Panama Art Biennial takes flight

PANAMA. The organizing team and the participating artists held an intimate dialogue with art aficionados and journalists yesterday, to discuss their experience putting together the 8th Panama Art Biennial and what they hope to accomplish with this year’s series of activities.

Founding Director Monica Kupfer and General Director Walo Araujo led the discussion, setting the context for this year’s production. “The idea behind this edition is for the Biennial to exert more efforts in establishing a space to stimulate, support and give value to investigation by the artists, as well as to portray the creative processes more clearly.”

The Panama Canal theme inspired many of the events in this year’s Biennial. “We had people approach us, telling us about their knowledge in the Zone’s environment, its urbanism? even people from abroad,” stated Kupfer. From this arose the idea of holding several conferences at the University of Panama, which complement and enrich the reflections planted by the exhibition, by “taking the Biennial outside of the museum.”

The participating artists commended Arriola’s work at the dialogue, given that more than being concerned only with deadlines, she was heavily involved in the artists’ creative process, in constant dialogue with them.

Magali said she hoped to add some chronology to the exhibit, but it was difficult given that most of the work was realized for the Biennial and not beforehand. “Some works of art don’t have a specific moment (in time),” so it would have been hard anyway, she said. She trusts the exhibit provides enough narrative for artists to get the theme across and viewers to connect the dots.

The exhibit will run Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Contemporary Art Museum until October 21.