Art

Cisco Merel at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025

Cisco Merel brings a powerful solo presentation to Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, exploring community, ancestry, land and abstraction through mud, performance and vivid geometry.

Por: Angela Leon Cervera
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Los panameños del parque de Miami a solo presentation by the Chinese-Afro-Panamanian artist Cisco Merel. Courtesy of Zielinsky

At Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, Cisco Merel steps into the Positions sector with a project grounded in community, ancestry and land. His solo booth with Zielinsky Gallery offers a vivid blend of mud, performance and geometric abstraction that redefines how material and ritual tell cultural stories.

 

The project, titled Los panameños del parque de Miami, unfolds through an installation activated by friends and Latin American art assemblers, a mud mural created with soils from Panama and Miami, and a group of new paintings that form his Hyperlithic series. Together, they trace a map of identity anchored in communal gestures and symbolic landscapes.

Cisco Merel | Silencio Solar, from the Hyperlithic series, 2025. Courtesy of Zielinsky

What defines Cisco Merel’s approach in this Art Basel presentation?

Merel’s practice connects traditional Panamanian techniques with contemporary abstraction. His use of mud references quincha construction, an ancestral method where communities gather to build houses through collective stepping. The booth includes a new version of La Pisada, a sculpture made of earth, straw and wood that becomes active only when people tread on it during the Junta de Embarra, a rural Panamanian custom rooted in solidarity, music and shared work.  

 

Key traits of the approach:


• Material honesty through earth and straw
• Activation by community participation
• Dialogue between architecture, ancestry and social ritual
• Geometric structures connected to Mesoamerican and Western references

Cisco Merel | El Lugar del Regreso, from the Hyperlithic series, 2025. Courtesy of Zielinsky
Cisco Merel | La Forma que Nació del Mar Oscuro, from the Hyperlithic series, 2025. Courtesy of Zielinsky

How does Merel integrate mud, performance and painting into one cohesive space?

The booth’s three walls are coated with a mixture of Panamanian and Miami mud, turning the stand itself into a cross-cultural surface that links origin and present. This creates a warm, textured environment where paintings and installation coexist as part of the same ecosystem.

 

After the activation, the beer bottles consumed by participants remain inside the booth, functioning as evidence of the communal act. This choice fragments the conventional boundaries between artwork, audience and documentation, transforming the booth into a living record of shared labor.

What is the Hyperlithic series and why does it matter here?

Merel’s paintings depict variations of a “hyperlith”, a fantastical megalith that mutates across canvases. Each composition functions like a frame in an ongoing transformation, using color and geometry as notational rhythms that mirror intensity and movement.

 

Highlights of the series:


• Each canvas isolates a moment in the hyperlith’s evolution
• Slight tonal shifts in the backgrounds suggest horizons
• Forms evoke musical notation, ritual objects or cosmic effigies
• The series connects sculpture and painting through imagined architecture

Cisco Merel | Antes del Sueño, from the Hyperlithic series, 2025. Courtesy of Zielinsky

Cisco Merel’s presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 becomes both a site of memory and a living stage for collective action. Through mud, color and community, he reshapes abstraction into a space where ancestry and imagination converge.

FAQ: Insights for the Curious Viewer

  • What is the meaning behind the project title Los panameños del parque de Miami? It comes from a Facebook community where Panamanians in Miami share achievements, traditions and cultural pride.
  • What materials does La Pisada use? Earth, straw, wood and fabric flags, combined with a performance involving communal stepping.
  • What is a Junta de Embarra? A traditional Panamanian custom where communities build a mud and thatch house through collective labor.
  • Did Merel recently participate in major exhibitions? Yes. He contributed to the Panama Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and held a solo show titled La Puerta del Sol at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá.

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