Edgar Calel (b. 1987) was born in San Juan de Comalapa, also known as Chi Xot, a city in Guatemala that is home to a significant community of Indigenous Maya Kaqchikel artists. Calel’s practice draws on the ancestral knowledge and creative practices of his people, as seen in the video Ru Q’an Ramaj – Escalera del Tiempo (2026), commissioned by MASP and presented here for the first time. In it, the artist states: “I belong to a group of people who carry fire in their blood.” The work is presented on the central wall of the Video Room and was created in collaboration and dialogue with Brazilian director Fernando Pereira dos Santos. The video brings together archival materials produced in Guatemala and Brazil over many years of friendship between Calel and dos Santos. Through fire, the work evokes a form of knowledge passed down through generations and kept alive by those who know how to read its flames.

Other videos accompany the new work. On the wall to the left, we enter the forest, guided and protected by a jaguar and accompanied by members of Calel’s family. The forest becomes a space of connection between different temporalities and between humans, animals, and the land. On the wall to the right, the jaguar stands before its own skin, stretched out over the stones, with a fire burning between them. The image suggests a body open to transformation and capable of establishing relationships with other forms of existence.

The fire around which we gather holds knowledge to be shared and learned. Calel invites us to recognize in the flames the ancestral force that passes through generations and remains alive within us.

Video Room: Edgar Calel is curated by Isabela Ferreira Loures, curatorial assistant, MASP.

The exhibition is part of the year dedicated to Latin American Histories, which also includes solo exhibitions by Carolina Caycedo, Claudia Alarcón & Silät, Colectivo Acciones de Arte, Damián Ortega, Jesús Soto (1923–2005), La Chola Poblete, Manuel Herreros de Lemos and Mateo Manaure Arilla, Pablo Delano, Rosa Elena Curruchich (1958–2005), Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Santiago Yahuarcani, and Sol Calero, as well as the group exhibition Latin American Histories and Video Room presentations by Clara Ianni, Claudia Martínez Garay, Oscar Muñoz, and Regina José Galindo.