NEXT Curator
NEXT is an innovative platform that allows fair attendees to discover the latest art from Latin America. In this edition, the section brought together six galleries that committed to emerging artists engaged with their contexts and the artistic experimentation of the region.
Emiliano Valdés is a Guatemalan curator and writer who currently serves as Chief Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Medellín, Colombia (until December 31). Over the past decade, he has developed a program that amplifies the voices resonating within the Museum. Valdés also works as an advisor to the Marketing Directorate of the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism (INGUAT), focusing on exhibitions and international fairs with an emphasis on artisanal and community processes. Until 2015, he was an associate curator of the 10th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) and co-director of Proyectos Ultravioleta (Guatemala City). Previously, he was the curator and head of visual arts at the Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala, where he also founded the space (Ex)Céntrico. Valdés has also worked at institutions such as dOCUMENTA(13) (Kassel) with a fellowship from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), and Contemporary Magazines (London). He has curated, among others, the following international art events: the XVII Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala, the VIII Biennial of Nicaraguan Visual Arts (2011), the 2013 Costa Rica Visual Arts Biennial, and the First Tamaulipas Border Biennial, Mexico (2015). He has written for international magazines, catalogs, and books. Valdés holds a degree in architecture from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (Italy), a postgraduate degree in the history of art and Hispanic literature from the Ministry of Culture of Spain and the Duques de Soria Foundation, and a Master's in Urban and Environmental Processes from the Universidad EAFIT, where he graduated with an exhibition on community art practices and social processes in the city of Medellín.