Eugenio Viola to Curate 2025 Bienal de Arte Paiz

Fundación Paiz para la Educación y la Cultura has tapped Italian critic and curator Eugenio Viola to curate the twenty-fourth edition of theBienal de Arte Paiz, set to take place November 2025–February 2026 in Guatemala City and Antigua, Guatemala. Established in 1978, the Bienal is Central America’s largest contemporary art exhibition.

“In an increasingly interconnected yet fragmented world, art is a powerful medium to reflect, challenge, and inspire,” Viola said in a statement. “It can offer different perspectives on reality, presenting alternative views to the contradictions of our contemporary era.”

Viola, who specializes in performance art and so-called body poetics, is artistic director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, where he has organized the first Colombian museum exhibitions of work by artists including Alexander Apóstol, Ana Gallardo, Dor Guez, Voluspa Jarpa, and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. Prior to his arrival there, he was a curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Australia. Before that, he worked at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples, where he curated the inaugural Italian institutional exhibitions of Francis Alÿs and Boris Mikhailov. Among the notable exhibitions he has curated are the Italian Pavilion at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale (2022), the Estonian Pavilion at the Fifty-Sixth Venice Biennale (2015), and “The Abramović Method” at PAC–Contemporary Art Pavilion, Milan (2012). He holds a Ph.D. in methods and methodologies of archaeological and historical-artistic research from the University of Salerno in Italy.

“I envision a polyphonic, inclusive, and participatory project,” Viola said. “It will resonate with the complex web of languages, religions, cultures, and historical perspectives that shape our globalized society while engaging with Guatemala’s rich and multicultural artistic ecosystem, which I have already had the privilege of experiencing throughout my career.”