‘The Cenote Ring’, Paola Estrella
HS Projects is delighted to present The Cenote Ring, an exhibition of recent works by Mexican multimedia artist Paola Estrella.
The Cenote Ring is a two-part project unfolding across distinct spaces and mediums to explore the cenotes—natural sinkholes formed by the impact of an asteroid over 66 million years ago. Scattered across the Yucatán Peninsula, these interconnected sites make up the geological formation known as the cenote ring.
Bridging collaboration, ritual, and storytelling, the project comprises a collaborative performance at Stone Nest, London and a solo painting exhibition at 5 Howick Place, London. Though presented separately, both are conceptually intertwined—inviting audiences to move between myth and material, the ephemeral and the pictorial.
Reflecting on the geological, spiritual, and mythological, rooted in the cenote ring of Yucatán, Mexico, The Cenote Ring emerges from a fascination with the subterranean waters formed by an ancient asteroid impact, which become portals that ripple through Mayan cosmology as spaces of transition, remembrance, and rebirth. These sacred sinkholes are echo chambers, carrying layered voices of the land, ancestors, and non-human worlds across time.
The project listens and captures what remains: traces of planetary memory, suppressed cosmologies and alternative ways of seeing. It becomes a site for collective meditation, an invitation to unlearn extractive world views and attune ourselves to observation, cyclical rhythms of grief and renewal to coexist with other species.
Estrella’s The Cenote Ring, was performed at the Victoria and Albert Museum East; Stone Nest in London’s West End and it will open the MIRA (Latin American Art Fair) in Paris this November. Estrella has also performed at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Goldsmiths; South London Gallery, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, where she is currently artist-in-residence with the collective Diasporas Now.
Her work has been exhibited internationally in a range of institutions, such as the Museum of Mexico City, Franz Mayer Museum, Saatchi Gallery and Somers Gallery. She was selected for New Contemporaries in 2022, and her work was featured in White Cube’s Tomorrow: London programme in 2020. Estrella holds an MA from the Royal College of Art.
This project has been made possible thanks to support from the Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants, and Artists Make Space Programme at Orleans House Gallery.
The Cenote Ring is at Howick Place from 20th June 2025 to 12th December 2025.
