TRACES – PANAMÁ’S DEBUT AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
The Panama Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale arises as a profound reflection on the enduring traces that migration leaves on individuals and their surroundings. Entitled Traces: On the Body and on the Land, this exhibition echoes the current migration crisis with a particular focus on the Panamanian context, interpreted by four artists through drawings, paintings, collages, glass sculptures, and installations.
For the first time ever, there is a Panama Pavilion at the prestigious Venice Art Biennale. This unique opportunity features four outstanding Panamanian artists who epitomize the best of the country’s contemporary art: Brooke Alfaro (1949), Isabel de Obaldía (1957), Cisco Merel (1981) and Giana De Dier (1980).
The artwork Mirages of the Gap by artist Cisco Merel provides a metaphorical exploration of the journey migrants make through the thick and roadless rainforest known as the Darien Gap. Based on two large abstract structures in which paint and pigment have been replaced by layers of mud, the rough textures of the multicolored soil that the artist gathered in situ symbolize the arduousness of the earthy trails that human beings have carved through the jungle.
The massive migration of Afro-Caribbean men and women in the early twentieth century for the construction of the Panama Canal brought about a profound transformation in Panama and its demographic makeup. The migratory waves not only etched an enduring mark on the nation’s history and but also exerted a significant influence on its cultural diversity. For those who dared to venture and relocate, the migrating body became a repository of chronicles and memories, while the individuals themselves grappled with the challenge of deciding what to carry along and what to leave behind. The central question evolves into a poignant dilemma: how to reconcile the desire to preserve one’s identity with the pressing need to assimilate for survival? Through collage, Giana De Dier meticulously assembles archival material, family documents, and oral histories, weaving them into new narratives that illuminate the migrant experience.
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Pavilion of PANAMA Traces: on the body and the land. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
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Pavilion of PANAMA Traces: on the body and the land. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
Inside the installation entitled Selva, visitors find themselves surrounded by a series of monumental drawings. With loose and expressive strokes, Isabel De Obaldía offers an immersion into the Darien Gap jungle. Roots surrounded by ferns, palms intertwined with vines, rivers, and waterfalls, confront the observer directly. Glass sculptures display dramatic colors and shapes with carved and richly textured surfaces that generate luminous effects.
The oceans and jungles in Brooke Alfaro’s paintings do not depict sublime seascapes nor peaceful rainforests. Rather, they are the scenarios of great human dramas where vulnerable individuals, often in large groups, in various types of boats or surrounded by wilderness, confront an aggressive and dangerous natural world. Although the compositions stem from his imagination, the pervasive sense of tragedy reminds us of the rafts full of migrants from the Mediterranean or in the Darien that we see in the news today. Alfaro began painting these ominous scenes in the nineties, long before the news about migration through Panama reported the current human crisis of epic proportions.
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Pavilion of PANAMA Traces: on the body and the land. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
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Pavilion of PANAMA Traces: on the body and the land. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
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Pavilion of PANAMA Traces: on the body and the land. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
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Pavilion of PANAMA Traces: on the body and the land. 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
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