Notes related to Colombia

The Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá presents A Total Story, an exhibition that reinterprets historical archives and collective fictions to intertwine the memories of both territories.

Ambra Castagnetti: Ephemeral Panic explores the mutability of the body and its link to the political and the poetic through sculpture, video, and performance.

The International Art Biennial returns after 44 years, bringing together over 120 artists from 25 countries, 300 artworks, and a free program spanning 15 municipalities.

By Candelaria Penido

ARTBO, Bogotá’s international art fair held from September 25 to 28, once again reaffirmed its position as one of Latin America’s most relevant platforms. It brought together 46 galleries and more than 180 artists across the five floors of Ágora Convention Center. With a program intertwining market and thought, this year’s edition emphasized diversity in formats, trajectories, and geographies, offering a multifaceted map of contemporary regional production.

The cultural event celebrates its 21st anniversary with 46 international galleries, four curatorial sections, and a program that reaffirms its role as a key platform for contemporary art in Latin America.

The residency invites participants to slow down, immerse themselves in a natural environment, and create space for inner listening and creative Exchange. Application deadline: August 18, 2025.

By Álvaro de Benito

Alberto Baraya (Bogotá, Colombia, 1968) presents his project Llatina i Mestral (Catalan for Lateen and Mistral)as part of the B Biennial in Majorca. The work begins with a performative action in which the artist paints directly onto a sail while at sea. The sail becomes a canvas that captures both a physical journey and a conceptual one.

By Álvaro de Benito

Barcelona’s MACBA is hosting Plegarias de resistencia (Prayers of Resistance), the first major anthological exhibition of the work of Carlos Motta (Bogotá, Colombia, 1978) to be held at a European institution. The presentation spans more than twenty-five years of the artist’s production, practice, and activism.

The Museum of Modern Art of Medellín presents Bubuia and Lleébu, two exhibitions that are part of a larger curatorial cycle showcasing the work of artists from Indigenous peoples, Black and riverine communities in Brazil, Peru, Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, and Colombia.

At the Haus for Media Art Oldenburg, the artist turns movement across territories into an act of reciprocity, care, and deep listening. 

The second exhibition cycle of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) in 2025 invites visitors to explore multiple ways of engaging with the visible and the invisible, the intimate and the collective. Through various disciplines, the exhibitions examine the relationships between image, memory, time, and sensory experience. Curated by Eugenio Viola and Juaniko Moreno, each show offers a distinct approach to the limits of representation and the role of memory as a form of knowledge.

This past April 2025, Venezuelan artist Samuel Sarmiento (Maracaibo, 1987) opened his solo exhibition, Primordial Marshes: Of Waters and Goddesses, at the Claustro de San Agustín of the National University of Colombia. Curated by María Belén Sáez de Ibarra, the show features over 100 works—ceramics, watercolors, and paintings—created by Sarmiento from 2013 to the present. The exhibition presents water as a fertile ground for human stories and myths, focusing particularly on narratives from the Caribbean islands, where the artist resides.

Americas Society presents the first institutional retrospective in New York of Colombian artist. The exhibition will highlight the six decades of her career, which has positioned her as a key figure for several generations of Latin American women.

Artist Lorena Torres presents Nada es distinto, a series of paintings that explore personal emotions through a direct relationship between lived experience and gesture. The work functions as an intimate record, where painting operates more as testimony than as aesthetic object.

The Palau Martorell in Barcelona is hosting Fernando Botero. Un maestro universal (Fernando Botero. A Universal Master), the most comprehensive exhibition of paintings by Fernando Botero (Medellín, Colombia, 1932 – Monte Carlo, Monaco, 2023) ever held in Spain. This exhibition offers a detailed exploration of the Colombian artist’s career, highlighting his mastery of various painting techniques and the scope of his artistic output.

The RAC Foundation presents, at its headquarters in Pontevedra, Expedition Camellias: Herbal of Artificial Plants, a solo show by Alberto Baraya (Bogotá, Colombia, 1968), originating from the Artist-in-Residence program developed by the foundation. The exhibition features a group of twelve works resulting from a research project on the camellia—a flower native to China and Japan that has become an essential element in the landscapes, gardens, and parks of western Galicia.

