Balam Bartolome was born in Chiapas, Mexico. Lives in Mexico City. His work explores the relation between culture and matter, the study of history and its drift in present time. Has exhibited in North, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. Has attended the next residencies: Encuentro Regional de Arte (UY, 2007); ISCP (USA, 2009); NKD (NO, 2011); Bemis Center (USA, 2014); Casa Wabi (MX, 2015), Flora Ars+Natura (COL, 2016), and Sculpture Space (USA, 2017). His most representative solo exhibitions are Meximoron, at the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones (MX, 2018), and Reves, at the Museo Carrillo Gil (MX, 2018). Among the collective shows are the 1st BIENALSUR (ARG, 2017), 1st Bristol Biennial (UK, 2012), 15th Tallin Triennial (EST, 2011) and Poli/Gráfica de Puerto Rico (PR, 2024). He currently co-directs the Bienal Tlatelolca, in Mexico City.
History, according to Mexican anthropologist Miguel León Portilla, is not a matter of the past, but instead “it happens in the past in which it occurred and the present in which we call to mind, study and think about it. History happens only when we acknowledge it.” Therefore, history does not belong to time but to us, the women and men who inhabit the present. In my work I link historical, cultural and natural topics and milestones, using art as vehicle to understand certain events and how they have shaped contemporary societies. My research goes around the next questions: In emergency times like the current one, how is art related to the notion of survival? If art is considered a producer of memory, is it an essential activity? And finally, will there be, in the near future, a new understanding of society and nature as a common, nurturing entity? Placing this human activity within the cultural discussion around the future of the world is also a way to see reality as a living archive, a multidimensional poetic and eco-political memory and, hence, as an essential vertebra on the spine of survival.