La work that Josseline Pinto carries out as healer of art is crucial since without his criterion, the work carried out by several artists when it comes to exhibiting would not make much sense to our eyes.
A curator is, if we are very specific, the person who chooses the things that we will see in a certain way and who gives meaning to said presentation.
Guatemalan Josseline Pinto, 26, is precisely a curator independent and teacher.
She was also co-founder and director of the MANIFESTO-space curatorial project, dedicated to the exhibition, training, research and production of contemporary art and since 2018 she has taught the courses "Theory of Contemporary Art" and "Curatorial Studies" at the Municipal School of Visual Arts.
She was also the producer of the 22 Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala and worked as an educational curator for the National Foundation for Fine Arts and Culture FUNBA.
Josseline Pinto is currently a curator for The Rebel Gallery, in Guatemala, so we invite you to get to know her a little better through Bio Fahrenheit.
Did you study art or are you self-taught?
I have a degree in Art History from Casa Lamm, but I learned to make exhibitions in practice, wanting to do it without knowing what I was getting myself into.
Describe your profession in one sentence.
Being an art curator is an eternal conversation with the artists, the works, the spaces and their experiences.
What was the first work that marked you to start your path in art?
I am going to talk about the first exhibition that marked my path to start curating. It is an exhibition project called MANIFESTO-space that I had for five years in Guatemala City.
The space only worked at night and during the day it was the event room of a restaurant. From 5 pm to 10 am we were allowed to vacate the entire space to create ephemeral video, installation and performance exhibitions with young artists from Central America and Mexico who had to leave the same night to use the space the next day, which allowed us to think of montages and ephemeral and changing projects that could use the same conceptions of temporality of space in the works.
We did very experimental projects that were valuable for the artists' careers, but above all for training me with a lot of responsibility in curating and learning how to work for art and artists and not the other way around. Since this project was short-lived, documentation was very important to me. We maintain a digital archive of all project exhibits at www.manifestospace.com
Place of inspiration or reflection.
My house in complete silence, at my desk in front of my computer. Silence is important.
What is your favorite meeting point with friends?
About the bike. I am the curator who arrives by bicycle to work and I meet my friends on the bicycle too.
What was your first exhibition?
My first exhibition was called 1-4-7 and it was an exhibition of contemporary photography at MANIFESTO-space.
Three creators you admire.
Margarita Azurdia, Guatemalan artist of painting, sculpture and performance.
Luz Méndez de la Vega, Guatemalan poet, teacher and writer.
To the women of the arts in Guatemala because it is a country that hates women, so it is admirable that women are in charge of culture.
What does creating mean to you?
To create, from the curatorship, is to open up to dialogue and conversation. A curator creates connections and links between ideas, images and shapes to create conversations and encounters. For me, creating is promoting dialogue between forms, objects, speeches and people.
What is the most important thing in your day to day?
Mark as finished the task #1000 of my pending checklist. (Workaholism is a disease. HELP!)
In three words, how do your close ones describe you?
I hope that with positive words and not with: she is always busy.
Something you want to add.
I currently work as a curator for La Galería Rebelde, a contemporary art gallery in Guatemala City directed by Jimena de Tezanos that has created an important platform for Latin American artists and now for curators.
For La Galería Rebelde I had the opportunity to curate three exhibitions that have allowed me to meet renowned artists and also have an intimate conversation with young artists whose works invite me to think at another level.
The first exhibition I curated for the gallery was an international show within the framework of the TogetherArts event, in Miami Beach, for 2021. We worked on this show with the work of María Adela Díaz, one of the first performance artists in Guatemala; Alonso Cedillo, Mexican artist of new media and post-internet art who created an entire installation with artificial intelligence and Clara de Tezanos, whose sundials traveled to the terrace of the place where the exhibition was held to fill the time counted by light with color of the sun.
I also had the opportunity to curate the first exhibition of the year 2022, a collective of artists represented by the gallery around textile art, to think about the history of textiles in art and also delve into the personal processes of artists working with the medium.
In addition, the curatorship of the Booth for the 2022 edition of Zona Maco was a challenge to think about spatiality and dialogue between artists whose works are intertwined in very particular interests. It has been a wonderful experience to have such close access to work with international artists and, above all, to think of curatorship as a collective exercise where dialogue between the La Galería Rebelde team is vital for the creation of an experience that is also collective.