Can artwork be each a refuge and a catalyst for change? The twenty fourth version of Guatemala’s Bienal de Arte Paiz (till 15 February) attests to artwork’s capability to query and subvert, but in addition join and remodel. The Italian curator and creative director of Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Eugenio Viola, has orchestrated the most important version of the Guatemalan biennial beneath the title and idea The World Tree, a cosmogonic image for historic civilisations—together with the Maya, for whom the Ceiba tree represents “the universe’s construction and the interrelation between the degrees of existence”—and in addition a synaptic map drawn from neuroscience typically depicted as a tree.
This version of Latin America’s second-oldest biennial options 46 artists from 30 nations throughout 11 venues in Antigua and Guatemala Metropolis. Along with being the biennial’s largest version that is additionally its longest, with the exhibition’s period prolonged to over three months. One other vital growth is that the organising non-profit, Fundación Paiz, has created its first everlasting exhibition and programming venue, which soft-launched with a efficiency by the Cuban artist Carlos Martiel on 6 November and can open on the finish of the biennial.
These modifications sign the organisers’ intention to increase the biennial’s attain domestically and internationally, reaffirming its position as Guatemala’s important non-public modern artwork initiative since 1978. Fundación Paiz’s president, María Regina Paiz, says the main focus “stays on amplifying the biennial’s resonance amongst Guatemalans”.
Viola’s idea for this version of “an interconnected arboreal metaphor” takes numerous varieties, many created by artists he has collaborated with beforehand. Some, particularly the 31 items commissioned particularly for The World Tree, discover the biennial’s theme by way of lenses that vary from the poetic to the political.
María Adela Díaz’s fee at Munag, Invisible Futures Picture: Sergio Muñoz. Courtesy Fundación Paiz
“The problem was to curatorially unite 11 venues, transferring from the macro—the World Tree—to the micro—the little timber of the synapse,” Viola says. “The venues and artworks function as websites of emergence, uncertainty and signs of our current, making a counter-cartography of resistance and resilience.”
Fragmented tree branches, reflecting how historic cultures noticed timber because the axis mundi and the present-day lack of reference to nature, inform the Peruvian artist Ximena Garrido Lecca’s work at La Nueva Fábrica in Antigua. The non-profit can be the one biennial venue that could be a area devoted to modern artwork, as the remainder are historic buildings or museums, and Guatemala doesn’t have a nationwide modern artwork museum.
At Antigua’s Museo Nacional de Arte de Guatemala (Munag), one of many biennial’s strongest venues, timber are potent metaphors. That is seen within the French Algerian artist Kader Attia’s large-scale set up depicting a desolate panorama populated by dry timber, every bearing a rubber slingshot, representing colonialism but in addition resilience. The commissioned work by the Mexican artist Tania Candiani explores underlying connections throughout the earth, particularly mycelium, by way of a show of grime encapsulated in glass the place the roots, slightly than the tops of the vegetation, are the protagonists. Sounds from deep within the earth create a pulsating ambiance.
Igor Grubic’s site-specific set up, Migrant Seeds, at Antigua’s La Recolección Picture: Constanza Ontiveros Valdés
On the biennial’s solely open-air venue, the dreamy ruins of Antigua’s La Recolección, an 18th-century monastery broken by earthquakes, the Croatian artist Igor Grubic’s commissioned work options plant pots mixing with the panorama. They gesture towards regeneration and adaptation. “Seeds embody the migration of individuals, concepts and languages, however we have to plant the seeds of affection,” Grubic says. Plant motifs additionally seem within the Brazilian artist María Nepomuceno’s fee at Munag, the place a poetic backyard of potted vegetation speaks to humanity’s prospects.
Bushes linked at their roots—encapsulated within the biennial’s official emblem by the Guatemalan artist Erick Boror—are even embedded in Guatemala Metropolis’s central plaza, the place pedestrians (typically inadvertently) stroll over them. When standing atop the plaza’s commentary deck, the motif reveals itself, leaving a mark on the town’s coronary heart.
