Casey Kaplan
Mateo López is featured in the inaugural BOG25: Bogotá International Biennial of Art and the City, September 20 – November 7, 2025.
Curated by Mariá Wills, José Roca, Jaime Cerón, and Elkin Rubiano with the theme “Essays on Happiness,” the biennial will explore happiness not as an idealized state, but as a critical urban issue, delving into it’s complexities within a city like Bogotá, Colombia.
López has contributed a new 16-minute film, “Ballet Bachué” alongside a display of sculptures and objects created especially for this project.
“Ballet Bachué“ was filmed in Bogotá’s architecturally significant Teatro El Parque. Designed in 1936 by Carlos Martinez the theater, since its founding, has programmed youth theater, puppets, and marionettes. Eight decades later in a return to narratives close to social realism and to neo-indigenism, “Ballet Bachué,” proposes to open new discussions around dogmas in art, symbolism, dance, folklore, craft, and the place of the artist.
Image: Behind-the-scenes “Ballet Bachué” (2025). Photo credit: Jose Luis Rugeles