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Central American art shines and Patricia Belli receives the Velázquez Prize 2025
The renowned artist Patricia Belli (Nicaragua, 1964) has been awarded the 2025 Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of visual arts in Spain and Latin America. The prize, announced by the jury on Wednesday, includes a cash award of €100,000 and recognizes Belli's career and significant contribution to the world of contemporary art.
Throughout her career, Patricia Belli has distinguished herself through her ability to fuse diverse disciplines and artistic languages, establishing herself as a key figure in the current cultural scene. This award recognizes not only her artistic output but also her influence on the renewal and international projection of the visual arts.
Her work encompasses sculptures, installations, assemblages, objects, and pieces using fabrics and other materials, both manufactured and natural. Her production is characterized by its exploration of human fragility, vulnerability, and the body as a symbolic territory. Through materiality—fabrics, found objects, wire, wood, among others—Belli generates profound reflections on memory, the body, and systems of power. Her work is situated within the framework of contemporary Central American art, highlighting issues of gender, identity, and regional history, and establishing her as an essential voice in the region's art scene.
Belli is recognized as one of the pioneers of contemporary art in Nicaragua. Her work transcends borders and has great relevance in Latin America, uniquely articulating the personal, the historical, the social, and the material in an artistic narrative that challenges traditional art structures.
The Nicaraguan artist has participated in highly significant exhibitions that have brought Central American art to the forefront, such as Mesótica II (1996-1997), Políticas de la diferencia (2001-2002), and Estrecho dudoso (2006). She has also been invited to numerous international biennials, including the Havana Biennial (1989 and 2000), the Central America and Caribbean Biennial (Domingo Santo, 1994 and 2001), as well as the biennials in Lima (1997), Cuenca (2011), Ireland (2018), Berlin (2018), FEMSA, Mexico (2020-2021), and the 58th Carnegie International (2022). Her work has also been featured in various editions of the Nicaraguan Biennial and the Central American Biennial.
Between 2016 and 2017, a retrospective exhibition of her work toured San José, Managua, and Guatemala City, solidifying her legacy in the region. Regarding her artistic practice, Belli states: “I believe that symbolic reality is fundamental to learning how to live and coexist. Undoubtedly. Art is part of that symbolic reality.”
