Curated by: Irene Gelfman
Territories in Connection presents the possibility of thinking about territory as a network of relationships in constant construction. The artists brought together in the exhibition situate themselves within this field of relations. Among their works, affinities, distances, and tensions emerge. A logic of equivalence in which certain questions are repeated from different places. A fabric in which no stitch is the same. What is visible on the surface is only part of the process: behind each thread there are displacements and memories that sustain one another, where multiple layers coexist. Entities that unfold in prismatic ways—that is, fragmented, superimposed, and open to different planes of interpretation.
On the occasion of the second edition of Pinta Panamá Art Week, artists from different parts of the region were invited to participate, working with video, textiles, and the body as artistic supports.
The exhibition thus opens a space of observation on the Panamanian art scene and its connections with the regional context. The works of Lulu V. Molinares activate textiles as an exploration of the body and contemporary identities, imagining forms of existence that challenge the normative structures that have historically regulated bodily experience. Meanwhile, the practice of Sandra Monterroso recovers textile knowledge as a vehicle for restoring and preserving ancestral knowledge that survived processes of colonization. Antonio José Guzmán and Iva Jankovic use fibers, natural pigments, and inherited techniques to connect present and past, matter and memory. In the work of Ana Teresa Barboza, natural fibers and artisanal textile techniques expand to compose landscapes where living beings and cultural productions coexist—the most enduring way human beings leave a trace.
The body also appears as a territory where care, illness, healing, and resistance are inscribed. In the performance by Ana Elena Tejera, there is a desire to reconnect with the echoes of the memories of communities buried beneath the waters that now flow through the Panama Canal. In the works of Milko Delgado and Cristina Flores Pescorán, we see how textile processes and organic materials are integrated into rituals that question dominant narratives about health, knowledge, and the relationship between body and community. Ana Elena Garuz creates abstract pieces from textile cutouts that can be perceived as expressions of geographical accidents.
In each of the activations, there persists a search to share a sensibility that establishes diverse connections and transformations of the territory. Each work proposes its own way of intertwining stories, bodies, and landscapes, revealing the different approaches that coexist within the Panamanian art scene.
In this new edition of the Video Project, five video works by the American artist and biologist Donna Conlon are presented. Conlon lives and works in Panama and maintains a strong connection with the region. The selection explores the relationship between human beings and the natural world, a narrative that runs throughout her entire body of work. Conlon’s practice brings her scientific attention into the field of art, where—without resorting to direct denunciation—it is characterized by a critical and poetic perspective on the human impact on the environment. In this way, the exhibition space seeks to create a new landscape that reveals the vulnerability of natural environments and the fragility of our relationship with them.
Conlon focuses on what often goes unnoticed: displaced objects, repeated actions, fragments that accumulate and decompose. Her works do not illustrate ideas; they condense them. Through videos, photographs, and minimal interventions, she exposes the social, political, and environmental contradictions that define our present, without resorting to direct denunciation.
Selva humana, Ana Elena Tejer
Ana Elena Tejera presents a special activation within the program: Selva Humana. A performance that combines expanded cinema and movement to evoke the submerged memories of the communities and landscapes that were left beneath the waters of the Panama Canal. Through a circular dance and projections onto the performer’s body, archives and echoes of a lost territory and jungle emerge.
More info
9 am – 7 pm – Thursday to Sunday
Address: Ciudad de las Artes – Llanos de Curundú, Ancón – Panama District
Territories of Connection: Lulu V. Molinares, Sandra Monterroso, Ana Teresa Barboza, Ana Elena Garuz, Milko Delgado, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Antonio José Guzmán & Iva Jankovic.
Fragile Shelters: Donna Conlon
Selva Humana: Ana Elena Tejera