Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Space to Dream:
Recent Art from
South America
Contents
Directors Foreword
Curators Introduction
El espacio de la conversacin
The Space of Conversation
27
DR ZARA STANHOPE
The Exhibition
45
77
El sentido de lo contemporneo 85
en la era de la globalizacin
The Sense of the Contemporary
in the Era of Globalisation
SERGIO ROJAS
101
GUSTAVO BUNTINX
The Artists
135
221
Curators Biographies
244
List of Works
246
Directors
Foreword
Rhana Devenport
SPACE TO DREAM
Curators
Introduction
Beatriz Bustos Oyanedel
Dr Zara Stanhope
SPACE TO DREAM
Una invitacin
a perderse
An Invitation to
Lose Yourself
Beatriz Bustos
Oyanedel
Espacio y sueo son las palabras abstractas y ambiguas elegidas para nombrar el
recorrido que propone esta exposicin. Ellas abren la posibilidad de desplegar un
campo fecundo para la experiencia: evocamos la temporalidad de los sueos para
percibir otros atisbos de lo real. Pero en los sueos somos nosotros mismos los que
ejercemos un rol relevante para que la realidad sea descifrada. Todo sueo es la
inmovilidad de un movimiento, escribi la filsofa espaola Mara Zambrano. Pues
no existe estado alguno, situacin ninguna en la vida humana, de completa inmovilidad.
La vida en su estrato ms elemental, en su lmite con la no vida, es tensin, conato
con movimiento, predisposicin a un movimiento reprimido, apresurado. Y los sueos
nacen de esa imposibilidad, de esa absoluta inquietud en el necesario reposo. Vida
primitiva por ello, primaria, vida rebelde y en rebelin que reitera el mpetu primero
de atravesar lo que se opone. Por eso todo sueo tiene carcter, por quieto y apacible
que sea su contenido, por lo que la vida tiene su origen primero de oscura lucha, casi
de delito, de perturbacin del orden establecido.1
El derribamiento de jerarquas, cronologas, secuencias y reglas del mundo
soado abre, entonces, el paso a pulsiones diversas y multiformes que reclaman nuestros
sentidos para volver a ver y comprender. Si los conceptos y juicios son derribados, se
puede ingresar a la interpelacin y a las nuevas relaciones de tensin y significacin
entre las diferentes obras. En este espacio para soar se conocen las narraciones posibles,
que incitan a reaccionar y activar los flujos que permiten nuevas vas de pensamiento.
El espectador puede observar los diferentes modos en que se habita el
sur del continente americano. Es un espacio poroso, en constante redefinicin, con
Space and dream are the abstract and ambiguous words chosen to name the journey that
this exhibition proposes. These words open up the possibility of unfolding a rich field
of experiences, evoking the temporality of dreams and the perception of other traces
of reality. In dreams, we are the ones who carry out an important role to decode reality.
Every dream is the immobility of a movement, wrote Spanish philosopher Mara
Zambrano. She elaborates: For there exists no state, or situation in human life, of
complete immobility. Life at its most basic level, at the boundary with no-life, is tension,
an attempted movement, predisposed to a repressed, hurried movement. And dreams
are born from this impossibility, from that absolute restlessness in this necessary rest.
Therefore a primitive life, primary, a rebellious life and in rebellion that reiterates the
impetus to cross all that opposes it. Hence all dreams have character. However quiet and
calm its contents may be, so life originates first from a dark struggle, almost of crime,
of disruption of the established order. 1
The overthrow of hierarchies, chronologies, sequences and rules by
the dream world opens, then, a path towards diverse and multifarious drives that
reclaim our senses to see anew and to understand. If concepts and judgements are
brought down, one is able to enter into interpellations and into new relationships of
tension and significance between the different works of art. In this space to dream,
the viewer becomes aware of the possible narrations that incite one to react and to
activate new ways of thinking.
The viewer can observe the different ways in which the South American
continent is inhabited. It is a porous space, in constant redefinition, with multiple
underlying dynamics: when we believe that we have found the right construct to
understand and articulate the narrative that allows us to find the understandable
and communicable history, we find ourselves facing detours and accidents that take
us back to that place where it is possible to narrate the unspeakable that is, the
poetics of art. This poetic inscribes itself within the empty temporality of dreams,
a space/possibility in which we discover that there is not only one narration, but
multiple subjective possibilities that constitute various narrations and build utopias
as defined by Hal Foster, the non-places for utopian possibility that generate
revolutionary energy condensed in the desire for a different future, the desire to
turn the postponements into future.2
For this curatorial project we considered it necessary to omit from the
title words that would create a geopolitical connotation. This decision was taken
to avoid the association of pre-established meanings, both from a universal and
from a local standpoint Auckland, New Zealand, where this exhibition is taking
place to provide freedom in exploration.
