Emilia Yang Exhibits at Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in Costa Rica
Work by Stamps Assistant Professor Emilia Yang is featured in a new exhibition on view through October 13, 2025 at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in San José, Costa Rica.
The exhibition, UNFES: “Somos Mares, Ríos, Flores, Minerales, Volcanes, Montañas, Y Compost” (We Are Seas, Rivers, Flowers, Minerals, Volcanoes, Mountains, And Compost), is curated by The Union of Feminists Engendering New Systems (UNFES), and features more than 40 works created in Central America by artists from the collective, allied collectives, and the MADC collection.
UNFES is made up of eight artists, curators, and feminist activists from various Central American countries, along with the collectives to which they belong: Maya Juracán (Guatemala), Emilia Yang (Nicaragua / Costa Rica), Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala), Gabriela Novoa (El Salvador), Ana Laguna (Panama), Mariela Richmond Vargas (Costa Rica), Narina ila (Nicaragua), and Rissethz Yangüez Singh (Panama).
The exhibition weaves together stories of individual and collective Central American feminist resistance against various forms of violence, reclaiming dignity through art and activism. The participating artists challenge official historical narratives, the exclusion of women and gender dissidents from contemporary art, and the erasure of Central America itself from global conversations. Their works address the systemic causes behind migration from the region — from economic, gendered, and racial violence to state repression and extractive practices.
“It fills us with joy to bring together in Costa Rica, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), these Central American artists and curators, who are also bearers of the voices, pulses of the collectivities and networks that inhabit their territories. This convergence dialogues with the museum’s spirit of being a beacon for critical and engaged art in the region. We feel that this is a propitious time to intertwine our struggles, to weave sensitive, firm networks and thus resist together the waves of violence that cross us, sustaining us from creation and radical tenderness,” said the UNFES Collective.
“…this is a propitious time to intertwine our struggles, to weave sensitive, firm networks and thus resist together the waves of violence that cross us, sustaining us from creation and radical tenderness.”
“For the Museum, it is an honor to receive the Central American artists and curators who make up the UNFES collective. We have worked in a committed way in the curatorial, museographic and educational fields to build an exhibition that dialogues with their diverse visions of the context, identities and material sensitivities. Since the 90s, the MADC has maintained a firm commitment to the visibility of the artistic voices of the region, promoting plural narratives that enrich our identity, collective historical memory and critical reflection.” mentioned Sofía Villena Araya, chief curator of the MADC.
The exhibition presents the result of individual and collective research, an archive of their processes, references, inspirations and a Central American Feminist Art Library, as well as guest artists from the MADC Collection, to generate imaginaries of shared futures in solidarity, healing and liberation through art.
The exhibition was produced by MADC, with the curatorial, pedagogical and museographic support of the museum’s team. It will be open to the public through October 13, 2025.
UNFES: “Somos mares, ríos, flores, minerales, volcanes, montañas, y compost”
Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC)
Centro Nacional de la Cultura, Antigua Fábrica Nacional de Licores. Avenida 3, calle 15. San José, Costa Rica
Exhibition Dates: May 29 to October 13, 2025
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday
Curated by Maya Juracán, Emilia Yang, and Ana Laguna
Participating Artists, Curators, and Collectives
Maya Juracán: Guatemalan curator, activist, and educator interested in using art as a tool to challenge and shift traditional historical narratives. She is the curator of the “Bienal En Resistencia.” Maya co-founded the feminist curatorial collective La Revuelta, which theorizes and practices feminist community curation.
Emilia Yang: Central American artist, organizer, and researcher. Her work explores memory, violence, emotions, performance, and participation in political imagination. She is a professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan and directs AMA y No Olvida, Museo de la Memoria contra la Impunidad, based in Nicaragua. Her works have been exhibited in international spaces and biennials across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Ana Laguna: Panamanian cultural programmer and curator currently based in Lisbon. She was part of the Museo Situado team at the Museo Reina Sofía and most recently worked as special projects curator at MAC Panamá. As an independent curator in Panama, she collaborated with Macro Fest, UNFPA, and Fundación Casa Santa Ana. She is currently the curator at Kunsthalle Lissabon.
Marilyn Boror Bor: Maya-Kaqchikel artist, curator, educator, and cultural manager. Her works promote the preservation of Indigenous peoples’ worldviews and philosophy. She has participated in major biennials and triennials, including the Aichi Triennale 2025 (Japan), the Leandre Cristòfol Biennial 2025 (Barcelona), the 35th São Paulo Biennial 2023, multiple Paiz Art Biennials (Guatemala), the Southern Biennial (Argentina), and the Bienal en Resistencia (Guatemala).
Mariela Richmond-Vargas: Costa Rican art educator and weaver of collaborative processes. She is part of several collectives: Las Hartas, focused on feminist artivism; La Ruidosa Oficina, on community education; and Escuela De La Tierra, focused on organic agriculture. She co-founded the Laboratorio Memoria de las Artes Escénicas (LAMAE), a center for research, archiving, and teaching in stage design in San José, C.R.
nara ila: artist and facilitator with ties and responsibilities to their communities — queer, displaced, and Central American — throughout the global south and its diasporas. Queerness, grief, and ecology shape their practice. They collaborate and research transnationally, and miss their dogs every single day.
Gabriela Novoa: Salvadoran visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores women’s bodies within sociopolitical structures of power, violence, and control. She creates feminist speculations in response to violence, not only to question but to imagine other possible worlds.
Risseth Yangüez Singh: Panamanian visual artist. Her works intertwine personal and collective memory by reappropriating narratives, images, and discourses imposed by dominant systems. She has participated in group exhibitions at the University of Panama, MAC Panamá, the Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala and Paris, and film festivals and workshops in Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Cuba.
AMA y No Olvida, Museo de la Memoria contra la Impunidad
Asociación Madres de Abril (AMA)
Artistas Anónimos
Colectivo Las Hartas
Las Portaleras
