ARTBO Weekend returns to Bogotá this week with a milestone worth noting – and a programme that suggests the event is no longer content with staying within its traditional comfort zones.

Celebrating its tenth edition from April 16 to 19, the city-wide initiative organized by the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce (CCB) arrives bigger, more dispersed and arguably more ambitious than ever. With over 160 free activities, 86 participating spaces and 280 artists from 27 countries, the numbers alone tell a story of steady expansion. But the real shift this year is geographic.

For the first time, ARTBO Weekend – Fin de Semana – pushes decisively into new territory. The addition of Kennedy, Nogal and Chicó as official circuits marks a deliberate move away from the event’s familiar enclaves. It is, in many ways, a statement about where Bogotá’s art scene is headed – or where it wants to go.

Kennedy stands out. Historically on the fringes of the city’s cultural programming, the district’s inclusion is more than symbolic. The reopening of the Chamber of Commerce’s exhibition space in the area signals a longer-term investment in decentralising Bogotá’s art ecosystem. It also raises a question that has hovered over ARTBO Weekend in recent years: who, exactly, is the event for?

For organisers, the answer has consistently been “everyone.” And, on paper, that commitment holds. Entry remains free across all venues, and the programme spans everything from gallery exhibitions and museum shows to performances, workshops, talks and editorial launches. The addition of complimentary transport routes – the Bus ARTBO – helps bridge the distances between circuits, turning what could be a logistical challenge into something closer to an urban stroll.

Still, navigating ARTBO Weekend requires a degree of planning. Bogotá is not compact, and its art circuits are spread across distinct neighbourhoods, each with its own pace and character. San Felipe, long considered the epicentre of the contemporary gallery scene, remains a reliable starting point, particularly for first-time visitors. Chapinero offers a more eclectic mix, where independent spaces sit alongside institutional venues, while the Centro Histórico provides a slower, more contemplative route through museums and heritage sites.

This year, however, the draw may well lie in the unfamiliar. Kennedy’s circuit promises a different rhythm – less polished, perhaps, but more reflective of the city’s broader social fabric. Chicó and Nogal, by contrast, introduce a more polished, design-forward dimension to the programme, expanding the conversation beyond traditional gallery spaces.

What distinguishes ARTBO Weekend from its larger counterpart, ARTBO, is precisely this sense of movement. There are no booths, no central venue, no singular point of focus. Instead, the city itself becomes the exhibition space, and the act of moving between circuits becomes part of the experience.

That experience is not purely visual. The “Conversaciones” series, curated by Raphael Fonseca of the Denver Art Museum, brings together artists, curators and academics for a series of panel discussions that aim to unpack the themes shaping contemporary art today. With free entry and simultaneous translation, the talks offer a point of entry for audiences looking to engage more deeply with the works on display.

Equally, the Encuentro Editorial continues to carve out a niche within the programme. Focused on independent publishing and the book as an artistic medium, it provides a quieter counterpoint to the busier exhibition circuits. For many, it is here – among the artist books and experimental print projects – that the creative pulse is most tangible.

After a decade, ARTBO Weekend has settled into a rhythm that feels both established and open-ended. It has succeeded in building audiences, supporting local galleries and positioning Bogotá within a wider Latin American art conversation. At the same time, it continues to grapple with the challenges of scale, access and representation that come with growth.

For visitors, the best approach may be to resist the urge to see everything. Pick two or three circuits per day. Use the Bus ARTBO, but don’t be afraid to walk, and take an umbrella for the inclement April weather. Allow time for the unexpected – a performance that spills into the street, a conversation that runs longer than planned, a small space that wasn’t on the map.

Because if ARTBO Weekend has proven anything over the past ten years, it is that Bogotá’s art scene is not confined to a single district, or a single idea of what art should be. It is scattered, evolving and, at its best, deeply connected to the city.

In Bogotá, the mountains are never out of sight. They rise abruptly along the city’s eastern edge, forming a green wall that shapes the capital’s light, weather and sense of place. For Colombian artist Marina Sánchez, the ridges that surround the Colombian capital’s cardinal points are also more intimate: a constant presence, a point of orientation and, increasingly, a subject of quiet urgency.

