Titled Lost. In between. Together., the theme this year is the hardships the Global South is facing today and how it chooses to tell its own story through art.
The biennale looks for art to bridge the past and the present, how ancestral sacred tradition meets modern activism to express the shortcomings of today’s society.
Guatemala as a focal point aims at putting a focus on indigenous people, as the country has the highest concentration of natives, a people that has endured racism, war and genocide throughout its modern history.
Nelson Makengo, E'ville (2018)
The inaugural weekend will be marked by live performances and an online symposium titled Perverse Geography/Cursed Geographies. 12 artists, with the likes of Marilyn Boror or Antonio José Guzman, are aiming to reflect on the systemic discriminations the Global South and natives have faced and how colonisation has bred deep ethnic inequality and violence.
Another theme of the biennale will be Past. Eternal. Future., a close look at individual stories and events that relate to the contemporary history of the global south, its political processes and the discriminations it endures.
The theme of the Universe of Matter will focus on the ancestry of matter and how it holds intangible meanings that only science or spirituality can explain. Through objects or landscapes, 16 artists, among whom will be Hellen Ascoli, Rafael Freyre and Edgar Calel, will try, through their art, to interpret their world.
Aníbal López (A-1 53167), Hugo, 2007 ©Prometeo Gallery
There will also be two individual exhibitions, with one being a retrospective on Anìbal Lopez, the figurative artist from Guatemala, who passed away in 2014. The second display will be dedicated to the Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz, covering 40 years of photography but also including a new collection of photographs made outside of Chile, in Guatemala, dedicated to the transgender communities of the country.
Arte Paiz Biennial Guatemala
cover image: Antonio José Guzmán, The Supreme Exodus, behind the wall, 2019, video performance, dimensiones variables. Foto: cortesía Jenny Sánchez, Shaldrian Gómez - Iva Jankovic.
