January 18, 2026 0 Artist Spotlight, Contemporary art, Costa Rica Belinda Adrián Arguedas Adrián Arguedas Interview This month, we visited Adrián Arguedas in his studio in Heredia to talk about his new body of work, his decades-long practice and what's next for one of Costa Rica's most celebrated contemporary artists. Adrián Arguedas (b. 1968, Barva de Heredia) has spent over three decades building a practice that moves fluidly between woodcut, engraving, watercolour, oil painting, installation and sculpture. His approach to Latin American figurative art channels the theatrical spirit of Costa Rican mask parades—transforming familiar imagery into surreal tableaux that question identity and the roles we perform in daily life. He creates compositions built on contrast: life and death, beauty and ugliness, the playful and the violent. This tension, underscored by parody and dark humor, gives his canvases their critical edge. In November 2023, we were lucky enough to attend the opening of Adrián's impressive solo exhibition Valle Oscuro (Dark Valley) at the Museum of Costa Rican Art, where approximately 700 people crowded the galleries and danced masquerade in the courtyard. The fact we could barely get in the door showed us just how important Adrián is to Costa Rica's cultural scene. His work resonates because it speaks directly to Costa Rican experience while engaging broader questions about human behavior and social masks—literal and metaphorical. A three-time recipient of the Aquileo J. Echeverría National Prize and winner of the Francisco Amighetti National Prize (2019), Arguedas has exhibited at Casa de las Américas in Havana, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, and most recently in the group show Seguimos at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica (2024). A solo exhibition is planned for July 2026. Over coffee, surrounded by works in progress and masks, Adrián spoke about growing up in Barva, his migration between mediums and why he's never been interested in rushing the creative process. MÍRAME Fine Art represents a selection of Adrián's prints and paintings. To inquire about available work, contact Belinda Seppings: [email protected] Below is the interview between Adrián Arguedas (AA) and Belinda Seppings (BS), MÍRAME co-founder. Adrián responded to our questions in Spanish. His answers have been translated into English; any minor discrepancies in translation are our own. 1. BS: Costa Rican cultural identity sits at the heart of your work giving it a distinctive identity within Latin American figurative art traditions. Can you tell us about your connection to these traditions and how they continue to inspire your practice? AA: Since I started my artistic project, I've been influenced by popular culture—for biographical reasons, by the context where I live, by family relationships, by lived experience. Perhaps that's what has most shaped the idea of the artistic project. Being from Barva, Heredia, a town eleven kilometers from the capital city, back in the 70s, Barva was a rural place. That meant a place where I played in the coffee plantations, in the pastures, I climbed trees, we ate and grew up by the rivers, we played traditional games... It was a real town. And that childhood shaped my artistic project and also my relationship with my great-uncle, Carlos Salas Cabezas, who is the first artisan I knew. I continue, in my artistic practice, the artistic practice related to popular culture. Yes, it's a life project, a project that develops slowly and over the long term. And I think that has also allowed me, along with the trips I've taken, the studies abroad, to understand my context and to know what my response is—at least my response to the idea of developing something from the inside out. 2. BS: You work across painting, printmaking, ceramics, and mixed media. How does moving between these different mediums help you express your ideas, and does each medium reveal something different about your subjects? AA: When I started studying at the National University in the mid-eighties, my interest at that time was working with printmaking. I developed my first series with these materials: wood, metal, and others, and slowly I made a migration, so to speak, towards painting. While in France, in the nineties, in '93, '94, that also allowed me to understand that I didn't necessarily have to dedicate my work to a specific technique. Then, in '96, I had the opportunity to go to the United States for the first time on an art scholarship, and there I had already begun to experiment with other materials, including three-dimensional art. It was during my master's degree at the University of Miami that I revisited things from my childhood, like making toys, and that experience allowed me to understand that I didn't have to adhere to any specific material, but rather that I could enhance it. There's a text by Thomas McEvilley called "The Demand to Direct Clouds," which is an interesting text because it talks about categories related to form and content, and how there are so many of them. For example, one of the interesting aspects is how the material itself carries inherent meaning. It carries content. So, depending on how this content is used, it can enhance the artistic work. It was from then on, from 1998, that I began to experiment more with video, with installation, with three-dimensional objects. That has been a constant since then, and what it has allowed me to understand is that with each project, I develop certain materials that can potentially enrich the artistic project. That's how it's been. The search isn't a rigid, structured one either. I really enjoy experimentation, I really enjoy the process, and in that sense, I've tried to justify my artistic project. 