Contemporary Art in Latin America.
Precedents
Trying to define “Latin American Art” as a single concept can be misleading since this period of Art resorts to different historical and geographical moments in itself. Most intellectuals agree that the concept of "Latin American art" emerged approximately in the 1970s, making important contributions to art and new trends. This type of art has been, to a large extent, influenced by military dictatorships, the diversity of culture and the search for identity. Reality has been recycled and overdone that there is no iconographic realism that expresses it, only allusive figuration can communicate the unrepresentability of individual and social loss.
Taking into account the geopolitics as well as the cultural interventions influenced the Art scene in Latin America, means the constant struggle between it attempting to be legitimised, or included within a social system and parallel to it, comes from the periphery and exploits the struggles and political issues Latin America has lived since being colonised.
As a consequence, boundaries set up during the 20th century seem inadequate for the current times since European classical art styles were the institutions of many Latin American artists continued to be schooled in the traditional 19th-century style, resulting in a continued emphasis on figurative work. Especially in Mexico where the muralist movement addresses issues that range from the personal to the political, many have a shared interest in indigenous issues and the heritage of European cultural imperialism. Nonetheless their production was still acknowledged as international and homogenising. Mimicking occidental vanguards and techniques, Latin American artists looked for “formulas” or paved paths to create their artwork. Making art without an objective or a deeper message, rather just looking for international compliance. Didi-Huberman (2002) notes is essential to recognise anachronistic study as a way of thinking and approaching images in history of art:
The consequence - or implications - of a methodical expansion of borders is none other than a deterritorialization of the image and the time that expresses its historicity. This means, to put it clearly, that the time of the image is not the time of history in general, that time that Warburg captures through the universal categories of evolution... For the history of art, (it is about) refound his own theory of evolution. Oriented by Warburg as a "historical psychology"
Therefore, the art period, known as “La Ruptura”, where artists broke away from the established national style of Muralismo in México, a glimpse of resistance was born out of the desire of younger artists for greater freedom of style in art, the exchange with photography and surrealism was palpable.
Nonetheless, Latin American art was still subdued by the canonical standard of European movements. To mention a few, creators such as Salvador Dalí, Leonora Carrington and André Bretón were particularly interested in the cultural richness that Latin America offered, perpetrating a legacy of dominance and emulation of occidental aesthetic rules. Exoticising the subject and overusing marginality and regionalism simply framed visual discourses that emphasised the otherness more than dignifying or giving them a real voice. Currently, this can be considered as “mainstream” art that clouds any aesthetic or cultural potential, avoiding all tensions that have to do with latin american plurality.
Subsequently, the invisibilization of Latin American artists was largely due to the linear direction time has illustrated in history. Regularly associated with a functional notion, the response of an immobile and passive attitude towards the interpretation of local issues and formal deliberations of Latin American identity.
Paradoxically, Marta Traba describes the birth of a culture of resistance:
Artists that correspond to the culture of the resistance separate themselves from both dangers: they rejected reflex modernization as a form of imposture, but they used linguistic materials moderns who met through her. They also avoided cultural degradation, but explored this area conscientiously, considering it a rich quarry of usable elements. The best works of continental plastic arts worked in this order spontaneous subversive, not programmed by any power group. Only in light of the culture of resistance acquire their meaning and their projection the set of initiators of modern art in Latin America: Torres García and Figari in Uruguay, Tamayo in Mexico, Mérida in Guatemala, Matta in Ghile, Lam and Peláez in Guba, They will reverberate in Venezuela, and even artists, apparently European, such as the Colombian Andrés de Santamaría, the Argentine Pettoruti and Brazilian Di Cavalcanti. (Traba 2009,141)
Potentially, the category of Latin American art emerged around the 1970s. These artists have Made some of the most significant contributions to the traditions of Conceptualism, Minimalism and the Art of Interpretation. The upheavals that began to emerge in the late 1960s underlie the shock waves of contemporary focusing primarily on alienation, exploitation, and the fractured identity politics that follow in the wake of imperialism, western world and military dictatorships.