One of the mechanisms used to create the exhibitions immersion is
the way in which the works have been arranged within the galleries and in the design
of complementary programmes. The works are located to establish dialogue and
tension between one another, regardless of the historical period in which they were
produced, their relevance or omission awarded by the so-called artistic mainstream,
or their adscription to terms such as political, relational, popular or documentary
art. Thus, in relationship to one another, they can be understood as a whole.
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SPACE TO DREAM
15
16
Las permeabilidades, las posibilidades e imposibilidades, las incomprensiones y lo ilgico, y sobre todo la exploracin y divagacin, son el espacio en
el cual constantemente transitamos y habitamos en este sur. Para la seleccin de
obras no consideramos que dieran cuenta de lo que podra llamarse el estado de la
produccin de arte contemporneo en Amrica del Sur durante los ltimos aos, en el
sentido de una ilustracin turstica de lo que en esta zona sucede, sino ms bien son
obras que encarnan el preciso sueo del arte. Superamos las opresiones del orden a
travs de la posibilidad de llegar a ese instante de vaco del sueo en que realizamos
lo deseado. Para descifrar la realidad de otra manera y ser sujetos de un sueo que
nos moviliza hacia la accin, debemos perdernos y entrar a un pequeo caos en orden.
A pesar de que la creencia en el progreso, en el mejoramiento material
y cultural, ha formado en Amrica Latina un discurso slido sobre la estabilidad y la
autodeterminacin como un estadio conquistado o siempre deseado, las constantes
irrupciones sociales y polticas, as como las amenazas de la naturaleza, nos recuerdan
peridicamente que estamos en un territorio que se mantiene en proceso de redefi
nicin. Esto ms que una fatalidad prefiero considerarlo como una posibilidad, ya
que permite la participacin de un proceso de construccin de sociedad. Este es un
espacio para soar donde el desastre convive con la exploracin de vas para articular
sociedad, y esos procesos exploratorios constituyen una de las caractersticas de
las dinmicas de nuestros pases del sur.
El espacio que queremos delimitar y abrir, al mismo tiempo, es un campo
frtil para crear nuevas formas de convivencia, un espacio en el cual lo establecido
play. The overthrow of hierarchies and assumptions, therefore, opens the exhibition.
The quote in Alfredo Jaars A Logo for America, 1997, in which he presents a map of
the United States under the phrase This is not America, is a precise demarcation
that cancels out the commonplace, as is the figure of Amrica invertida (Inverted
America), 1943 by Joaqun Torres Garca, the image that opens this exhibition.
Torres Garca said in his 1937 manifesto: I have called this School of the South,
because in reality, our North is the South. There must not be North for us, except
in opposition to our South. Therefore, we now turn the map upside down, and then
we have a true idea of our position, and not as the rest of the world wishes. The
point of America, from now on, forever, insistently points to the South, our North. 3
The inverted map is the de-contextualisation of the so-called Latin
American art. This image is the first gesture that sets new spatial parameters and
also opens up the possibility that a map is no longer only the demarcation of territory,
but more so something representative of mental constructs that carry attributes
that lead to change.
Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentine author, defines poetry and lays
out the idea of an unstoppable search: If we think of an expression of something,
then weve landed back into the old problem of form and matter; and if we think about
the expression of nothing in particular, that gives us really nothing. So, we receive
respectfully that definition and then we go on to something else. We go on to poetry,
we go on to life. And life is, I am sure, made of poetry. Poetry is not alien: poetry is,
as we shall see, lurking around the corner. It will spring on us at any given moment.4
SPACE TO DREAM
17
extrao: est acechando, como veremos, a la vuelta de la esquina. Puede surgir ante
nosotros en cualquier momento. 4
La poesa acecha en Latinoamrica, y sus formas mltiples son orgnicas,
sociales y de lenguaje. Son diferentes poticas que reformulan lo real: la lucha, la
tragedia, la celebracin, el origen, lo desconocido. Estos conceptos, para m, forman
una red fuera de las jerarquizaciones y los ordenamientos cronolgicos, una red de
trminos y ejes que nos guan para internarnos en el campo de posibilidades del arte.
LA POTICA DE LA LUCHA
Las obras de artistas y colectivos que han recogido los asuntos polticos y sociales
para denunciar situaciones urgentes de sus respectivos contextos, han constituido
acciones con la intencin de generar verdaderos movimientos ciudadanos. Eso ha
ocurrido en diferentes periodos histricos y en diversos pases, y enriquecen el campo
de posibilidades que entrega el arte en cuanto a la activacin de dinmicas sociales.
