Sam Gilliam Award Program: Edgar Calel
Wednesday, November 18, 2026
6:00 pm
Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York
Free. Spaces are limited; register for the event here.
2026 Sam Gilliam Award recipient Edgar Calel discusses his multidisciplinary practice in conversation with Dia deputy director of program and chief curator Humberto Moro. Often creating enveloping environments that incorporate a range of materials, which this program will also feature, Calel advocates for community and shared experiences. Deeply rooted in his Maya Kaqchikel heritage, Calel engages ancestral knowledge systems, ritual practices, and the traditions of Guatemala’s midwestern highlands, where he is based. His work draws on materials, language, and sites connected to his hometown to foreground Indigenous experiences and addresses histories of colonialism, systemic exclusion, and cultural erasure. Calel’s practice is also grounded in the Maya Kaqchikel understanding of personhood as fundamentally relational, extending to both human and nonhuman entities. Building on this framework, Calel embraces a philosophy that the land itself is alive and inextricable from all beings’ agency.
Edgar Calel was born in Chi Xot (San Juan Comalapa), Guatemala, in 1987. Hailing from a family of Maya Kaqchikel artists and artisans, Calel’s practice often engages with sites and traditions around his hometown as creative touchstones for works that meticulously interconnect localities, at home and internationally. A leading voice of institutional critique among Latin American artists, his work frequently addresses power dynamics and historical shifts while raising the profile of Indigenous peoples through an anti-colonial transmission of living beliefs and customs. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City (2022); Desanexo do Desapê, São Paulo (2023); SculptureCenter, New York (2023); and Mendes Wood DM, Germantown, New York (2024). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Soft Power, Berlin (2023); Galeria de artistas, São Paulo (2023); Armada Galería, Mexico City (2024); and Tate Modern, London (2025). His work has been included in the Carnegie International, Pittsburg (2022), and in the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art; and Bienal de São Paulo (all 2023). Calel lives in Chi Xot.