Subversion and counterculture
Latin America cannot be conceived as a single, homogeneous entity, and the following examples consider the diversity of artistic responses to realities shaped by colonial and modern histories characterised by repressive government policies, economic crises, and similar social inequalities, as well as by alternating periods.
Despite financial growth and increased stability in most of the continent over the past decade, Latin America remains divided by class and ethnic differences, as well as marked by the possibility of political and economic upheaval. Under the same sun presents works of art that address the past and present of the region to allow us to imagine other possible realities such as the work by Jonathas de Andrade: Carteles para el Museo del Hombre del Noreste, 2013:
According to the artist, “Northeast Man” was created in ’79 by a sociologist named Gilberto Freyre. He wrote a book called Casa-Grande e Senzala where he developed one of the main theories about how Brazilian culture was created. [It included] a mix between colonisers, slavesIndians in a kind of racial democracy…. In this version,there are only images of men on the posters. Being this a provocation with the original museum because it was created at a time where sexism in the culture was supernatural… This tension takes sexuality and encounters as part of the methodology of that museum, as if it were part of the anthropology of that place…”
Re - appropriation of the tradition
As mentioned before, the invisibility of some Latin American artistic practices is due, in many cases,
to the colonisation of theory analysis methodologies aesthetics. By way of illustration, we will mention a simple example that shows the implication that this theoretical colonisation had in textile art. The quipu, from the Quechua khipu, which means 'knot, tie, ligature' has its origins in ancient America and dates back to at least three thousand years ago. This technique, invented and used by the
Andean towns—consisted of a storage system and information made up of wool or cotton strands of different colours, hanging from a horizontal rope were used to account for figures linked to agricultural production and as a graphic writing system.
Juan José Santos, art critic and curator illustrates and explains the Installation of Cecilia Vicuña, Quipu menstrual (la sangre de los glaciares), set at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, Madrid as “Works inspired by the knotted ropes that Andean cultures used to relay information until they were banned by the Spanish as potential and demonic vehicles of secret messages” (Santos, 2021)
Art from the periphery
Installation view of The Autoconstrucción Suites, 2013, dimensions variable, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
"Autoconstrucción" (self-building) is the term Abraham Cruzvillegas uses to describe the improvised construction methods and techniques of Mexico City. The artist migrated to the city with his family to live in el Ajusco and observed the gradual construction of his parents' home. The entire community of family members and neighbours was involved in the creation of the self-built settlement, a regular practice product of human solidarity.
Potentially, one can believe that contemporary art in Latin America is made to provoke and subvert the boundaries that European and American Art have stated in the past. Yet it has become a product of constant demand from these regions and has invaded the cultural vision of occident. As seen before, the resulting work is derivative from an act of dependency and at the same time, a desire to overcome it. These work, now live outside and within society, the media has taken over obvious stereotypes product of the servile diligence of the resistance. Awkwardly, there lies a discord between cultural autonomy and resistance, an issue that turns the project into a sellable, collectible and amusing provocation for Western culture.
Bibliography
Didi-Huberman, G. La imagen superviviente. Historia del arte y tiempo de los fantasmas según Aby Warburg. Abada Editores. (Madrid, Spain 2002)
Traba, Marta. “La Cultura de La Resistencia.” Revista de Estudios Sociales 34, December 2009
“BOMB Magazine | Word-Weapons: Cecilia Vicuña: Seehearing The….” n.d. BOMB Magazine. Accessed February 12, 2024. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2021/05/03/word-weapons-cecilia-vicu%C3%B1a-seehearing-the-enlightened-failure-reviewed/
Image sources
References
“Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano - Ciclo de Charlas Diderot.Art.” YouTube, October 31, 2022.
Leonard, Thomas M. 2010. Encyclopedia of Latin America. New York: Facts On File, Cop.
“Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today.” n.d. The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. Accessed February 12, 2024. https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/under-the-same-sun-art-from-latin-america-today.