FOUR ARTISTS EXPLORE AND RECONSTRUCT SPACE AT PINTA PANAMÁ 2026

The second edition of Pinta Panamá Art Week will take place from March 18 to 22, 2026. Under the artistic direction of Irene Gelfman, the program deepens its conceptual axis: Panama as a territory of connection, a space where artistic practices from Central America converge and bridges are articulated between the north and south of the continent. Within this framework, four Panamanian artists develop proposals that engage with this idea of crossing and exchange.

Cisco Merel

Cisco Merel (1981) uses photography, painting, and sculpture to transform everyday scenes into exceptional ideas, reflecting on society and culture. At Pinta Panamá 2026, he will present Chantín Bar, a sculpture built from fragments of domestic architecture from the Panamanian Caribbean: pieces of houses that evoke Afro-Antillean dwellings, island homes, and chantín—popular structures built with ingenuity and available materials.

The piece recalls a house reconstructed from memory. At its center appears a mini bar with a bottle of seco—an emblematic Panamanian drink—introducing the social dimension of gathering, conversation, and everyday celebration. “Between sculpture and small-scale architecture, the work transforms the house into an intimate object of gathering, where memory, popular culture, and hospitality intertwine,” the artist states.

Lulu Molinares

The Panamanian artist imagines, through textiles, performance, and writing, bodies and worlds that challenge established norms. For Pinta Panamá 2026, Molinares prepared a new series of works using hollow ornamental blocks, gravel, sand, and fabrics. Through an interplay between materials and crochet, the artist produces a piece that seems to assemble itself, open to free interpretation and the passage of time.

“The idea is simple: ornamental blocks and ornamented blocks. I want these blocks to play with light to create shadows on the floor; objects that can stand freely on a surface or on the ground and that, like the blocks they are, can be placed one on top of the other as if building a wall,” the artist explained to Arte al Día. Molinares is interested in exploring the desire to adorn and the possibility of building again.

Arístides Ureña Ramos

Together with Marjalizo Corp., a Panamanian real estate development company, Arístides Ureña Ramos will present a 360-degree immersive experience at the Soho Mall Experience Center. The artist’s work on recovering the identity of the men who inhabit the sea has led him to produce a series of works that place at their center the ways these spaces are occupied and lived.

La casa arriba al mar encompasses the maritime culture built by those who inhabit these territories, who often fail to recognize themselves in dominant narratives. Through signs, dreams, and symbolic elements, the artist seeks to reinvent situations that allow for imagining new aesthetics linked to everyday life and to the relationship with the sea.

Isabel de Obaldía

Isabel de Obaldía will participate in Pinta Panamá 2026 by welcoming a small group of international visitors to her studio. There, they will be able to see a selection of her work, learn about her creative process, and discover the techniques behind her glass sculptures.

In recent years, the artist has focused on the drama of migrants crossing the Darién jungle. These works are the result of extensive documentary research and direct experiences in that region of the country. From these encounters, she has developed drawings and paintings that interpret stories and episodes that have profoundly marked that reality.

The proposals by Molinares, Merel, Ureña Ramos, and De Obaldía reveal the diversity of approaches present in the contemporary Panamanian art scene. Between domestic architecture, maritime culture, textile materiality, and migratory narratives, their works show how art can function as a space to reconstruct memories, imagine futures, and rethink the territories we inhabit.