Spotlight on Central American Art.

• Author: Wyels, Joyce Gregory
• Position: !Ojo!

THE SAO PAULO Biennial, the Venice Biennial, the New Orleans Biennial ... It seems that at any given moment, an art biennial is taking place somewhere on this planet. Even so, the Sixth Biennial of Visual Arts of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC) was a rarity. In a world where most recurring art events are associated with a particular place, BAVIC hop-scotches from the capital of one Central American country to another.

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Starting in Guatemala in 1998, the Central American Biennial has touched down successively in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, and El Salvador. For the sixth edition of the biennial, and its tenth anniversary, the arts spotlight was on Honduras. Tegucigalpa's Museum for National Identity, located in the former Palace of the Ministries, served as the principal venue.

Rotating the host city offers various groups an opportunity to organize the biennial. BAVIC 08 took place under the auspices of the Association of Women in Arts (MUA) and its executive director America Mejia. The private, non-profit organization is known as Mujeres en las Artes "Leticia de Oyuela" for the pioneering Honduran writer and intellectual who died in early 2008. The general coordinator is Bayardo Blandino, a Nicaraguan artist and curator who resides in Tegucigalpa and who co-founded the Contemporary Visual Arts Center of Women in the Arts (CAVC/MUA).

Originally conceived as the "Painting Biennial of the Central American Isthmus," the event has evolved to embrace a wider focus on contemporary art. Now the guidelines encourage "bi-dimensional or...