Nicolás Paris Vélez

Nicolás Paris Vélez is in residence at LUMA Arles from October to December 2026.

Before turning to art, Nicolás Paris Vélez (Colombia, 1977) was a teacher in rural schools and worked as a baker. These experiences are the basis of his work, positioning learning and embodied practice as forms of thought and sense-making.

Investigating how we learn and the cooperative forms of knowledge production, his projects propose open structures in which biological processes, strategies for collective learning and diverse forms of political imagination interweave: environments to exchange reflections and to invent and practice new ways of being together.

In 2017, he founded the Institute for Radical Learning, a place to mobilize cooperative processes and facilitate the activation of study groups.

Projects have been developed for the 12^th and 15^th Havana Biennials; the Medellín International Art Biennial (Bi_AM); the 30^th São Paulo Biennial; the 2^nd New Museum Triennial; the 11^th Lyon Biennale; the 54^th Venice Biennale; and the 7^th Mercosur Biennial, among others.

His work is represented in the collections of MUSAC; JUMEX; Kadist Art Foundation; MoMA; Tate; La Caixa; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21); MAMU Banco de la República; CIFO; CA2M; MACBA; and Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia.