NEXT

Curated by Emiliano Valdés

THINKING THE DOING, DOING THE THINKING

The NEXT section of Pinta Lima 2025 focuses on practices that, on the one hand, review the place of crafts within contemporary artistic practices, drawing from ways of doing and knowing outside traditional techniques, often considered specific to so-called minorities such as women and indigenous groups. On the other hand, it incorporates artists and projects whose practices tend toward the meditative, that is, exploring the thinking-doing relationship from places distinct from the rational. The section aims to present a polyphony of ways to understand art not only as a form of representation but as a means to conceive and build the world.

In a dialogue between practices that stem from doing or craft, and others from thinking or the conceptual, the 2025 edition of NEXT seeks to erase the boundaries between the Western conception of art and creative forms outside narrow margins.

 

Participating galleries and artists:

 

Galería Linse, Argentina

Textiles Semillas

 

NG Gallery, Panama

Lulu Molinares

 

Puna, Peru

Yerko Zlatar

 

Segismundo, Guatemala

Sofía Véliz

 

Salón comunal, Colombia

Cecilia Ordóñez and Bernardo Montoya

 

ALA Projects, Dominican Republic

Laura Castro

 

  

Emiliano_Headshot_MAMM

Emiliano Valdés is a Guatemalan curator and strategic advisor based in Guatemala City. Until December, he served as the Chief Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Medellín, Colombia, where over the past decade he developed a program that amplified the voices resonating within the museum and positioned it internationally. He is currently advising the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism on exhibitions, culture, and international fairs, with an emphasis on artisanal and community-based processes. Until 2015, he was the 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 Cultural Center of Spain in Guatemala, where he also founded the space (Ex)Céntrico. Valdés has also worked with 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 Nicaraguan Visual Arts Biennial-2011, the Costa Rican Visual Arts Biennial 2013, and the First Tamaulipas Border Biennial, Mexico-2015. He has written for international magazines, catalogs, and books. Valdés is an architect from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (Italy), holds a postgraduate degree in the history of art and Hispanic literature from the Ministry of Culture of Spain and the Duques de Soria Foundation (Spain), and a Master's degree in Urban and Environmental Processes from EAFIT University (Colombia).