York Public Library. He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores of Mexico and teaches Baroque and Latin American literature at Hofstra University.

Evan Calder Williams is an associate professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, where he also teaches in the Human Rights program, and is a contributing editor for e-flux Journal. Williams’s newest book, Inhuman Resources, will be published by Sternberg Press in September 2025, and his novel The Losing Team is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.