María Paola Malavasi L. (Costa Rica)
María Paola Malavasi L. (cc. Lola Malavasi)
Co-director of TEOR/éTica, a non-profit independent art space in San José, Costa Rica, focused on contemporary artistic practices from Central America and the Caribbean. As part of this space, she is in charge of educational and research projects, focusing on production by young artists, and rethinking cultural management and artistic education practices. She created and currently leads Alter Academia, a residency programme and formative space for young artists from Costa Rica, built on the principles of shared learning and collective processes. Her curatorial projects include Teramorfosis (2015), and Lo Escrito, Escrito Está (2016), both presented in TEOR/éTica. Alongside Miguel A. López, she curated the exhibition Virginia Pérez-Ratton. Centroamérica: deseo de lugar, MUAC-UNAM, Mexico City, 2019. With Daniela Morales, she edits “Buchaca”, a digital magazine that aims to preserve a critical memory on projects proposed by TEOR/éTica and its collaborators. She graduated with honours, BFA in Art History, Minor in Fashion, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2011.
TEOR/éTica is an independent, private, non-profit organisation located in San José, Costa Rica. Both its name and its ethos imply theory, aesthetics and ethics. Since it was founded in 1999, this project has operated as a platform for research and the diffusion of contemporary artistic practices, with an emphasis on Central America and the Caribbean. TEOR/éTica aims to be an agent for spaces of doubt, questions, debates and thought pertinent to the context it operates in, in dialogue with global realities. Working from one of the world’s most violent, unequal and challenging regions, TEOR/éTica advocates for art as a common space from where to generate research, collective study and resistance against hegemonic discourse and conservative forces. Through exhibitions, talks, workshops, publications, grants, and a specialised archive and library, it procures spaces – both symbolic and physical – of encounter, study and conversation about contemporary artistic practices and their engagement with social and political realities.
