Grants and Fellowships

Liz Lasso is an independent curator and researcher focused on archival processes, artistic research, and collective curatorial practices that explore affect as a working methodology. Her approach centers on collections from a critical perspective that connects memory, contemporary art, and community access, with an emphasis on decolonial rereadings of local narratives. Until 2025, she managed the collection of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá (MAC Panamá). 

With the project This story has not been told many times. Experimental Art in Panama, Lasso seeks to study a little-documented generation of artists who, in a context of political and institutional change, became involved in avant-garde practices during the 1970s and 1980s in Panama.

Patricio Majano is a curator and cultural manager. He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of El Salvador, and his work focuses on Central American artistic practices and their diasporas, in connection with the region’s political urgencies. His career has developed primarily within El Salvador’s art field: as curator and Head of Programming at Y.ES Contemporary, a pioneering platform for the promotion of contemporary art; as a professor at the School of Arts of the University of El Salvador; and as a collaborator in the educational programs of the Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE) and Museo Forma in San Salvador, respectively. He is a member of the ICAC Advisory Committee. 

Under the title Amputated Identities: Ghosts in Salvadoran Art, his research traces genealogies and resonances between contemporary Salvadoran art, the 1932 Indigenous genocide, and the civil war (1980–1992), examining how these unresolved forms of violence operate as artistic material. 

• Admission to the Master’s program (UCM): 
  First application period: January 28 – February 28, 2026 
  Second application period: April 27 – May 22, 2026 
• Admission to the Master’s program (UAM): 
  Single application period: February 4 – April 1, 2026 
• Fellowship application period: 
  March 24 – June 21, 2026. In order to apply for the scholarship, candidates must have successfully completed the admission process to the Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture (MHACV).  

Josseline Pinto, independent curator, researcher, and lecturer. 
She holds a degree in Art History from Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm (Mexico City, Mexico) and has served as Exhibitions Coordinator at the Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala. She has been co-founder and director of MANIFESTO-espacio, a curatorial project dedicated to contemporary art; Chief Curator of La Galería Rebelde (Guatemala); and a lecturer at the Escuela Municipal de Artes Visuales (Guatemala). She has collaborated with institutions such as the Bienal de Arte Paiz, Fundación Paiz, FUNBA, and La Fototeca, and has participated in curatorial training programs at TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica, as well as at ICI and La Tallera in Mexico. 

Her essays have been published in books and specialized art journals in Latin America. Among her recent curatorial projects are exhibitions at the Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala and in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. Her practice brings together writing, teaching, and curating as forms of critical thinking and artistic mediation. 

Sofía Villena Araya, Chief Curator of the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) in San José, Costa Rica 

She holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Society and Culture Studies at the University of Costa Rica. Her work interweaves historical research, artistic experimentation, and pedagogy to address issues related to collective processes in contemporary art, particularly in the Central American region. 

She is part of the transnational curatorial collective Topsoil, together with Amelie Wedel (Berlin) and Deniz Kirkali (Istanbul), and has participated in international residencies such as the Performance Festival Reunión-Honduras (2023). Among the exhibitions she has curated are: Revocar by Guatemalan artist Yavheni de León (2022); Glosario para un gobierno vegetal by Costa Rican artist Christian Wedel (2023); Territorios domésticos, co-curated with Erika Martin at TEOR/éTica (2024); and Encuentros: poéticas del duelo y la regeneración at the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) in Costa Rica (2024–2025). Her publications appear in edited volumes such as Lo curatorial desde el Sur (2021) and Saber/desconocer: pedagogías relacionales y prácticas artísticas en Centroamérica (2022).