Nature extra broadly is a recurring concern all through the biennial, with some Guatemalan artists reflecting on ecological points utilizing lake water as creative materials. María Adela Díaz tinted 40 yards of material with the cyanobacteria affecting Lake Amatitlán, displayed at Munag’s entrance. “The piece is ephemeral as I exploit reside cyanobacteria,” Díaz says. “I intend to proceed with this mission, calling out environmental degradation; hopefully the federal government or different organisations can get entangled.”
Verónica Riedel’s fee, Material of the long run, at Guatemala Metropolis’s Centro Cultural de España Picture: Constanza Ontiveros Valdés
The commissioned piece by Verónica Riedel at Guatemala Metropolis’s Centro Cultural de España (CCE) consists of figures product of biomaterials, together with species invading Atitlán Lake—considered one of Guatemala’s important vacationer points of interest—and Mayan healing vegetation. The work factors to air pollution and social points, but in addition presents technique of therapeutic.
A number of featured tasks are a part of transdisciplinary analysis studios, like Plano Negativo at Antigua’s Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española (CFCE), which analyses the results of the pressured eradication of the coca plant, which broken ecosystems. “We present complicated dynamics,” says the mission’s co-director Hannah Meszaros-Martin. “Our important query in Colombia is how the surroundings turns right into a weapon attacking communities.”
Indigenous illustration and Mesoamerican references, primarily Mayan, are additionally prevalent all through this Bienal de Arte Paiz. Some tasks largely deal with formal connections, as seen within the French artist Orlan’s self-portrait pictures, a part of her Self-Hybridization collection (1998-present), at CFCE. Within the photographs, the artist embodies the options of a collection of Mayan figures lent by Guatemala’s Ruta Maya Basis, which with extra contextualisation might need drawn deeper connections however right here dangers verging on cultural appropriation.
Comissioned mission by the Guatemalan Jorge de León, Delivery Documentation, at Guatemala Metropolis’s Centro Cultural de España Picture: Constanza Ontiveros Valdés
Others, just like the commissioned mixed-media mission by the Guatemalan artist Jorge de León at CCE, reveal a extra analytical strategy, utilizing analysis on a Mesoamerican object of unclear provenance to uncover points regarding historical past, id and present-day migration. Video works by the Tz’utujil Maya artist Antonio Pichillá additional reveal the rhythms, syncretism and symbols embedded in rituals.
Efficiency is a major a part of the biennial’s programme, reflecting each Viola’s experience within the style and the biennial’s overarching spirit. The Cuban artist Glenda León’s contribution explores spirituality by turning braille representations of deities in a number of languages right into a musical rating carried out by the Kaqchikel Maya pianist Yahaira Tubac. Different performances are extra overtly political. The Chilean Mapuche artist Seba Calfuqueo, as an illustration, addressed the copper trade’s historic, social, political and ecological impacts embodying a copper determine and carrying copper masks with ribbons bearing woven messages rising from their mouths as a voice is heard within the background narrating the numerous results of extraction in Chile.
Regina José Galindo’s efficiency, Yo Me Siento Libre, exterior the supreme court docket of Guatemala Picture: Constanza Ontiveros Valdés
The efficiency with arguably probably the most native political resonance was that of the Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo, who carried out because the incarcerated reporter José Rubén Zamora on the plaza in entrance of Guatemala’s supreme court docket, studying aloud his letter denouncing years of state oppression. “It’s preferable to die standing than kneeling,” the letter reads partly.
Though uneven in some venues and tasks—typically because of the challenges of putting in modern work in historic areas—this version of the Bienal de Arte Paiz portrays the complexities of humanity whereas providing much-needed hope and embodying Viola’s conception of artwork as group. In a manner, this displays the biennial’s bigger mission.“This isn’t the mission of 1 basis or household, however of a rustic,” Paiz says.
The twenty fourth Bienal de Arte Paiz,The World Tree, till 15 February 2026, numerous venues in Antigua and Guatemala Metropolis, Guatemala
