The Bienal de Arte Paiz has chosen the Italian art critic Eugenio Viola as curator of its 2025 edition. The biennal’s 24th iteration will take place in Guatemala City and Antigua, November 2025-February 2026.
Viola, who specialises in performance art and “bodily poetics”, has curated more than 100 exhibitions around the world. These include The Abramović Method (2012) at Milan’s PAC—Contemporary Art Pavilion and two national pavilions at the Venice Biennale: the Estonian Pavilion in 2015 and the Italian Pavilion in 2022. He is currently artistic director of the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá (Mambo), where he has curated the first museum exhibitions in Colombia of artists like Alexander Apóstol, Ana Gallardo, Dor Guez, Voluspa Jarpa and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa.
“I envision a polyphonic, inclusive and participatory project,” Viola said in a statement of his plans for the biennial. “It will resonate with the complex web of languages, religions, cultures and historical perspectives that shape our globalised society while engaging with Guatemala's rich and multicultural artistic ecosystem, which I have already had the privilege of experiencing throughout my career.”
Before his time at Mambo, Viola was a curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Australia. Prior to that, he worked at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (Madre) in Naples, where he curated the first Italian museum exhibitions for Boris Mikhailov and Francis Alÿs and organised a site-specific project by Daniel Buren.
The Bienal de Arte Paiz was inaugurated in 1978 and is the largest contemporary art exhibition in Central America. It is also the sixth oldest biennial in the world and the second oldest in Latin America (after São Paulo).