Exhibitions
Trixie Briceño: Systems of the Marvelous, an Intimate Cosmology at the MAC Panama
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama inaugurated the exhibition Trixie Briceño: Systems of the Marvelous on February 27th, a retrospective dedicated to the pioneer of Panamanian contemporary art, Beatrix “Trixie” Briceño. The exhibition offers a journey through more than five decades of artistic production and also establishes a dialogue with the digital artist Ix Shells, who reinterprets Briceño's visual universe through the technological possibilities of the present.
The exhibition brings together more than fifty works that allow visitors to observe the evolution of a singular artist within the Panamanian art scene. Through paintings, installations, and contemporary pieces inspired by her work, the visitor enters a visual universe where order, repetition, and domestic symbolism become the pillars of a deeply personal poetics.
Born outside of Panama, but naturalized Panamanian, Briceño arrived in the country in the 1960s. Her path to art was not immediate: she decided to dedicate herself to painting at the age of forty, a late choice that, far from limiting her career, allowed her to build a visual language independent of the dominant trends of her time.
From her earliest works, the artist developed compositions characterized by meticulously arranged interiors: tables, shelves, gardens, or architectural structures where everyday objects—eggs, fruit, glasses, drawers, hearts, or arrows—appear arranged with almost ritualistic precision. Each element seems to occupy a precise place within a symbolic architecture where the domestic acquires a transcendent meaning.
The historical context in which much of his work developed—marked by wars, migrations, and political instability—lends an additional dimension to these compositions. Faced with the disorder of the outside world, Briceño constructs visual systems where balance and organization function as a form of intimate resistance.
Although her work has sometimes been linked to Surrealism or the faux-naïve aesthetic, the exhibition proposes a broader and more complex interpretation. The rhythmic repetition of objects, the axial organization of spaces, and the use of flat chromatic fields reveal a rigorous formal discipline that transforms a sense of displacement into visual equilibrium.
Within this universe, everyday objects acquire a symbolic dimension. An egg suggests the latent power of life; a glass measures presence; a drawer holds what remains hidden; a table becomes a ritual surface where the visible and the secret negotiate their emergence. The great questions—origin, desire, time, pain, or knowledge—are thus transferred to a domestic scale, where the extraordinary is revealed in the seemingly trivial.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is the dialogue with digital artist Ix Shells, who presents an installation based on Briceño's work. Through digital tools and computer programming, Shells recreates and expands the artist's visual systems, demonstrating how her language continues to be fertile ground for new interpretations.
This encounter between generations also highlights how art formats and platforms have profoundly evolved in recent decades. While Briceño developed his work within the traditional realm of painting, contemporary reinterpretations open new avenues for experiencing his imagery in technological and immersive environments.
Taken together, “Trixie Briceño: Systems of the Marvelous” invites us to rediscover the work of an artist who transformed the everyday into an intimate cosmology. Her seemingly silent compositions conceal a profound reflection on memory, order, and the fragility of the world. The exhibition demonstrates that, in Briceño's universe, mystery needs no grandiloquence: it already resides in the simplest objects, waiting to be discovered in the delicate balance between the visible and the invisible.