3. We asked Adrián about Costa Rica's strong printmaking tradition—a legacy that includes masters like Francisco Amighetti. Why has printmaking remained so vital here? Adrián explained that printmaking offers a completely different sensibility, a distinct way of connecting with and exploring an art form that sets it apart from other mediums. This distinction became clear as we looked at the works in his studio, each one revealing textures and mark-making impossible to achieve through painting alone. BS: Tell us about your new body of prints—what inspired them, and can you walk us through how you created them? AA: The process of transitioning from one project to another always takes time. As the years go by and I get older, I've come to understand that personal projects can't be rushed, can't be forced into a quick change from one short time to another, right? I've always believed that, rather, with the years, I've tried to enrich the project with more meditation, more time to be with the materials, with new concerns. At this moment, the latest works I've done somehow give a certain closure, if not a complete one. Valle Oscuro, the exhibition that ran until 2024 at the Museum of Art—I don't feel complete closure with that either. I continued working on the theme of the popular masquerade, but slowly I'm closing with continuing those engravings, continuing experiments with other motifs. I also developed a series of masks, a set of masks that are around forty masks that I haven't finished yet. This whole is intended to be partly an installation, partly a performance piece. However, it won't necessarily become an exhibition. What I mean by this is that I'm producing without forcing the process, and I'm changing slowly. It's always been this way. It's just that before, perhaps the processes were shorter. 4. BS: After decades of exhibiting, what do you hope collectors discover when they encounter your work for the first time? AA: The idea of the collector is one that can enrich the artistic process. Perhaps what one would hope for, utopically or ideally, is that the collector would be interested in understanding the processes. Also, that they would be interested in creating, eventually, visits that allow them to delve deeper into the artists' projects. I believe that one is equally open to conversation, to a reflective space, not only with collectors, but also with curators, with people in the art world who are in the administration of museums and cultural spaces. Yes, what I've noticed is that, sometimes, the collector, at least in the context of this country, operates indirectly. That is to say, they don't come directly to the space of artistic production. That doesn't work in some places internationally. It's believed that galleries are the ones that should do all the work. But I think that knowing the artist's production space allows you to see the work from the inside out and also allows you to talk directly with the artist. I, at least in this country which is so small, would aspire to that. In truth, I have aspired to that for a long time. That's why I haven't wanted to work with private galleries, at least not in this country. 5. Adrián's current projects—the series of forty masks, the large-format prints, the performance elements—form part of a longer-term vision, perhaps a five-year undertaking that will unfold gradually and without rush. We look forward to watching this project unfold. BS: We look forward to seeing how your latest vision unfolds! Knowing this work will take some years, what does 2026 look like for you? AA: 2026, at least what I'm seeing—because it's a process that doesn't necessarily stick to one year, and the next year is different, right? At the end of last year I had already started a series of large-format prints. That's one. I'm just starting again with a painting project, with the experimental part. Well, I'm close to retiring from the university. So, this year and next would be my last years as a professor at the National University, which is why I'm slowing down and working and enjoying all the processes, taking care of my health, taking care of my family, taking care of my friends, the people who are really close. And I think that as a life project, that's fundamental. We greatly enjoyed spending time with Adrián in his studio, where the masks in progress gave us a sense of what he's working on, and the prints—something truly special—reminded us why his work continues to resonate. As an important Costa Rican artist and exemplar of Latin American figurative art, Adrián deserves continued international recognition for a practice that honours tradition while always staying relevant in contemporary culture. For collectors interested in Latin American figurative art that explores cultural identity and contemporary tradition, Adrián Arguedas' work offers a distinctive voice rooted in Costa Rican masquerade culture. View available prints and paintings here or contact MÍRAME Fine Art at [email protected] Latin American Figurative Art | Adrián Arguedas
