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After taking a short pause from public activities over the past month to focus on what often goes unseen—reflecting on our practice, listening deeply, rethinking, and imagining new possibilities for TEOR/éTica’s projects and long-term sustainability—we’re slowly beginning to reemerge.
We’re not jumping in all at once, but returning gradually, with renewed energy, fresh ideas, and the same commitment as always: to make art a space for encounter, inquiry, and shared creation.
Thank you for your attention and continued support during this period of internal work.
Our opening hours are Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm and Saturdays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
LA MELCOCHA – JUNE 19 TO 28
In its 2025 edition, the Costa Rica Festival Internacional de Cine (CRFIC) is opening a new space dedicated to video art, with the goal of fully integrating it into the landscape of contemporary audiovisual production. This initiative is born out of a desire to bring visibility to an artistic practice that challenges the traditional boundaries of cinema, expanding its narrative, aesthetic, and political possibilities.
The development of this video art program involved the participation of: Abraespacio, Alianza Francesa, cerouno, deCERCA, MADC, Reunion, satis.FACTORY Casa de Artes and TEOR/éTica.
TEOR/éTica, in collaboration with Reunion and MADC, presents a selection of video art works from the 1990s and early 2000s that are part of the MADC Video Art Collection and the Archive of Lado V – TEOR/éTica’s Study and Documentation Center. This compilation intends to show, in a non-exhaustive way, a part of the history of video art in Costa Rica through representative works that show the ways of seeing and narrating with moving images different realities of our context through the available technologies or “new media” of that time.
Artists: Jorge Albán, Andrés Carranza, Rocío Con, Habacuc, José Alberto Hernández, Juan Carlos Jiménez, Priscilla Monge, Joaquín Rodríguez del Paso, Karla Solano, Cinthya Soto, Jurgen Ureña, Paulina Velázquez, Manuel Zumbado.
Curated by: Kevin Pérez, Paula Piedra, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Viviana Zúñiga Ramírez.
LA TRAMA
Since late 2024, a group of independent spaces, artists, galleries, organizations, and museums dedicated to contemporary art in San José, Costa Rica, have been coming together to connect and strengthen our collective efforts to shape the landscape of art and critical thought in the country and the region.
Recently we named ourselves “La Trama”.
As of today we are participating in this network: Abraespacio, Alianza Francesa, cerouno, deCERCA, F de Imagen, Macro Arte Contemporáneo, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC), Reunion, satis.FACTORY Casa de Artes, TEOR/éTica and Lado V – Centro de Estudio y Documentación.
You can follow La Trama on its Instagram profile to keep up to date with our activities:
LADO V and ONLINE ARCHIVES
As our activities gradually resume at a gentle pace, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind you of the various free public resources available for accessing TEOR/éTica’s collections. These include:
- a library specializing in contemporary art
- a physical archive containing documents on artistic practices in Central America
- a selection of texts in PDF by Virginia Pérez-Ratton
- and an online audiovisual archive of over 200 videos on our YouTube channel, showcasing artistic processes and practices from the region.
We invite you to explore these resources, which are a vital part of our ongoing commitment to memory, critical thought, and open access to educational and research materials.
AUDIOVISUAL ONLINE ARCHIVE
Since 2017, TEOR/éTica has built an audiovisual archive open to the public through its YouTube channel, which today gathers more than 200 videos and continues to grow. Spanning from the early 2000s to the present, this archive is a living tool of memory and free access that collects almost two decades of work, including talks, interviews, exhibition records, book presentations, film cycles, pedagogical processes, and much more. It reflects the critical thinking and artistic practices that have passed through TEOR/éTica, and serves as a way to continue sharing knowledge beyond our physical space
LIBRARY
Located in the Lado V house, in front of TEOR/éTica, this library is a place designed for the research and dissemination of contemporary artistic practices. A fundamental part of TEOR/éTica since its beginnings, our collection includes books, magazines, independent publications, and materials difficult to find in other spaces. You can find exhibition catalogs, artist monographs, critical texts and essays, art theory, etc.
It is a living resource that accompanies and complements TEORéTica in its different areas, it is a study tool for the exchange of knowledge on art, pedagogy, cultural studies and feminism, among other topics.
The library is free and open access, and can be visited from Wednesday to Friday from 11 am to 6 pm, or on Saturdays by appointment at biblioteca@teoretica.org.
The books can be consulted on site in the different spaces of Lado V: the reading room, the covered terrace, or in the small niches on the second floor of the library.
ARCHIVE
The Archive of the TEOR/éTica’s Center for Study and Documentation is a collection of physical and digital documents organized in three sections:
- the institutional history of the Foundation from 1999 to the present
- materials on key projects, people and spaces for contemporary art in Central America and the Caribbean since the 1990s
- the archive of Virginia Pérez-Ratton, which highlights her work as a manager, curator and artist.
This archive is a key resource for researching artistic practices in the region and reflecting on the different ways of constructing memory.
The Archive’s documents can be consulted by appointment through this form:
The archive can be consulted by interested persons by appointment.
Virginia Pérez-Ratton
Texts available in downloadable PDF format
Artist, curator and cultural manager, she was founder and director of the independent project TEOR/éTica, in San José, from 1999 to 2010. She dedicated much of her life to research, support and dissemination of contemporary artistic practices in Central America and the Caribbean.
> Here you can find several of his texts in PDF format for download.
PUBLICATIONS
Since its founding in 1999, TEOR/éTica has developed a publishing program that now includes over 50 titles—most of them bilingual in Spanish and English. The collection includes exhibition catalogues, theoretical books on contemporary art, monographs on key historical figures, and documentation of specific projects carried out at TEOR/éTica. These publications are rooted in the artistic and cultural contexts of Central America and the Caribbean, highlighting perspectives often underrepresented in dominant art narratives.
If you are interested in contemporary art approached from a critical, diverse, and situated point of view, we invite you to explore and acquire our publications.
Each book is a resource for delving into the practices, histories, and debates that shape art in our region. These materials are valuable for artists, researchers, educators, students, and anyone seeking to understand art beyond mainstream discourses.
Our publications are available in both print and digital formats, with several digital titles offered free of charge.
We also want to inform you that, unfortunately, our Instagram account was hacked and we lost access to it. As a result, we are now migrating to the Lado V account, which will serve as the single Instagram presence for both TEOR/éTica and Lado V. We’d really appreciate your help spreading the word and following us in this new space 💛
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