On July 9 (local time), 500 TRAZOS: UN RETRATO ABSTRACTO DEL PERÚ (“500 Brushstrokes: An Abstract Portrait”) officially opened at the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), the capital city’s leading art museum. This exhibition marks Chinese artist Wu Jian’an’s first solo show in South America and centers on his most recent major work from 2024–2025: “500 Brushstrokes for Peru”. Spanning 12 meters in length and 5 meters in height, this monumental ink-and-mixed-media collage on paper brings together the physical brush traces of 459 individuals from Peru—of diverse genders, ages, social classes, and geographic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds.

“500 Brushstrokes for Peru” is the latest chapter in WU Jian’an’s (ACC 2023) ongoing “500 Brushstrokes” series, which he began in 2016. This new iteration was co-curated by the artist and his longtime friend Pablo Espinel, an international contemporary art advisor who has lived in Peru for many years.

In August 2024, over the course of just over three weeks, “500 Brushstrokes for Peru ” undertook an inclusive journey across the diverse geographies of the South American continent—coastlines, highlands, valleys, rainforests, and lake regions—with a commitment to embracing difference and diversity. Thirteen brushstroke workshops were held across a wide range of locations and institutions: in Lima at museums, galleries, and hotels; at the National University of the Arts in the highland city of Cusco; at the Intercultural University in Quillabamba, deep in the Amazon rainforest; and in the impoverished Carabayllo district on the outskirts of the capital. The project also reached into Indigenous Andean communities such as Chincheros and Accha Alta, the mysterious stone ruins of Vilcabamba, and the island communities of Taquile and Uros in the highland lake region of Lake Titicaca.

Distinguished guests attending the opening included former President of the Peruvian Congress Pedro Olaechea; the ambassadors of Ecuador, Switzerland, and Germany to Peru; and Luis Martin Bogdanovich, director of Lima’s Historic Center Rehabilitation Program. Many participants in the project were also present at the opening—several of them visiting Lima for the first time in their lives. They were reunited with their own brushstrokes within this monumental installation, bearing witness to moments of cross-regional and intergenerational connection.