New chapter for Artbo: Colombia’s art market finds resilience amidst flux – The Art Newspaper

A decade ago, the Colombian art market was at its peak. The country’s marquee fair, Artbo, had double the gallery numbers that it has now. Everywhere you turned, it seemed clear that “Colombia was having a moment”. But the fair, created and led by the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, has proven itself remarkably resilient and able to evolve even though, in the words of Paula Bossa, the director of the local gallery Casas Riegner, “Colombia’s art market is complicated.”

This week’s 21st edition of Artbo (until 28 September) is framed by two significant events. First, the inaugural Bogotá Biennial, Ensayos sobre la Felicidad (until 9 November), which took over the Colombian capital the weekend before the fair, adds significant motivation for international collectors and museum curators to travel to the city. Second, a changing of the guard at the fair itself: after a decade under the leadership of María Paz Gaviria, the daughter of a former Colombian president, the fair is now led by a director of a younger generation, Jaime A. Martínez.

Martínez, an art historian and former gallerist who previously lived and worked in Berlin, is prioritising quality and discovery. “Artbo is very elegant and I try to maintain that feeling, but it is also the space to discover Latin American and Colombian art,” Martínez tells The Art Newspaper.

The domestic art market is still in flux due to the lingering effects of the 2023 peso devaluation and inflation, shifting political landscapes and post-pandemic adjustments. And the fair is occurring at a time when the international art market itself is undergoing a structural crisis. Yet Artbo, with its loyal contingent of local and international galleries—46 in all—is determined to serve as the key platform to support the circulation of Colombian and Latin American art.

The São Paulo-based Galeria Vermelho, which has been participating in Artbo since 2007, is showing works by two artists who are showing monumental works in the Bogotá Biennial, the Peruvian artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca and the Argentine artist Ivan Argote. Within the first hours of the fair opening to VIPs on Wednesday (24 September), the gallery sold a work by the Mexican artist Tania Candiani, form her 2015 Cromatica series, priced at $18,000, as well as a piece from Marcelo Moscheta’s Autopoiesis series priced at $4,000. The gallery also sold a piece from Garrido-Lecca’s Restauraciones de señal series, priced at $16,000.

“Colombian collectors have a very good understanding of what we bring,” says Eduardo Brandão, the gallery’s artistic director and co-founder. “And they want to know more, are careful and critical too.”

For Brandão, the difficulties of importing material to Colombia and dealing with customs and currency conversions are well worth it—and have actually gotten easier in some respects. “We used to have to ship through Miami,” he says. For his gallery, when it comes to Artbo, there is no question: “We have to do it.”

Strategies for a cautious but curious market

The synergy with the new Bogotá Biennial and the fair’s strong regional focus translated into immediate action during Wednesday’s VIP preview. Within the first 10 minutes of the fair’s “First Choice” champagne hour, SGR Galeria sold a work for $7,000 by Colectivo Mangle, the duo of María Paula Álvarez and Diego Álvarez, two artists and carpenters who have been working together since 2006. The domestic market, however, remains cautious and, in many aspects, limited in the number of collectors and their acquisitions budgets.

“Artbo is not a big market like Mexico or Miami, but given that their programme focuses on the global south, it’s a really interesting complementary way to connect with Latin American collectors,” says Cesar Levy of Paris’s 193 Gallery, which is participating in the fair for the second time this year. Plus, he adds, Bogotá is “such a beautiful city”. By the fair’s second day, his gallery had sold a work by the Cuban artist Rafael Domenech for $5,500, a piece by the Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu for $8,500 and a mixed-media work by the Ivorian artist Joana Choumali for $16,500 dollars.

The fair’s highest-value sales typically come from established galleries like New York’s León Tovar, Bogotá’s Casas Riegner, and Paris-headquartered Mor Charpentier. Galleries with a presence both abroad and locally, such as Mor Charpentier (which opened a Bogotá space in 2021), highlight their strategic commitment to the local ecosystem despite its decline over the past decade. By the early afternoon on the preview day, Mor Charpentier had already sold works by Latin American artists including Liliana Porter, Mateo López and Guadalupe Maravilla for prices ranging from $15,000 to $60,000.

Maravilla, the El Salvador-born artist whose work is influenced by his experience emigrating to the US and the country’s immigration policies, “is currently having a major moment with exhibitions at major institutions”, says Philippe Charpentier, the gallery’s co-owner. The gallery also opened a solo show of Maravilla’s work (until 29 November) on Thursday night at its Bogotá space.

Charpentier says the works on the stand at Artbo are strategically priced—between $15,000 and $40,000—“to match the local market dynamics”. The goal for him is clear: to adapt to the local market’s dynamics and nurture the local audience, which he sees as important for the gallery’s long-term viability.

Curatorial threads meld tradition and technology

Among Artbo’s strengths are its expansive curated sections, which provide a crucial counterpoint to the commercial main section, giving collectors a deeper understanding of regional art practices. The Proyectos section, curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, is titled The Plot of the Future: Contemporary Practices from Textiles and showcases works by ten artists exploring the critical and creative potential of fibres and textiles as language, through techniques from embroidery to ancestral knotting.

Among the section’s highlights is a presentation of works by María Sosa, who will represent Mexico at next year’s Venice Biennale. Her work, which is being presented by the Guatemala-based Galería Extra, uses traditional Mexican textiles to explore themes of colonisation and its impact on women’s bodies through performance art. Silvia Obiols, Galería Extra’s director, says that within an hour of the VIP opening one of Sosa’s monumental wall textile was already on reserve, adding: “They came in with a mission, they knew what they wanted.” The gallery also sold four works made with banana sap by the Guatemalan artist Andrea Monroy Palacios, including works placed with Colombian collectors and international museums, for prices ranging from $3,000 to $10,000.

Also in the Proyectos sector, the New York-based gallery Henrique Faria Fine Art is showcasing the Chilean artist Francisca Rojas, whose work mixes traditional techniques, notably a re-reading of the quipu (an Andean knot-based recording system) linking it with binary computer language. The gallery sold textile works from that series and from a new, playful series of feminine figures to Colombian collectors, with prices ranging from $2,500 to $3,500.

The 2025 edition of Artbo attests to the Colombian art ecosystem’s resilience and adaptability. While the local market may be “super challenging”, as Bossa from Casas Riegner puts it, the fair serves as a critical nexus where local and Latin American talents can achieve international visibility. With a new fair director and the energy of the concurrent Bogotá Biennial, the city appears determined to cement its status as a regional leader in contemporary art.

• Artbo, until 28 September, Agora Bogotá Convention Center, Bogotá