Biography
Humberto Vélez has a Law and Political Sciences degree from the University of Panama. He was also awarded a scholarship by The Foundation of Latin American Cinema to study Filmmaking and TV in the International School of Cinema of San Antonio de Los Baños, Cuba, founded by Gabriel García Márquez.
He has had solo performance shows at the TATE Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), among others, and participated in international art events, such as the Venice (2013 and 2015), Havana (2004, 2012 and 2015), Shanghai, Montevideo (2012 and 2014), Ireland and Liverpool Biennials, among others, and in many group shows. He created the farewell art event for Cornerhouse, Manchester, in 2015.
Vélez has been an artist-in-residence in Vienna (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Toronto (York Art Gallery University) and London (Triangle Arts Trust-Gasworks), Paris (Cité des Arts), Sheffield (ArtSpace), among many other cities.
He works as an artist, art professor, independent filmmaker, and art producer. In 2011 he founded VISITING MINDS (with Panamanian curator and art critic Adrienne Samos), an international forum based in Panama, devoted to art and education.
This idea of prefabricated art that has no respect for people is what I’m fighting against and where I disagree with institutions that already have an idea of what they want me to make. This is against art itself. It’s a very contemporary problem that we have to face: it’s about ethics and art