Gallery Setting: The Fishbowl

September 2025

Theme: Ephemerality; fleeting and impermanence

“This show explores art that is a product of change, degradation, fleetingness, impermanency, transitions, decay and growth, grief and acceptance and how these experiences are explored artistically.”

Curators: Lenin Arguelles & Rya Wu

"To Be Touched" (2015) by Nathaly Lerma

Medium: charcoal, coffee, graphite

My series explores the impermanence of everyday mundane objects. The series portrays what appears to be a vintage Mouli shredder press, popular in France in the 1940s. The object starts as a novelty, with a sense of sturdiness, movement, and potential. As we progress through each piece, we can see the decadence of its utility, the fading of its story and, ultimately, its purpose.

By using coffee and charcoal to interpret rust and dirt, and employing texturized surfaces, each one of the object's parts--the barrel, the hand piece, the hopper--are shown as affected by time, humidity, and ultimately, human indifference.