ANA CASTELLA’S FAIR OF ENCOUNTERS

A culture where art fairs are laboratories of hospitality, places of surprise and discovery, and forums for the senses and sociability. That is the vision of Ana Castella, director of the art fair Salón ACME since 2023, who served for more than a decade as its chief curator. The fair’s signature is an annual exhibition of work by about 100 artists, selected through an open call, which draws over 1,000 submissions from around the world. This approach differentiates Salón ACME from conventional art fairs, which tend to be mediated by commercial galleries with little room for emerging projects. Castella brings an international perspective to Salón ACME, shaped by her work at art fairs in Bogotá and Buenos Aires, as well as her broader experience in Europe. Her focus, though, is firmly on Latin America: “There’s more and more ephemeral encounters, collaborative and community initiatives that question the individual identity of the single artist,” she says. This emphasis on collaboration also permeates Salón ACME’s programming, as each edition is curated by a different board of invited guests. The focus of the fair shifts year to year, and has an acute ability to highlight emerging artists. Castella values cultivating this sense of novelty, the “emotion of surprise, of discovering new artists,” and the potential of consolidating new cohorts of collectors. But mostly she relishes the opportunity to bring art to people who don’t usually engage with it. That’s where hospitality comes in. “Beyond the commercial, the circulation of knowledge, it’s about generating sociability and connections around the artistic enterprise,” she says.