Matilde Cánepa González, multidisciplinary visual artist, Latin American Artist

The Artist

From Caracas to Berlin

I first came to Berlin in 2001 — not to stay, but to present my work. The piece, Eine Tür unter dem Himmel von Berlin (A Door Beneath the Berlin Sky), was inspired by a film that stayed with me for years, with angels above a divided city and questions of arrival. The exhibition took place at the Brazilian Cultural Institute within a show on religious syncretism from the Caribbean and Brazil. I did not know then the city would become my home.

I was born in Caracas and trained at the Cristóbal Rojas School of Fine Arts. From there I moved through Brazil and Argentina, developing techniques, materials, and a visual language shaped by Caribbean, Indigenous, and Latin American influences that I still use today.

Before Berlin, there was Tenerife, where I developed Cartografia Orgánica, a travelling exhibition, and where a personal connection began to draw me north. Years later, I chose Berlin — not as a compromise, but as a decision. The move felt less like relocation and more like recognition.

Today I work from my Berlin studio across abstract painting, sculpture, and cyanotype — three practices exploring the same questions in different languages. Works from this studio have been shown across Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

I live by art. It has always been a bridge between my inner world and the outside world.

Exhibition · Berlin 2001

Religious Syncretism in the Caribbean and Brazil

In the summer of 2001, the ICBRA – Instituto Cultural Brasileiro (Brazilian Cultural Institute) in Berlin presented the group exhibition Religious Syncretism in the Caribbean and Brazil. Among the participating artists was Matilde Cánepa González, a Venezuelan-born artist living and working in Berlin, whose work has long engaged with the spiritual and cultural heritage of Latin America.

The exhibition traced the historical entanglements between the Caribbean and Brazil — belief systems that emerged from the encounter of African religions, Indigenous traditions, and European Catholicism. These are not museum pieces. They are living traditions that continue to shape how people mark birth, death, and everything in between across much of Latin America.

Religious Syncretism exhibition Berlin 2001 – work by Matilde Cánepa González, image 1

Religious Syncretism exhibition Berlin 2001 – work by Matilde Cánepa González, image 2

Religious Syncretism exhibition Berlin 2001 – work by Matilde Cánepa González, image 3

Religious Syncretism exhibition Berlin 2001 – work by Matilde Cánepa González, image 4

In Matilde Cánepa González's paintings and sculptures from this period, symbols from Caribbean and Indigenous cosmologies appear alongside Catholic iconography — not as illustration, but as something more personal: a visual vocabulary rooted in her formative years in Venezuela. The work does not explain syncretism. It embodies it.

At a glance

Born: Caracas, Venezuela
Based in: Berlin, since 2021
Training: Cristóbal Rojas School of Fine Arts, Caracas
Practice: Painting, sculpture, ceramics, cyanotype, poetry
Teaching: Since 1989
Membership: bbk Berlin, since 2025

30+ exhibitions since 1992, across Venezuela, Spain, Germany and the US