AUTONOMY FROM THE ENCOUNTER: ART FROM LATIN AMERICA AT THE HABITANTE GALLERY, PANAMA CITY

Galería Habitante, at its headquarters in Costa del Este, Panama City, has brought together eight Latin American artists, each with a different origin and heritage, as well as training, tastes and experiences. Each of these works converses with the neighbors, each with its own voice; all of them, sharing the limelight.

Diálogos Autónomos brings together Gabriel Wong, a Panamanian architect and artist of Chinese descent, born and raised in the Panama Canal Zone. His art reflects his personal history: a fusion between his Chinese cultural heritage, his tropical upbringing and his architectural training; Rafael Amir Candanedo (Amir Lucky) with work influenced by street art, graffiti and pop culture; Omar Mendoza, a contemporary Colombian painter whose work explores the relationship between nature and the human-built world in a powerful environmental critique; Alexander Wtges, an artist shaped by the intersection between advertising, graphic design and the visual arts; Gladys Sevillano, an architect who works with sculpture because she turned her love for glass into a passion; Gennaro Rodríguez, an architect and visual artist whose artistic proposal arises from abstract compositions of geometric lines and figures; Enrique Jaramillo, architect, visual artist and writer who has participated in more than 75 art interactions between solo and group exhibitions, auctions and urban interventions and Manolo Rodríguez, a Peruvian artist whose work has evolved towards abstraction and geometry, focuses on movement as an essential element of form,  seeking to create compositions that metaphysically resonate with the observer.

They share a common geographical framework, but not the same label. Instead of adjusting to predetermined categories or simplified readings, each artist builds his own visual system and establishes a grammar from which he governs his language.

Latin America then appears not as a fixed identity, but as a zone of possibility: a plurinational, multiethnic, pluricultural and multilingual territory, woven by countries, customs and rituals that do not respond to a single definition.

Diálogos Autónomos will be open to the public on March 18.