Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru
Joselyn Romero Avila is a biomedical engineer from Peru who studies computational methods that trace fiber pathways in brain tissue images and reveal patterns of neural connectivity.
the artwork
Nudos de conocimiento
Spanish - Knots of Knowledge - 2026 - digital collage
audio commentary
Knowledge never grows alone. Every idea connects to another, and every discovery builds on work that came before it. I love tracing these connections, so I tied knots and cords across the collage to bind different moments in history together. The artwork moves from older civilizations and knowledge traditions, including the Inca, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, toward milestones like the heart transplant, the telephone and the Moon landing, and finally to technologies still shaping our future.
Joselyn Romero Avila
The change in how we build and pass on knowledge, from ancient knots to modern networks.
mathematics in Peruvian culture
One of the clearest connections between Peruvian culture and information for me is the Inca quipu. Quipus used cords, knots, position and color to record and organize information. I took inspiration from this idea when creating the knots in my collage. They also resemble nodes connected within a network, creating a visual parallel between an Andean way of recording knowledge and the way relationships and connections can be represented in modern computational thinking.