Arts Connection

Arts Connection Foundation stands with Venezuela in the wake of the earthquakes that have struck the country.

Our thoughts are with the families affected, with those searching for loved ones, and with every community facing loss.

At a time like this, art steps back so that what matters most—caring for one another—can come first. We’ve gathered verified ways to help, shared in our stories and through the link in our bio.

What if the most interesting part of an image is not the image itself, but everything that happened to it along the way?

In 1975, Venezuelan artist Claudio Perna took a discarded printing sheet — waste from the publishing industry — and transformed it into Untitled (Maculatura Series — Mao Tse-Tung). Layered over a Warhol-derived portrait of Mao: stamps, exhibition invitations, color fragments, printing errors. And on the back: a discarded educational sheet, never meant to be seen.

Perna called them Maculaturas — the waste sheets produced when printing presses are calibrated. What industry rejects as failure, he reclaimed as meaning.
The result is not just an artwork. It is a record of how images travel, circulate, and accumulate meaning — and what gets left behind.

In May 2007, Venezuela’s government shut down RCTV — the country’s oldest private television network. Millions of Venezuelans watched their screens go dark.

One year later, Cuban-Venezuelan artist David Palacios responded with Patrón de Prueba. He took the test pattern — that technical image of interruption — and placed the stars of the Venezuelan flag inside it.

Bright colors. A silenced voice. A question that doesn’t go away: what happens when communication is controlled?

Patrón de Prueba (2008) is part of the Fuentes Angarita Collection — an archive that has always understood that the most necessary art is the kind that refuses to be invisible.

Venezuelan art entered a Paris classroom. And it didn’t ask permission.

On June 4, researcher Emilio Piñango (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle / Université Côte d’Azur) led two workshops on artistic censorship, political persecution, and exile in Venezuela as part of Les Rencontres de la Recherche 2026 at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle — selected through an open call and scientific committee review.

Among the works presented: Tremendo Cambur, by our founder, Andreína Fuentes Angarita. A piece that turns a very Venezuelan expression — the “cambur,” a well-paid public post obtained not by merit but by political connections — into a sharp visual critique of power.
Two sessions. Dozens of French high school students.

One question that didn’t leave the room:
What happens to an artist who dares to challenge political power?

Emilio Piñango

In 2019, The Wynwood Times invited Venezuelans around the world to write about exile.

But exile doesn’t only belong to those who leave.
Percusiones de la memoria, by Atamaica Mago, won first place alongside Bonito Blue. It is the story of someone who stayed in Venezuela — and who carries inside her the exile of everyone who left.

“My memory is a pacemaker, an arrhythmia of foreboding.”

Five years later, the story is still necessary.
Read the full text at the link in bio.

June is Pride Month. And this image was there before Pride was a hashtag.

San Francisco, 1977. Three people. One parade. One direct gaze at the camera.

Cuban photographer Carlotta Boettcher documented the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement not as a spectator, but as a witness. Her lens captured anonymous individuals claiming space, community, and the right to be seen.
Gay Parade III is part of the Fuentes Angarita Collection — an archive that has always understood that the most necessary art is the kind that refuses to be invisible.

In 2019, The Wynwood Times invited Venezuelans around the world to write about exile.

651 texts arrived. From Argentina, Spain, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Germany and more.

Bonito Blue, by Geyser Dacosta, won first place. It’s the story of a father and son at a bus stop in Florida. It’s the story of what it means to miss a sky that looks like the one back home — but isn’t.

Five years later, the story is still necessary.
Read the full text at the link in bio.