Bogotá’s art scene was reinvigorated this past weekend with a new edition of ARTBO | Fin de Semana, held from Friday, April 25 to Sunday, April 27. Unlike the main fair taking place in late September, this format invites visitors to explore the city’s key contemporary art circuits, with gallery openings, guided tours, talks, and performances across various cultural venues.

The Museum of Modern Art of Bogota (MAMBO) presents its first exhibition cycle of 2025 with Colombian artist Julieth Morales, Chilean artist Seba Calfuqueo, and Brazilian artist UÝRA. They address, from different perspectives, the relationship between identity, territory and memory, proposing new forms of resistance.

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía has announced the acquisitions made during the ARCO fair, through which both the institution and the Ministry of Culture expand the museum’s collections. Among the artists whose work is now part of the Madrid-based institution are Argentine artist Marta Minujín and Colombian artists Juan Pablo Echeverri and Luz Lizarazo—three figures with different career trajectories who bring a distinct Latin American perspective to a list of acquisitions largely focused on Spanish artists.

The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA Miami) presents a retrospective of textile artist Olga de Amaral (Bogotá, 1932), a pioneer in material exploration and the expansion of textile art. The exhibition, in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, will be open from May 1 to October 12, showcasing over 50 works spanning six decades of her career, including pieces never before exhibited outside Colombia.

The MIT List Visual Arts Center presents The Great Learning, Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s exhibition that materializes our polyrhythmic experiences of time.

The Museum of Modern Art of Bogota (MAMBO) presents ReparaRenacer (RepairReborn), the first institutional exhibition in Colombia by Franco-Algerian artist Kader Attia. This exhibition highlights Attia’s work around the concept of repair, a central theme in his art that explores both physical and mental repair through various artistic techniques.

The Museum La Tertulia invites artists and creators, both Colombian and foreign residents in Colombia, to participate in the Visión de Ciudad (City Vision) call. This competition aims to integrate art, science, and technology into the creation of a sculptural project for the city of Cali. Deadline to apply: January 10, 2025.

Shocking and enigmatic, this is the first major retrospective in Europe that the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art presents of Olga de Amaral, a key figure in the Colombian art scene and Fiber Art. The exhibition brings together nearly 90 works created between the 1960s and the present, many of which have never been presented outside Colombia.

The Museum of Pontevedra exhibits Vento (wind, in Galician), the proposal that the artist Alberto Baraya (Bogota, Colombia, 1968) has developed and now shows at its headquarters in the Castelao Building as part of the cycle of exhibitions Infiltracións. This program aims to carry out specific projects that have as their backbone the dialogue arising from research and work with pieces from the collection of the Galician institution to promote re-readings on it.

The Medellín Museum of Modern Art (MAMM) is seeking a new Chief Curator, who will build upon the Museum’s decade-long process of growth and transformation, contributing to its consolidation as a vital space for the cultural life of Medellín, Colombia, and the region. Applications open until December 1^st, 2024.

The section dedicated to abstraction in the Strangers Everywhere / Stranieri Ouvunque exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2024 explores how artists from the Global South -particularly those from Latin America- pursued less rigorous forms, undulating lines and a vibrant color palette stemming from references of their own.

The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is presenting the first major retrospective in Europe of Olga de Amaral, a key figure of the Colombian art scene and of Fiber Art. The exhibition brings together nearly eighty works made between the 1960s and now, many of which have never been shown before outside of Colombia.

The Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art (CAAC) is showing Continuum or the appearance of the parts and the whole in its recovered space in the cellars of the institution's complex in Seville, an exhibition whose origin is to be sought in Profundis, the proposal that Colombian Delcy Morelos (Tierralta, Colombia, 1967) made for this same center this year and that served as a framework to sublimate, from the analysis, the dialogue beyond the material and the relationship she kept with her collaborators when it came to putting together her recent exhibition.

Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín was announced as ArtBo's nominated artist for the EFG Latin America Art Award, the company's annual acquisition award. The winning artist will be featured at Pinta Miami 2024.