Her latest exhibition, Panorámicas de la Sabana, runs from 5 to 29 March inside the colonial  Museo del Chicó, where 26 acrylic-on-canvas works reinterpret the high-altitude plateau of the Sabana through a distinctly chromatic lens. Installed in the museum’s Salón Colonial, the show brings together landscape, memory and abstraction in a series that feels both personal and outward-looking.

Sánchez has long been recognized for her expressive use of colour but this body of work marks a measured shift. While her earlier practice leaned towards abstraction, here the forms are more legible—ridgelines, shifting skies, traces of vegetation – yet never fixed. Instead, they dissolve through layered pigments and gestural brushwork that privilege sensation over strict representation.

What distinguishes Sánchez’s approach becomes clear in the work itself. The Cerros are not rendered as stable topography but as shifting, atmospheric forms. Bands of diffusec green rise and fold into one another, interrupted by flashes of cobalt, ochre and lilac, while a dense, unsettled sky presses down with quiet intensity. The composition resists stillness. It moves – closer to inclement weather than landscape.

Rather than mapping terrain, Sánchez constructs it through colour. The mountains appear to breathe, their contours dissolving at the edges as if seen through mist or memory. There is no single vantage point; the eye travels across the canvas, tracing lines that feel at once familiar and unstable.

“I want to show the relevance of these giants that often go unnoticed,” Sánchez says. For Bogotá’s residents, the hills are omnipresent yet rarely examined beyond their silhouette. In her telling, they become active participants in the city’s identity – “guardians” that accompany an urban landscape marked by rapid, and at times impersonal, expansion.

The project began during the pandemic, when isolation altered both her routine and perspective. Working from home, Sánchez found herself drawn to the view outside her window: the slow fade of light across the mountains, the subtle shifts in colour at dusk.

“Being away from people – family, friends – I was left with the sky and the light of sunsets,” she says. “I wanted to replicate something I hadn’t fully appreciated and, in doing so, feel part of nature.”

Her visual language, however, is not shaped by Bogotá alone. Sánchez has exhibited in New York City and Milan – cities where she has also lived, and whose pace and structure have informed her approach to rhythm and composition. If Bogotá provides the grounding geography, New York and Milan introduce a contrasting sensibility: verticality, movement and a heightened awareness of structure.

These contrasting narratives – from urban to rural, isolation and engagement, are visible throughout Panorámicas de la Sabana. Linear gestures – suggestive of passing headlights or urban flow – cut across certain canvases, briefly suspending the stillness of the mountains. It is a restrained intervention but an effective one, hinting at the tension between expansion and preservation.

Colour, in Sánchez’s palette, is not decorative but foundational. Greens shift from luminous to dense; blues dissolve into shadow; entire forms recede into haze. The landscape is reassembled through pigment, hovering between recognition and abstraction.

She describes her work as “chromatic poetry”, a phrase that aligns with her broader intention: to create space for reflection. “I want to offer a moment of calm beyond the difficulties that surround us,” she says, “despite the inevitable conflicts, wars and inequalities.”

In Bogotá, that impulse carries particular weight. The Eastern Hills and peaks to the West are not only a visual constant but a fragile ecological system—central to water sources and biodiversity, yet increasingly under pressure from urban growth. Sánchez’s paintings do not argue this point directly; instead, they suggest it, allowing atmosphere and colour to carry meaning.

For the artist, colour remains essential. “It would be difficult for me to imagine the world in black and white,” she says. “Colour is vitality. It gives strength and solidity. It is pure magic.”

That conviction runs through the exhibition. The hills emerge not as backdrop but as presence—shifting, watchful and quietly insistent. In Sánchez’s hands, they ask to be seen again, and more carefully this time.

Panorámicas de la Sabana runs from 5 to 29 March at the Museo del Chicó (Carrera 9 No. 93-38, Bogotá). Admission is free.