Nicaraguan Patricia Belli, 2025 Velázquez Plastic Arts Prize: “Symbolic reality is fundamental to learning to live together” | Culture | EUROtoday

The Nicaraguan artist Patricia Belli (Managua, 60 years outdated) claims that she has managed to “sublimate” her wounds, turning them into artwork, in a artistic course of that she has outlined as “a recovery experience.” Belli has explored the scars of worry, reminiscence and issues generated by financial issues, migration and violence in a area, Central America, in everlasting pressure. This inventive dedication to its surroundings has been acknowledged this Wednesday with the Velázquez Prize, comparable to 2025, an award price 100,000 euros. “I am very grateful, super honored,” says Belli in a phone interview. “It’s unexpected. I always do my work with a lot of sportsmanship, the best I can, but I don’t expect anything. And this is like a bomb, but a very happy bomb,” the artist reacts.

The jury highlighted “the impact of his work in the Latin American context, specifically in Central America, and his commitment to education in a context of fragility.” Likewise, he considers that “his work on the memory of vulnerable bodies, the scar left by fear and shame, as well as his cultural activism, are a reference for various generations of artists.” “His work involves the sensoriality of the public to propose reflections linked to subjectivity, trauma, imbalance and power mechanisms,” notes the notice from the Ministry of Culture after granting his prize. “The union of opposites is a transversal axis in his work, in which he reflects on issues such as oppressor-oppressed, pleasure-pain and nature-civilization. On the other hand, he pays special attention to the collective unconscious, from which he obtains symbolic references.”

Belli is among the most influential plastic artists in Central America. His work, which strikes between set up, pictures, video and efficiency, explores the tensions between the physique, vulnerability, reminiscence and social construction, at all times from a important and deeply private perspective. “I see memory not as a living wound, but as a scar from what I have experienced. When I discovered that I was making scars, which was when I started working with used clothes, tearing them and suturing them, I saw that there was a common thread that had to do precisely with the wound that was not only healed by nature, but mended. In other words, there is a hand that heals, a healing will. I felt that I had found something that gave me relief, that made me feel like I could breathe better,” he explains.

Belli comes from a household of artists. His early childhood recollections, he has stated, are marked by the artistic affect of his dad and mom: his father portray and taking images; and mom making garments and different crafts, experimenting along with her palms. After graduating in Visual Arts in 1986 from Loyola University in New Orleans (Louisiana) and in 1997 in Arts and Letters from the Central American University (UCA) in Managua, Belli obtained a Master of Visual Arts in sculpture on the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001.

The award jury has additionally highlighted his dedication to artwork instructing. Belli based EspIRA, a corporation for the delicate and important coaching of artists, which has been key within the emergence of recent generations of creators within the area. Through workshops, residencies and help packages, the creator has promoted a important and autonomous inventive scene in contexts of nice institutional fragility. “I feel very honored that this was one of the criteria for my selection. I have been working with young artists for many years. And I feel very lucky to say that many of these artists are now also dedicated to teaching,” she says. In a area the place there’s a lack of sources and little help for artwork from the authorities, Belli has managed to create a powerful group of artists. Recently, an exhibition known as home territorywhich introduced collectively 23 artists who emerged from the tutorial challenge she based. “It was a great joy to see how professional artists they are,” he says.

The Nicaraguan participated in Mesotica II (1996-1997), Politics of distinction (2001-2002) y uncertain strait (2006), three exhibitions of historic relevance for the method of visibility of Central American artwork in these years. She was additionally invited to the Biennials of Havana (1989 and 2000), Central America and the Caribbean (Domingo Santo, 1994 and 2001), Lima (1997), Cuenca (2011), Ireland (2018), Berlin (2018) and FEMSA, Mexico (2020-21) and to the 58th Carnegie International (2022), in addition to to numerous editions of the Biennial Nicaraguan and Central American. An anthological exhibition of her work toured San José, Managua and Guatemala City between 2016 and 2017. “I believe that symbolic reality is fundamental to learning to live and coexist. Undoubtedly. Art is part of that symbolic reality,” says the artist.

In latest editions, the winners of the Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts have been Francesc Torres (2024), Marisa González (2023), the Argentine Elda Cerrato (2022), the Cuban Tania Bruguera (2021) and Soledad Sevilla (2020).