Gala Porras-Kim’s inaugural solo exhibition in Switzerland, The motion of an alluvial record, was recently on view at Kunsthalle Bern. Continuing her long-standing, institutionally critical practice, the artist examines how institutional frameworks define, legitimize, and preserve collections and cultural heritage, and reconceives art as a sensory medium that can be experienced physically, historically, and performatively within climate-controlled institutional environments.

At the center of the exhibition was the installation The motion of an alluvial record, an “atmospheric pavilion” composed of living matter including clay, sediment, and silt collected from the wetlands of the Yucatán Peninsula, placed in conditions of high humidity and heat that reflect the Mayan concept of cyclical time. By artificially recreating a tropical climate within a freestanding wood-and-glass module, the work disrupts conventional museum climate concepts, which typically strive for a controlled, dry environment. Instead, it exposes how environmental control itself reshapes the meaning of objects. The installation also incorporated material traces embedded with institutional histories—such as ash from the fire at the National Museum of Brazil and dust gathered from the Peabody Museum in the United States—highlighting museums not as neutral repositories of knowledge, but as contested sites where multiple narratives intersect.

Through this exhibition, Porras-Kim investigates how the conditions of the white cube and institutional display and preservation logics often strip away cultural and political contexts. Viewing the object not as a static artifact but as living matter, the artist proposes alternative approaches to stewardship that foreground an object’s original functions and cultural presence. In doing so, the exhibition became a space to reconsider how museums construct memory and interpretation, suggesting more open-ended and expansive modes of engaging with cultural heritage.