Hii Hi Henaki Kuami XI (Leafless Tree / Árbol sin hojas)
Estimate: 15,000 - 25,000 USD
This October, Sotheby’s will present the first benefit auction in support of LA ESCUELA___, an experimental pedagogical platform connecting artistic research, education, and collective practices across Latin America, the Caribbean, and their diasporas.
Presented as part of Sotheby’s Contemporary Discoveries sale, the online auction will run from October 1 through 8, 2026, with highlights on view from October 2 through 7 at Sotheby’s New York headquarters in the landmark Breuer building at 945 Madison Avenue.
The auction brings together works by artists whose practices have been an important part of LA ESCUELA___’s intellectual, pedagogical, and collaborative ecosystem: Luis Camnitzer, Rufino Tamayo, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Miguel Braceli, Simón Vega, Seba Calfuqueo, Lizania Cruz, Marilyn Boror Bor, Diana López, John Rivas, Esvin Alarcón Lam, Constanza Alarcón Tennen, Dulce Gómez, and Luis Romero. Together, they reflect the breadth of artistic approaches and forms of knowledge that shape the platform, while offering collectors an opportunity to encounter practices rooted in questions of territory, memory, identity, ecology, and collective life.
Browse Works
![View 1 of Lot 1233: Año 2173, y aquí… [It’s 2173, and here…] (No hay museos solo espacio comunales) (i) & Año 2173, y aquí… [It’s 2173, and here…] (En Abya Yala el territorio solo lo dividen los ríos) (ii): Two Works](https://sothebys-com.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/34249c2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x1518+0+0/resize/330x250!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com%2Fwebnative%2Fimages%2F74%2Ffa%2F3be1d5e14003816ed733b830ff41%2Fn12255-dqqbv-cs-02-group.jpg)
A school without walls
LA ESCUELA___ began in 2021 with a reflection from its artistic director and co-founder, Miguel Braceli, about educational models for social practices and situated learning. This idea of bringing art and education closer to social realities by taking them out into public space became the building block of a project co-developed with the international foundation Siemens Stiftung. From this vision, LA ESCUELA___ was conceived as a “school without walls.”
Rather than operating from a fixed campus or following a predetermined curriculum, this artist-run platform works through a growing hemispheric network of artists, architects, educators, researchers, organizers, independent spaces, and communities. Its projects take shape in different contexts across the Americas, responding to local conditions while creating connections between places and practices.
Since 2022, LA ESCUELA___ has developed more than 45 projects in 13 countries, engaging more than 6,000 participants in online and on-site programs, and collaborating with over 350 artists and thinkers. Its programs include on-site experimental classrooms and online labs, residencies, public art, exhibitions, lectures, workshops, symposia, and research processes. An open-access Library with over 300 essays, interviews, documentation, and pedagogical resources expands this work into a growing alternative critical pensum of Latin American artistic and pedagogical practices.
At the heart of the platform is a commitment to reciprocal exchange: not exporting a model from one place to another, but creating conditions for different forms of knowledge to meet, circulate, and transform one another.
A collaborative network
The artists connected to LA ESCUELA___ are not simply contributors to a program. Their practices, ideas, and relationships have helped shape the platform itself, rooted in collaborative research on 20th-century artistic-pedagogical experiences, ancestral forms of knowledge, and contemporary creation.
Among the participating artists in this sale is Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. The Yanomami artist from the Venezuelan Amazon occupies a particularly intimate place within LA ESCUELA___, as a series of his drawings are part of the platform’s visual identity, appearing across its publications and materials, weaving this Amazonian visual language into the fabric of international-reaching discourses.
Another key contributor is Luis Camnitzer, whose ideas about art, education, and public education have been deeply influential for LA ESCUELA___, engaging in conversations with him since the initial stage. His thinking has remained an important reference point for a platform interested in education as a critical and creative practice.
For Esvin Alarcón Lam, the connection is equally foundational. He led LA ESCUELA___’s inaugural Aula project, in Venezuela in 2022. His work for the auction engages the idea of the huaca, an Indigenous notion of energetically charged geographical spaces that can teach and transform those who enter them, bringing questions of territory and knowledge directly into the material encounter with a place.
For LA ESCUELA___, situated learning and engaging in creative interactions with the places to address ecosocial challenges has become a consistent yet open methodology. Seba Calfuqueo, a trans Mapuche artist whose practice engages ecological questions and, particularly, bodies of water, has been a close collaborator of the platform over several years. Her work and thinking are part of LA ESCUELA___’s Campus, and she developed an Aula project in Guatemala in 2024. Their work Mongen, the Mapuche word for “life,” continues this exploration of relationships between bodies, territories, and living systems.
Also rooted in Indigenous worldviews and addressing environmental questions and encounters between different systems of knowledge is the work of Mayan-Kaqchikel artist Marilyn Boror Bor. She developed an Aula project in Ecuador in 2024, and her ideas are featured within LA ESCUELA___’s Library.
The auction also includes work connected to LA ESCUELA___’s first exhibition project in the United States, Education as Resistance, presented at MoMA PS1 Homeroom in 2025. During the exhibition, the Dominican artist and designer Lizania Cruz developed the residency project Carteleras for the Future: It’s 2173 and here..., inviting Latinx and diasporic communities in New York to participate in an exercise in civic imagination. The works offered in the auction emerged fromthis project.
The auction also includes works from a contribution by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, which includes pieces by Rufino Tamayo, Diana López, Luis Romero, and Dulce Gómez.
These relationships reflect how LA ESCUELA___ has grown: through artists sharing practices, knowledge, and networks, and through connections that often extend far beyond a single project.
A new chapter
The Sotheby’s benefit auction marks a new chapter in LA ESCUELA___’s fundraising programs and activities through La Escuela, Inc., its New York-based nonprofit organization. Board members include Miguel Braceli, Madeline Murphy Turner, and Antonieta Landa.
Established to support the continued development of the platform and its growing network across the Americas, La Escuela, Inc. creates new ways for artists, collectors, institutions, and other supporters to participate in sustaining this ecosystem. The auction will directly support LA ESCUELA___’s programs and operations across the Americas in 2027, centered in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Art, Education, and Social Practices Across the Hemisphere.
The auction is possible thanks to the generosity of the participating artists and their galleries: Alexander Gray, W Galería, Proxyco, Sorondo Projects, Henrique Faría, Abra, Kates-Ferri Projects, and Nina Johnson Gallery; as well as a contribution from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Their support extends the collaborative spirit that has shaped LA ESCUELA___ from the beginning while helping create the conditions for future programs, exchanges, and forms of collective learning.
For LA ESCUELA___, this is ultimately an invitation to expand the school’s network into another context: connecting artists and their work with new audiences and collectors, while supporting a platform that understands art and education as interconnected forms of inquiry, encounter, and collective possibility.
