PARAÍSO: Latin America, Together in London
The first thing you saw when you walked into PARAÍSO was a stack of letters. The Mexican conceptual artist Felipe Ehrenberg fell in love with the British postal service while living in exile in England in the late 1960s, and made it his medium. A show of his mail art was meant to open in 2016, but was cancelled when his health failed. Ten years later it finally hung at the entrance of London's new Latin American art fair. I could not think of a better welcome.
Celeste Melgar is a Latin American art specialist, curator, writer and entrepreneur working at the intersection of contemporary art, collecting, cultural strategy and international market development, using London and Panama as bridges between Latin America and the global art world. She is the founder of CM Art Advisory, which builds corporate and private collections, represents artists, and develops curatorial and institutional programming across Latin America, Europe and North America. Recent projects include the exhibition Narrativas at Pavilion Club, Knightsbridge.
Underground, and full of light
PARAÍSO ran from 15 to 18 October at Ambika P3, a vast concrete hall beneath the University of Westminster on Marylebone Road, during Frieze week, the busiest in the London art calendar. Twenty-two galleries and projects came from Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and London itself. They were joined by independent artists, a programme of Central American video art, independent publishers, talks and performances. Mexico was the focus country for this first edition.
Within the first hour of the VIP preview, galleries were reporting offers. The crowd went well beyond the Latin American community, which is exactly what a fair like this needs.
How it came to be
PARAÍSO was founded by Javier Calderón, who opened Somers Gallery in King’s Cross in 2015 and has spent years working between the UK and Mexico. It is the first fair dedicated to Latin American art in London since Pinta closed its London edition in 2015. For a decade, the city had no single place where the region could be seen together at the scale a fair allows.
The way the galleries were recruited says a lot about its spirit. Calderón and his team used their own networks and approached Latin American galleries they knew had already shown in London. Manuela Rodríguez, a fair partner and co-founder of The LAACC consultancy, told The Art Newspaper the approach was “very Latino of us.”
The ambition is long term. Each edition will focus on a different country, and the fair describes its mission as building new collaboration between Latin America and the UK, with London as a bridge to the rest of the world.
Why London, and Why Now
The timing matters. The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026 found that the global market returned to growth last year, rising 4% to an estimated $59.6 billion. The UK held its place as the second-largest art market, with an 18% share and $10.5 billion in sales. London is still where reputations are made and collections are built.
At the same time, Latin American art is having a remarkable moment. ArtTactic reported record auction sales for Latin American art in 2025, even as the wider market softened, and the Art Basel and UBS report recorded 21% growth for Brazilian galleries. In London the signs have been building for years: Tate’s Latin American Acquisitions Committee, the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, and, in 2024, the Stand Prize at Frieze London’s Smoke section, won by Proyectos Ultravioleta of Guatemala City.
Yet for most of the year, Latin American artists still reach London one by one: a single booth at a large international fair, a group show, an auction lot. The work is here, but scattered. PARAÍSO puts the region in one room, on its own terms, so that audiences see the range of it at once: different countries, generations, materials and histories side by side.
It also opens the door to new collectors. Prices at the fair ran from around £300 to £64,000 for a monumental wooden carving by Germán Venegas at Acapulco 62, with many works in the four figures. As an advisor, I see this as one of the most valuable things a regional fair can do. It gives first-time buyers a way in, and gives serious collectors a reason to look deeper.
What I Will Remember Most
The numbers were strong, but if you ask me what the biggest success was, I will not give you a figure. It was the community.
Walking through Ambika P3 felt like moving through one long conversation, not a row of separate stands. Gallerists sent collectors to other booths and celebrated each other’s sales as if they were their own. Many of the artists stayed for the whole fair, which made all the difference: you could stand in front of a work, then turn around and talk to the person who made it. Conversations went on from coffee in the morning to a glass of wine at night. By Sunday it felt like one big family.
A few presentations have stayed with me.
Victoria Law Projects showed the work of Lucía Pizzani, born in Caracas in 1975 and based in London since 2007. Pizzani works across clay, photography, textile and film, and her pieces carry plants, migration and memory in their very material. Victoria Law, who founded her London project space in 2022, has championed Pizzani for years, and that commitment showed. It was a booth I kept finding my way back to.
The LAACC, the Bogotá-based consultancy founded by Manuela Rodríguez and Laura Montañés, presented six Latin American artists from the Royal College of Art. Ceramic tiles hung alongside works on canvas and paper, at prices starting around £300. Some of the most fascinating conversations all week happened at this stand, about materials, about migration, and about what it means to be a Latin American artist trained in London.
Isabel Croxatto Galería, founded in Santiago in 2012 by the choreographer Isabel Croxatto, brought Errantes, a solo presentation by Nelson Hernández. Born in Patagonia and now based in London, Hernández looks at how images travel across time and place, mixing European painting traditions with popular culture and digital archives. The centrepiece was a monumental new painting that reimagines the old genre of battle painting. It was a reminder of how strong Chilean painting is right now.
These booths, and many others, showed what is possible when Latin American artists share a stage and are part of the same dialogue.
Only the Beginning
During Frieze week, PARAÍSO was called the surprise of the season, and I think it earned that. What excites me most is what could happen next. A different country every year means a different set of artists, collectors and stories arriving in London each time. If the fair holds on to the generosity and warmth of this first edition while it grows, it could become the place where Latin America and Europe meet every autumn.
Seeing so many Latin American artists in the same room, in London of all places, is something I have long hoped for. It feels like we have only just started.
CM Art Advisory was proud to be a partner of this first edition. Championing Latin American art is the reason we exist, so being part of PARAÍSO from day one meant a great deal to us. See you at the next one.
All image courtasy of Take Five
