Please join us for the opening of the XXIII Paiz Art Biennial on Saturday, July 15th from 10am-5pm at La Nueva Fábrica. Admission is free.

The XXIII Paiz Art Biennial Bienal is a poem

bebí palabras sumergidas en sueños (i drank words immersed in dreams) is the title of the project, a verse belonging to the poem Nací mujer (I Was Born a Woman) by the writer and poet Maya Cú

Fundación Paiz para la Educación y la Cultura presents the XXIII Paiz Art Biennial, the most important contemporary art event in Central America, which has been exhibited free of charge for 25 years. This biennial edition will be displayed from July 13 to 30 in five venues. Three venues are located in Guatemala City: Centro Cultural de España (CCE), the Centro Cultural Municipal Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen, and Portal de la Sexta, and two in Antigua Guatemala: the Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española (CFCE) and La Nueva Fábrica.

The Bienal Paiz is a platform for exhibition, creation and dissemination of national artistic production.

The curatorial team is made up of Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig and Juan Canela. The Shared Knowledge Program, an educational component of the Biennial, is curated by Esperanza de León.

The themes, ideas, participants, and structure have been taking shape in a collective work process with a curatorial assembly convened by Minia Biabiany (Guadeloupe); Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala); Minia Biabiany (Guadeloupe); Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala); Duen Neka’hen Sacchi (Argentina); Juana Valdés (Cuba-United States).

The Biennial highlights the work of five pioneering women artists who opened paths and became the inspiration, anchor, and starting point of the event: Margarita Azurdia, Ana Mendieta, Fina Miralles, María Thereza Negreiros, and Cecilia Vicuña.

30 participants (artists and collectives)

Carolina Alvarado (México-Guatemala); Margarita Azurdia (Guatemala); Minia Biabiany (Guadalupe); Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala); Zoila Andrea Coc-Chang (Guatemala-Estados Unidos); Josué Castro (Guatemala); Roberto Escobar Raguay (Guatemala); Laia Estruch (España); Adler Guerrier (Haití-Estados Unidos); Colectivo Ixqcrear – Elena Caal Hub, Ixmukane Quib Caal e Ixmayab’ Quib Caal – (Guatemala); Yavheni de León(Guatemala); Ana Mendieta (Cuba-Estados Unidos); Fina Miralles (España); Helen Mirra (Estados Unidos); Julieth Morales (Colombia); Verónica Navas González (Costa Rica); María Thereza Negreiros (Brasil-Colombia); La Nueva Cultura Material – Bryan Castro y Valeria Leiva (Guatemala); Itziar Okariz (España); Eliazar Ortiz Roa (República Dominicana); Lourdes de la Riva (Guatemala); Sallisa Rosa (Brasil); Duen Neka’hen Sacchi (Argentina); Ix Shells (Panamá); Colectivo Tz ́aqol – Victor Manuel Barillas y Marta Tuyuc – (Guatemala); Colectivo Tz’aqaat – Cheen (Cortez) y Manuel Chavajay (Guatemala); Juana Valdés (Cuba-Estados Unidos); Cecilia Vicuña (Chile); Martín Wannam (Guatemala- Estados Unidos); Risseth Yangüez Singh (Panamá).

The title of the XXIII Paiz Art Biennial is a fragment of a poem by Maya Cú, one of the referents of Mayan poetry in Guatemala, whose body of work represents the search for identity establishing a feminine genealogy and a heritage in resistance. Her verses accompany the construction of this project.

The conversations and meetings have been braided around the existing links between language, body, and territory since the first shared intuitions. Writing, orality, story, corporality, presence, movement, community, territoriality, landscape, nature, and community are some concepts that emerge from these relationships, articulating narratives that challenge hegemonic stories and imagining futures that delve into the possibilities of lives in common.

“The project is built from a polyphony of voices that emerge from the dialogue with the participating artists and the reflections that emanate from their work. These voices and gestures emerge from different territories and evolve while experimenting with what is close to articulate meeting spaces. There is an unmistakable will to work from undefined certainties born from intuitive spaces and diverse spiritualities. The exhibited works, displayed in different venues in Guatemala City and Antigua, delve into linguistic, poetic, dreamlike, telluric, political, psychic, emotional, or affective territories in which materialities, subjectivities, and subjectivities, and desires take shape from the conviction of building bridges”.

Curatorial team, Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig, and Juan Canela.

Image: Kawok, 2023. Tz’aqaat Colective – Cheen Cortez y Manuel Chavajay