Untitled Document

The Panama Art Biennial presents works by local and international artists chosen by Mexican curator Magali Arriola.

For the first time, the Biennial has a specific theme: the art projects have been developed around the idea of the former Panama Canal Zone, an enclave under the administration of the United States Federal Government from the time of its creation until the implementation of the 1977 treaties.

Conceptually, the Biennial will operate on two interconnected levels. Artists familiar with the Canal Zone have been invited to create in situ interventions that promote a dialogue about this territory’s past and present. These artists are: Abner Benaim, Enrique Castro Ríos, Donna Conlon, Jonathan Harker, Rich Potter, and Ramón Zafrani, all based in Panama; Humberto Vélez, Panamanian artist resident in London; the U.S. artist Sam Durant; Francis Alÿs (Belgian based in Mexico), and three artists who reside in Berlin, Germany: Sean Snyder (from the U.S.), Roman Ondak (from Slovakia) y Michael Stevenson (from New Zealand).

The curator has included artists less acquainted with the Canal Zone who, operating from different and distant latitudes, will propose works or interventions as reflections on the political and cultural evanescence of a place, and as speculations on the significance of this type of geographical transactions. The artists invited for these distant collaborations are: Joachim Koester (Denmark / U.S.A.), Aurélien Froment (France), Mario García Torres (Mexico / U.S.A.), Jonathan Monk (U.K. / Germany) and Mungo Thomson (U.S.A.)

The Sweet Burnt Smell of History: A conversation with the artists and the organizers of the Biennial

The Biennial’s participating artists and the event’s organizers will hold an exchange of ideas with each other and with the audience about their work, analyzing the way in which the exhibition as a whole develops the proposed curatorial theme.

Universidad de Panamá, Sala Manuel E. Amador (Across from the Simón Bolívar Library)

An exhibition produced by Kurt Dillon, Roger Trancik, and Sam Sweezy for the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University (New York). The exhibition presents a view of the urban system in the Canal Zone, situating its development within a particular tradition of urban and regional planning, and focusing on the work of North American professionals and intellectuals such as Clarence Stein, Frederick Law Olmsted, and others, whose ideas influenced urban development in the Canal Zone. The exhibition consists of 30 photographs, as well as bilingual text panels (Spanish and English). The exhibition’s creators will present a lecture about the exhibition as part of the Biennial’s conference program.

Academic Conferences The Panama Canal Area: A Cultural Heritage Site of Worldwide Importance

Universidad de Panamá, José Dolores Moscote Auditorium
September 11th, 17th and 18th (mornings and afternoons)

As part of its eighth edition, the Panama Art Biennial is organizing Academic Conferences focused on analyzing the patrimonial values of the urban and regional design in the Panama Canal area, currently considered an endangered cultural heritage site of worldwide importance. The conferences are being organized in collaboration with the Universidad de Panamá, and will include a large number of students, professors, and professionals from the fields of architecture, history, and fine arts.

Eduardo Tejeira
The Panama Canal Area as an Endangered Cultural Heritage Site of Worldwide Importance

Carol McMichael Reese and Thomas Reese
Cara a Cara - Face to Face: Panama City and the Canal Zone, 1904-1999

Afternoon:

Eduardo Tejeira
Conference about the now defunct neighborhood of El Marañón, which was planned and built during the construction of the Panama Canal for Afro-Antillean immigrant workers

LuÍs Pulido Ritter
The Canal Zone: A Fractured City, an Imagined Nation, and Transnational Culture in Panama (1913-1977)

Kurt Dillon, Roger Trancik y Sam Sweezy
Garden City: Progressive Planning and the Panama Canal

Charlotte Elton
The Role of Summit Gardens in Canal Zone Landscaping

Visit by students and professors to the City of Knowledge (former Clayton military base) for an introduction to its new Master Plan for urban development.

Álvaro Uribe
The Planning Process for the Use of Properties and Assets in the Reverted Areas during the 1990’s

Raisa Banfield
Citizens’ Demands for the Conservation of the Canal Area’s Natural and Historic Heritage

Almyr Alba and Kurt Dillon
Initiatives in Conservation and Evaluation of the Panama Canal Area sponsored by the World Monuments Fund

Walo Araújo
The Zone Reconsidered. The Art Biennial and the Theme of the Former Canal Zone

This documentary about U.S. citizens who lived and worked in the Canal Zone sheds light on their lifestyle and different aspects of their civilian government, as well as on the work of the military forces, thereby portraying the social structure of the so-called Zonians. Wiseman has been acknowledged over the past three decades as one of the most important filmmakers in the United States..

Within the framework of the Biennial, Panama’s well known artist Brooke Alfaro will present, for the first time in several years, an exhibition of his paintings.

Brooke Alfaro (Panama 1949) graduated in 1976 as an architect from the University of Panama. He studied painting at the Art Students League in New York from 1980 to 1983. Since the early 1990s, his painting evolved from a technique close to the classical masters towards a radical transformation in form with the aim not only of manipulating pictorial space, but of expressing specific spiritual and psychological states. Both in his paintings and his videos (a medium he has worked in since 1999), a major part has been played by Alfaro’s humble neighbors from the historic area of San Felipe, where the artist used to live and continues to visit. In both genres, he employs a caustic sense of humor and deceptive jokes that subvert the possible interpretations of his artwork. (A.Samos)