At Art Basel Miami Beach this year, Luis Fernando Zapata emerged as one of the most compelling rediscoveries of the fair — a Colombian queer visionary whose work feels like time-travel artifacts from a future past.
Zapata’s booth in the Survey sector wasn’t just another exhibition — it was an archaeological trip through imagined civilizations. His large, shield-like sculptural forms, textured with earthy geometry and ritualistic signifiers, looked as if unearthed from a lost cosmology. Across totemic steles, hand-made sarcophagi, and tactile “excavations,” his pieces blur the lines between ancient myth and contemporary expression.
Born in Colombia in 1951 and active through the late-20th century, Zapata synthesized cosmologies from Indigenous and African diasporic thought into a visual language that feels incredibly of the moment — even though it was largely overlooked for decades. Living with HIV in the 1980s, his later work confronts ritual, mortality, and transcendence with deep poetic force.
Presented by Galería Elvira Moreno (making its first appearance at Basel), “The Immemorial: The Transcendence of Luis Fernando Zapata” has electrified audiences and critics alike, reframing Zapata not just as a regional artist, but as a global figure whose legacy is finally stepping into the light.
Institutions are already responding: major museums from New York to Madrid have acquired his works, and curators are pushing for broader historical inclusion. This moment signals a shift — Zapata’s world systems are no longer fringe, but foundational to how we think about lineage, ritual, and queer futurity
