MAPAS IMPOSIBLES | CENTRO CULTURAL DE ESPAÑA EN COSTA RICA | CURATED BY GABRIEL RODRÍGUEZ PELLECER
The exhibition brings together in Costa Rica a new generation of Guatemalan artists who explore the fractures, contradictions, and uncertainties of the region through visual arts, film, poetry, performance, and sound art.
Next Friday, June 5, the Centro Cultural de España in San José will inaugurate Mapas Imposibles, a group exhibition showcasing contemporary artistic production from Guatemala and positioning Costa Rica as an important meeting point and platform for emerging voices in Central American art.
Curated by Gabriel Rodríguez Pellecer, the exhibition offers a journey through the tensions, explorations, and contradictions experienced by a generation of young artists creating from one of the region’s most complex and vibrant territories.
Through visual arts, film, poetry, essay, performance, and sound art, Mapas Imposibles seeks to take the pulse of a vibrant and deeply hybrid artistic scene, where disciplines intersect and contaminate one another to engage with questions of memory, violence, precarity, identity, and resistance.
Rather than attempting to define an entire artistic scene, the exhibition functions as a barometer of its time: an exploration of how art is produced within contexts marked by social, political, and economic uncertainty.
A Central America We Rarely See
The exhibition embraces the fractures and contradictions of a region shaped by historical inequalities, political crises, structural violence, and an economic model that constantly pushes its artists toward the margins.
Inspired by the thinking of philosopher Giorgio Agamben, the curator approaches the contemporary as the ability to look directly into the darkness of an era: that which normally remains hidden within cracks, interstices, and zones of uncertainty.
Within this context, precarity ceases to be understood solely as a limitation and becomes, too, a creative possibility. Many of the works presented in Mapas Imposibles emerge from the urgency to create, even when material, institutional, or economic conditions appear insufficient.
“In Guatemala, there is a great void when it comes to archives, memory, and cultural documentation, yet artistic production continues to emerge organically and unexpectedly, like weeds growing through any crack,” explains Rodríguez Pellecer.
The exhibition also engages with a phrase attributed to Guatemalan Nobel laureate Miguel Ángel Asturias: “To survive in this country, you have to be drunk or crazy.” Mapas Imposibles transforms this paradox into a creative impulse.
Emerging Artists with International Reach
The exhibition brings together visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, and performers who constantly cross disciplines and formats to expand their artistic practices.
Among them are emerging artists currently developing their practices through international education and circulation, such as Josseline Pinto, who is pursuing graduate studies connected to the Museo Reina Sofía in Spain; Edizon Cumes, recent recipient of the Terremoto residency in the Caribbean; and Evelyn Price, who received a scholarship to pursue theater studies in the United States.
The exhibition also features artists well established within Guatemala’s contemporary art scene, such as Elda Figueroa and David Ramírez, both recipients of awards in prominent local competitions such as Juannio and Galería Abierta.
The exhibition features works by Elda Figueroa, Andrés Rodríguez, Margo Porres, Mario López, Freddy Rangel, Kevinn Dubon, Sofía Veliz, David Bianchi, David Ramírez, Fabrizio Queme, Katheryn Patá, Diego Rosal, Josué Lemus, Numa Dávila, Evelyn Price, Josseline Pinto, Alejandro Ortiz, Saqb'ech Avex, Edizon Cumes, Silvia Etec, Camila Fernández, and Francisco Zurita.
