Image: Panama Museum of Contemporary Art
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá is drawing attention to the final weeks of two exhibitions that link Caribbean histories, memory, freedom and the history of art in Panama. The museum says visitors still have time to see 'otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua' and 'Trixie Briceño: sistemas de lo maravilloso', both on view until 23 August at the MAC Panamá in Ancón.
'otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua' arrives in Panama after its presentation at Ocean Space in Venice, where the project was shown by TBA21–Academy. According to the museum, the Panama presentation is the exhibition’s first in the American continent. The project is part of TBA21–Academy’s The Current IV, a curatorial research programme led by Yina Jiménez Suriel and curated at MAC Panamá by Juan Canela, the museum’s chief curator.
The exhibition brings together works by Nadia Huggins, from Trinidad and Tobago, and Tessa Mars, from Haiti. The museum’s presentation frames the project around the ocean and mountains as spaces of memory, refuge, displacement and resistance. Huggins’s section, 'A Shipwreck Is Not a Wreck', begins from the forced exile of the Garifuna people from St Vincent in 1797, when they were sent adrift by the British. The source material says the vessel ultimately reached the coast of Roatán, Honduras, and that the journey became a history of survival and dispersion across Central America.
Mars’s contribution, 'a call to the Ocean', turns to the mountains of Haiti and other territories of Abya Yala that served as refuge, meeting places and routes of liberation for Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. The museum links the work to the Haitian Revolution, stressing that these geographies were not passive settings but places that sheltered bodies, enabled resistance and opened routes outside colonial control. The installation combines paintings, sculptures and the sound of the fututo, a shell used to send messages and summon people in times of struggle.
Alongside the Caribbean-focused show, MAC Panamá is also presenting 'Trixie Briceño: sistemas de lo maravilloso', an exhibition built from fragments, documents and recollections around a key figure in Panamanian modern art. The museum describes Briceño as one of the pioneers of modern art in Panama and says she developed a distinctive language in the 1960s, marked by geometric forms, intense colours, unexpected objects and dreamlike imagery.
Because much of Briceño’s work remained dispersed among private collections and archival traces, the exhibition reconstructs her practice from clues. It also brings the artist into dialogue with a new generation through an immersive installation by Panamanian digital artist Ix Shells. The museum says Ix Shells created a generative work based on elements taken from Briceño’s art and life, transforming her colours, gestures and patterns into light, sound and movement.
The museum says the two exhibitions are open for their last weeks through 23 August. MAC Panamá is located on Calle San Blas in Ancón, with opening hours from Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.
