Edgar Calel engages with the rich cultural heritage and rituals of Guatemala’s midwestern highlands, where he resides. Hailing from a family of Maya-Kaqchikel artists and artisans, Calel works across drawing, installation, painting, performance, and sculpture. His practice engages with sites and traditions around his hometown of Chi Xot as creative touchstones for works that meticulously interconnect localities, at home and internationally. The artist’s primary concerns include exploring the complexities of Indigenous experiences and representing the Maya-Kaqchikel worldview to new audiences.

For his installation in the exhibition Several Eternities: Form in the Age of Living Materials, Calel collected granite and lava boulders in Los Angeles. Before the exhibition opening, he performed a ceremony during which he drew abstract shapes with his own blood on the rocks. As the blood oxidized, the drawings darkened. Across the walls, Calel painted a mural using natural dyes extracted from medicinal plants, such as ruda and valeriana, and textiles woven from worn clothing sourced in Comalapa. The boulders and the mural evoke the verdant, mountainous landscape he sees daily in his hometown. In the cosmovision of the local Maya-Kakchikel culture, both stones and mountains hold intrinsic value; they are alive and regarded as ancestors.

Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Desapê, São Paulo (2023) and SculptureCenter, Queens, New York (2023). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Tate Modern, London (2025); Armada Galería, Mexico City (2024); the 35th São Paulo Biennial (2023); and Galeria de Artistas, São Paulo (2023). His work is included in the collections of Fundación TEOR/ética; Kadist Art Foundation; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José, Costa Rica; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Rijksmuseum; the Hammer Museum; and Tate Modern.

Organized in conjunction with Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials, on view at the Hammer through August 23, 2026.