Maria Rondeau (Founder/Director) (USA/Guatemala,1971) returns to Guatemala to re-establish the link to the country where she grew up, supporting and promoting the interest in contemporary art and culture within Guatemala. As Founder of Concepcion 41, her interest is to develop an open structure for the production of experimental projects. A practicing architect and artist based in Cambridge, MA, Maria graduated from the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in 1996, and for fifteen years has been involved in experimental architecture practices such as mOrphosis, office dA and Monica Ponce de Leon Studio. Interested in multi-disciplinary collaborations, she has developed a series of topographic and audio-visual productions where she plays out the inter-relationship between space, place, and image. Since 2008, Maria has taught at the School of Architecture of the Rhode Island School of Design as a Visiting Faculty member leading Advanced Studios and as Thesis Advisor.
JUAN MANUEL CALDERON
Juan Manuel Calderon (Producer/Programmer) (Perú,1967) Independent video producer/director, he began his artistic career during the 1990s by creating portraits of the alternative rock scene and documenting the major dance and theatre troupes in Lima, Calderón established his career with personal works of video art and experimental shorts that clearly reflect his inter-relation with different artistic media. In 2001 he travels to New York where he develops a project with the Brooklyn Public Television channel and forms the collective “Spanic Attack”, created to support, divulge and promote Latin American art in New York. With “Hot Potato Productions” he begins his trilogy “Reasons, Motives and Circumstances”, feature-length films dealing with Peruvian exiles throughout the world. He shares his experiences through teaching and workshops in public schools in New York, Texas and Peru. Indefatigable traveller, he arrives in Guatemala to apply his experience to the service of art and the cultural movement.
ROSINA CAZALI
Rosina Cazali (Curator/advisor). Critic and independent curator specialized in contemporary Guatemalan art. She worked as an independent curator since 2000 and participated in several art projects such as Colloquia and the art festival Octubre Azul in 2000. From 2003 to 2006 she became the director of the Spanish Cultural Centre in Guatemala . Between 2003 and 2010 she curated several exhibitions and biennials on contemporary art of Guatemala, Central and Latin América. She has participated in important theoretical events organized by Teorética in San José, Costa Rica (2000 and 2012); Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, New York (2001); Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas (2006); ARCO, Madrid, Spain (2006); La vida nuda, preliminary encounter at Kasell Documenta in México City and Cairo; Performing Localities, by the Royal College of Art, London (2009); Independent Curators International, at the New Museum of Art, New York (2012). She is currently a columnist and essayist for El Periódico in Guatemala. In 2010, she received the John Simon Guggehnheim Grant to conduct research on contemporary art in Guatemala. She works and resides in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Proyectos Ultravioleta (Collaborators) is a multifaceted platform for experimentation in contemporary art, founded in 2009, and based in Guatemala City. It’s an initiative dedicated to the production of art exhibitions, multidisciplinary projects, discussion forums, loud concerts, happenings, public interventions, as well as a platform for intermediation between other local and foreign projects.
Ambush (Web Design and Development) is an art direction studio focused on creating visual material for a variety of projects in the fields of art, fashion, music and print. Created in 2008 by Amanda Bustamante and Juan Brenner with the objective of executing innovative and avant garde communication proposals that reflect their love for popular culture, fashion and new technologies.
Emiliano Valdes (Curator, …to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment) is an architect and curator, currently Curator/Head of Visual Arts at the Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala and a member of Proyectos Ultravioleta, a three-person artistic and curatorial collective that runs a multi-faceted space for experimentation in contemporary art based in Guatemala City’s historical center. In 2012, he was the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Curatorial Fellow at dOCUMENTA (13). He has also been Temporary Exhibition Coordinator at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, (Madrid 2006 2007); Managing Editor at Contemporary Magazines, (London, 2007-2009); Co-Curator of the 8th Bienal de Artes Visuales Nicaragüenses (Nicaragua, 2011-2012); Curator of the 17th Bienal de Arte Paiz (Guatemala, 2010); Director of the seminar ‘Hábitat: Arte contexto y análisis urbano’ (Managua, 2010) as well as Artistic Director of Foto30 (2009-2010- 2011), a contemporary photography and image festival in Guatemala City.
AKIRA IKEZOE
Akira Ikezoe is a New York-based artist born in Kochi, Japan. He works with painting in relation to the connection between human beings and our surrounding environment, and is investigating an illustrative approach towards concepts that raise questions about inherent contradictions of human existence. His solo exhibitions include Drawing, Ise Cultural Foundation, NYC (2012); Repeater, Sanagi Fine Arts, Tokyo (2010); and Ephemeral Garden, Esso Gallery, NYC (2009). His group exhibitions include Play with Nature-Played by Nature, Satoshi Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2013); Kiss the Heart, Isetan Shinjuku, Tokyo (2012); Future Primitive, Ma2 Gallery, Tokyo (2010). After majoring in printmaking and graduating from Tama Art University in 2003, he received the Tomio Koyama Gallery Prize and Naruyama Gallery Prize at GEISAI #10 in 2006. He was also selected as an artist member at GEISAI MIAMI in 2007.
ROBERTO BLUM
Roberto Blum is licenced in law and political science, and has a masters degree in political anthroplogy and and doctorate in constitutional law. He is currently a visting professor at the University Francisco Marroquin. His central interest has been the study of the various processeses of development wherein he considers science and art as complementary human activities through which to develop individually and collectively. Blum has participated in different «think tanks» focused on economic and social development to promote and engage in his socio-economic proposals.
SABRINA CASTILLO GALUSER
Sabrina Castillo Galuser is director/founder/
JIMENA CANALES
Jimena Canales is a historian and philosopher of science focusing on the modern physical sciences. She is currently an Associate Professor at Harvard University, where she received her MA and PhD. She is the author of A Tenth of a Second: A History (hardcover 2010; kindle 2011; paperback 2012). Her second book project, One Day in Paris—Einstein and the Philosophers Who Never Forgave Him (currently in preparation), focuses on a debate between the physicist Albert Einstein and the philosopher Henri Bergson. She received the “Prize for Young Scholars” International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of History of Science and Technology and was recently awarded the Charles A. Ryskamp research fellowship award from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Jimena has been a visitor at various universities and research centers including Max Planck Institute, IKKM, Princeton University and MIT. She has lectured widely nationally and internationally, including the Musée Pompidou, Fundación Juan March, the BBC and others.
DAVID MARIN ROMA
David Marín Roma is an artist whose inter-disciplinary art projects are based on reprogramming the collective imagination. At the same time, he has developed a series of kinetic and auditory sculptures that are inspired in the sonorous of Joaquin Orellana. David is licenced in physics from Universidad San Carlos, Guatemala, a diploma in physics in High Energies by the ICTP in Trieste, Italy, and a doctorate in Physics at the Institute BioMaps at Rutgers Univesity for the Inter-relation of Biology, Physics, and Mathematics. He currently works at Pajaro-Juaguar Productions.
NINA SAMUEL
Nina Samuel is an art historian and independent curator based in New York City with a PhD in Art History from Humboldt University, Berlin. Her thesis, entitled «The Shape of Chaos», investigates visual epistemologies in the field of complex dynamics and drawing as a mode of thinking. During 2011-2012 she was Visiting Assistant Professor at the BardGraduate Center in New York City. Nina’s current project draws from more than ten years of experience as a curator in residence at the Berlin gallery forcontemporary art kurt im hirsch, and focuses on an exhibition of drawing as thinking process in contemporary art and various disciplines, planned toshow at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in Fall 2013. From October 2013 on, she will start a new position as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin.
AMURAK SAPPER
AumRak Sapper is a trans-personal physcotherapist and ceremonialst that has worked with the Mayan calendar during the last 15 years, and whose goal is precisely, share her knowledge. She has worked extensively in North, Central and South America, and Europe. Yogini for over 30 years, AumRak has explored the paths and discipline of yoga, leading her to fortify the pyschic aptitudes of the canalization, empathy and other intuitive connections. As high priestess of xxxxxx she has developed a true connection with the mission of her soul towards the facilitation of the new world, the change to an elevated conscience. AUmRak has developed shamanic techniques that re-connect the interior paths that lead to clear path of life, healthy and balanced. She has a title in trans-personal therapy and in Education from Padagogishe Akademie des Bundes de la Universidad de Graz, Austria as well as many different titles earned in Canada which credit her as an Educator.