First International Biennial of Art and City

In 2025, Bogotá will have the first International Biennial of Art and City
The Mayor's Office of Bogotá announced the International Biennial of Art and City BOG25 that will take place between September and November 2025. Learn the details of this meeting that will be accompanied by calls for artists.
The Felicidad Chapinero Center, inaugurated in October 2024, was the scene of the announcement of one of the cultural projects of the Mayor's Office of Bogotá for 2025: the realization of the first International Biennial of Art and City BOG25.

Through the Secretariat of Culture, Recreation and Sports, SCRD, it proposes to promote and strengthen the ecosystem of plastic and visual arts, architecture and design in Bogotá and to amplify another branch of culture and art in the city.
With the city as a stage, this biennial will take place from September 20 to November 7, 2025, opening the city's space to art, with thematic axes that will revolve around Bogotá's architecture, migrations, happiness, enjoyment and leisure, rituals and nature, among others.

Santiago Trujillo, Secretary of Culture, assured that the biennial will be in the streets, neighborhoods and even in the Transmilenio, allowing emerging artists and established artists from the city to dialogue with artists from other parts of the world.
"We made a budget investment of more than 7 billion pesos for now and we hope it increases because we are convinced that it is very important for a city like Bogotá to have a stage for reflection and enjoyment around the visual arts, the arts of design and installations," he said and pointed out that the fact that a city manages to have an art biennial represents its cultural coming of age.
A coming of age that the city has been experiencing through other cultural proposals focused on the visual arts during the last two decades such as ArtBo and the San Felipe Art District, among other public and private initiatives that are annually held in galleries and conventional and non-conventional spaces in the city.

At the announcement of the biennial, which was also accompanied by Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán, the team that leads this cultural proposal was announced, which will have two co-directors and a curatorial committee. Cultural managers Diego Garzón and Juan Ricardo Rincón, founders of La Feria del Millón, a platform dedicated to emerging art that has been held in different spaces in Bogotá for 12 years, are the co-directors of the biennial.

“International biennials normally revolve around a curator, but since it is the first biennial of this magnitude, we proposed putting together a plural committee, which allows for bringing together many perspectives,” explained Garzón about the composition of the team that makes up the curatorial committee.

María Wills, art historian and curator specialized in contemporary art; Jaime Cerón, researcher, art critic, independent curator and cultural manager; and Elkin Rubiano, PhD in Art Theory and Architecture, are already part of this committee. Wills said that “people are increasingly looking for spirituality and art in many cases is willing to provide experiences that will be very timely within these essays on happiness,” which are the axes that the biennial will have.
The biennial will offer spaces for creative exchange, but also for dialogue and critical reflection. By decentralizing its activities, which include educational programming and workshops, BOG25 will promote social inclusion and access to art for all audiences, including children, young people and adults from its neighborhoods and localities.

During the event, the Secretary also highlighted that, in line with the objective of internationalization of Bogotá, and the spirit of cultural exchange that inspires BOG25, an important announcement will be made in the coming days as a result of his recent visit to Mexico City, where he met with Ana Francis Mor, Secretary of Culture of that capital, to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between the two cities.

From the Felicidad Chapinero Center, where tribute was paid to artists Beatriz González and Alfredo Jaar, the Secretary also announced the winners of the first three calls for the biennial: neighborhood artistic interventions, independent artistic curatorships and popular art, among which incentives of 309 million pesos will be awarded.

“We want Bogotá to gradually position itself with an event like the biennial; the idea is that just as there are people who travel from other countries for events like the Estéreo Picnic or Rock al Parque, the biennial in the short and medium term will call people from other countries to see art,” Garzón hopes.
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