ABOUT PACO BARRAGÁN

A lifetime career dedicated to art.

Art professionals with whom I have worked usually say that I am “self-demanding and very passionate about my job.” And it’s true: I simply love what I do! 

For more than 20 years now I have been writing, curating, performing art management and researching. As such, I had the chance to work directly with art fairs (CIRCA Puerto Rico and PhotoMiami); biennials (Valencia Biennial, Prague Biennale-IBCA, Lanzarote Biennial); festivals (SOS 4.8 Murcia, Toronto Nuit Blanche); contests (Castellón Expanded Painting Prize,  Art All Around Maine Energy Tank Competition); private collections (Ofelia Martín and Javier Núñez Family Collection Lanzarote); and museums for which I curated 91 exhibitions (Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, COBRA Museum, ACP Sydney,  Museo del Barrio, MUSAC León, et al). 

I had the opportunity of exhibiting emerging, mid-career and established artists like Juan Dávila, Lee Bul, Santiago Sierra, Shirin Neshat, Do Ho Suh, Erwin Olaf and Sandra Gamarra, just to mention a few.

If I were to point out four highlights in my artistic career, these would be my first and still ground-breaking exhibition “Don’t Call it Performance” at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2003; my appointment as Head of Visual Arts at Matucana 100 in Santiago de Chile between 2015 and 2017; the nomination as co-curator for the Nuit Blanche Toronto in 2016; and the reception of the Extraordinary PhD Award Year 2019-2020 from the University of Salamanca (USAL) for my thesis “Narrativity as Discourse, Credibility as Condition: Art, Politics and Media Now”.

Both through my publishing and first-hand working experience I have acquired a unique and rare mix of theory and practice. 

Whenever I have been asked about one defining characteristic that conforms my personality, my answer is rather straight: The ongoing desire of anticipating change!

And success is ultimately the ability to think out of the box!  

Paco Barragán
Message Us on WhatsApp