Emiliano Valdés
Emiliano Valdés (Guatemala, 1980) is Chief Curator at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art (MAMM). Prior to that, he was Associate Curator for the 10th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2014 – 2015) and Co-Director of Proyectos Ultravioleta (2010 – 2014), then a multi-faceted platform for experimentation in contemporary art based in Guatemala City. In 2012, Valdés was the CPPC Curatorial Fellow at dOCUMENTA(13) (Kassel), and from 2009 to 2012, he was Curator/Head of Visual Arts at the Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala City. Valdés has also worked for institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, (Madrid, 2005 – 2006), and contemporary Magazines, (London, 2006 - 2008). Valdés was Co-Curator of the 8th Bienal de Artes Visuales Nicaragüenses (Nicaragua); Curator of the 17th Bienal de Arte Paiz (Guatemala); Director of the seminar ‘Hábitat: Arte, contexto y análisis urbano’ (Nicaragua), Artistic Director of Foto30, a contemporary photography and image festival in Guatemala City and Professor of Curatorial Practice at the Francisco Marroquín University (Guatemala). He is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Residency Program arts and literary arts panel and an advisor to the Kadist Foundation (Paris/San Francisco).
At MAMM Valdés has organized exhibitions such as In and In Between Geographies (2015); Carlos Amorales. Working Tools (2017); Desire. An Exhibition About Sex, Love and Lust; Allora & calzadilla. The Night We Became People Again; Pasado Tiempo Futuro. Arte en Colombia en el siglo XXI (2019), El arte en Antioquia y la década de los setenta (2019); and El camino más largo. Arte contemporáneo en Antioquia (2021) as well as solo presentations of artists Libia Posada, Beatriz Olano, Juan Mejía, Jorge Julián Aristizábal, María Isabel Rueda and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, among many others. In 2017 he completed Guatemala from 33,000 km. Contemporary Art 1960–Present, the first international survey of Guatemalan modern and contemporary art for the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.
Valdés holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from IUAV University (Venice, Italy) and master’s degree in History of Art and Literature by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Fundación Duques de Soria (Spain). He is currently enrolled in the Master’s Program in Urban and Environmental Processes at EAFIT University in Medellín.
