Patricia Belli Patricia Belli
Patricia Belli is a Nicaraguan visual artist, and the winner of a scholarship for a Master of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Shortly after her return from the United States in 2001, she began a sequence of weekly meetings among young creators to discuss art in Nicaragua. In time, her interest to stimulate the capacity of young artists, lacking opportunities of superior academic formation in this discipline led to the formation of TAJo (Taller de Arte Jóven), which rapidly became a space for the practice of contemporary art in Nicaragua, with more than 200 critical, theoretical and technical workshops in arts. Building on this experience, Belli founded La Espira in 2004. La Espira has grown to be a place for artistic reflection and creation, non-profit association of artists, interested in human development through art. It perceives itself as a cultural platform for different artistic projects in the fields of visual arts and multimedia.
To date, Patricia Belli has brought hundreds of emerging artists from Latin America to Nicaragua for an artist residency, where local artists of the region collaborate with the international visiting artists. Workshops and other activities of La Espira have expanded the role of art in Nicaragua from traditional painting and sculpture to interventions, performances and interactive works in the public sphere. She was also a panelist for the debate Cultural Heritage and Shared Knowledge on 7 November 2010, realized in cooperation with Framer Framed, Arts Collaboratory and Reinwardt Academy.
Between 2016 and 2017, a retrospective exhibition of her work, curated by Miguel López, traveled between Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Her works were also exhibited during the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2018, and in 2019, Patricia Belli took part in the Pernod Ricard Fellowship at Villa Vassilieff, center for contemporary art, in Paris.
- ARTE AL DIA MAP OF INDEPENDENT ARTIST RESIDENCIAS IN LATIN AMERICA
- TRAVELLING EXHIBITION LA FORMA EQUIVALENT 2008