The exhibition highlights the differences and similarities of social struggles in Central America through more than 40 works of art, archives, and performances.
The Union of Feminists Engendering New Systems (UNFES) presents “We Are Seas, Rivers, Flowers, Minerals, Volcanoes, Mountains, and Compost” in all spaces of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in San José, Costa Rica beginning May 29, 2025. The exhibition features more than 40 works created in Central America by artists from the collective, allied collectives, and the MADC collection.
UNFES is made up of eight feminist artists, curators, and activists from various Central American countries: Maya Juracán (Guatemala), Emilia Yang (Nicaragua / Costa Rica), Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala), Gabriela Novoa (El Salvador), Ana Laguna (Panamá), Mariela Richmond Vargas (Costa Rica), nara ila (Nicaragua) y Risseth Yangüez Singh (Panamá) and the collectives of which they are a part.
This exhibition aims to narrate and weave together stories of individual and collective Central American resistance that seek dignity through art and feminist activism. These artists question the official histories of their respective Central American countries and the exclusions of women and dissidents in contemporary art, as well as in the region. Their works also point towards the reasons for increased migration from the region to other places due structural, racial, gendered and state violences and extractivist practices.
“It fills us with joy to bring together in Costa Rica, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), these Central American artists and curators, who are also bearers of the voices, pulses of the collectivities and networks that inhabit their territories.We feel that this is an urgent time to intertwine our struggles, to weave sensitive, firm networks and thus resist together the waves of violence that cross us, sustaining us from creation and radical tenderness,” said the UNFES Collective.
“For the Museum, it is an honor to receive the Central American artists and curators who make up the UNFES collective. We have worked in a committed way in the curatorial, museographic and educational fields to build an exhibition that dialogues with their diverse visions of the context, identities and material sensitivities. Since the 90s, the MADC has maintained a firm commitment to the visibility of the artistic voices of the region, promoting plural narratives that enrich our identity, collective historical memory and critical reflection.” mentioned Sofía Villena Araya, chief curator of the MADC.
The exhibition presents the result of individual and collective research, an archive of their processes, references, inspirations and a Central American Feminist Art Library, as well as guest artists from the MADC Collection, to generate imaginaries of shared futures in solidarity, healing and liberation through art.
The exhibition was produced by MADC, with the curatorial, pedagogical and museographic support of the museum’s team. It will be open free of charge to the public from Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. From May 29 to October 13, 2025.