La apropiacin por parte de la ciudadana del smbolo de la accin NO+ del grupo
C.A.D.A (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte), realizada en Chile durante el periodo de
la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet (19731990), y la accin Lava la bandera, impulsada por el Colectivo Sociedad Civil en Per bajo la dictadura de Alberto Fujimori
(1990-2000) que se relata en extenso en el texto de Gustavo Buntinx al final de
este libro, sealan las complejidades de este tipo de intervenciones.
La accin Fogo Cruzado (2002) de Ronald Duarte, en tanto, realizada
en medio de levantamientos en Ro de Janeiro, en el barrio de Santa Teresa, con la
Poetry lurks in Latin America, and its multiple forms are organic,
social and made by language. There are different poetics that reformulate the real:
struggle, tragedy, celebration, origins and the unknown. These concepts, for me,
form a network that excludes hierarchies and chronological order, a network of
terms and core ideas that guide us into the field of possibilities of art.
THE POETICS OF STRUGGLE
The works of artists and art collectives who have chosen political and social issues
to denounce urgent situations of their respective contexts, have set up actions
with the intention of generating real citizen movements. This has happened
in different historical periods and in different countries, and has enriched the
possibilities that art can grant in terms of the activation of these social dynamics.
The appropriation by citizens of C.A.D.A.s (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte, Collective
of Art Actions) symbol NO+ in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
(19731990), and the action Lava la bandera (Wash the Flag) developed by the
Colectivo Sociedad Civil (Civil Society Collective) in Peru under the dictatorship
of Alberto Fujimori (19902000) referred to extensively in Gustavo Buntinxs
essay point to the complexities and possibilities of such interventions.
On the other hand, the action Fogo Cruzado (Crossfire), 2002 by
Ronald Duarte, which took place in the midst of the uprisings in Rio de Janeiro in
the streets of the neighbourhood of Santa Teresa, with the participation of several
artists constituted as a collective, portrays these streets as a space of insurrection.
18
SPACE TO DREAM
participacin de varios artistas constituidos como colectivo, sealan esas calles como
un espacio de insurreccin. Y, desde su publicidad y la participacin de la ciudadana,
generan una reflexin poltica y filosfica.
A la vez, hoy cobran relevancia gestos que en este contexto podran
considerarse mnimos o silenciosos. Si ampliamos la mirada los podemos definir
como inclaudicables, adems de dar cuenta de un cruce entre arte y vida, un arte de
resistencia llevada a cabo durante periodos de opresin, como es el trabajo de Virginia
Errzuriz en Chile en los aos 1970, y de Paulo Bruscky y Antonio Manuel en Brasil
entre los aos 1960 y 1970.
Podramos suponer que este tipo de dinmicas se encuentran an vivas
y se activan a travs de estos poros permeables entre la ciudadana y el artista o el
colectivo, y viceversa. Ambos trnsitos, facilitados por una causa comn, encuentran
tambin hoy en la potica del arte un espacio para manifestar demandas. La potica
de la lucha entrega entonces la posibilidad de lograr cambios en el modo en que
vivimos a travs del arte, asociando obras a un espacio para la accin de las utopas.
LA POTICA DE LA TRAGEDIA
La metfora ha sido un recurso para decir lo indecible en momentos histricos silenciados, cuando se suprime la libre expresin. En cambio, cuando se tornan los hechos
indecibles a causa de acontecimientos que irrumpen en nuestra biografa como traumas,
o situaciones que nos vulneran, se transforman en una potica de la tragedia.
Mximo Corvaln, en su obra ADN (2012), conecta con las pulsiones
And, from its publicity and citizen participation, the action generates political and
philosophical reflection.
At the same time, today certain gestures that in this context could
be considered minimal or silent become relevant. If we extend our view, we can
define them as unyielding; as a relationship between art and life, an art of resistance carried out during periods of oppression as is the work of Virginia Errzuriz
in Chile in the 1970s, and Paulo Bruscky and Antonio Manuel in Brazil between
1960 and 1970.
We are, then, able to suppose that these dynamics are still alive
and are seen activated through these existing permeable membranes between the
people and the artist or collective, or vice versa. Both of these ways, provided by
a common cause, find in the poetics of art today a space to express demands. The
poetics of struggle deliver the possibility to create changes in how we live through
art, associating works with a space for the action of utopias.
THE POETICS OF TRAGEDY
Metaphor is a common device used to express the unspeakable at historic moments
of silence, when freedom of speech has been suppressed. Yet when these untold
facts become a trauma because of events that burst into our biography or because
of situations that make us vulnerable, they are transformed into a poetic of tragedy.
In Proyecto ADN (DNA Project), 2012 Mximo Corvaln connects with
the most intimate aspects of pain through his own biography (the execution of his
AN INVITATION TO LOSE YOURSELF
19
20
LA POTICA DE LA CELEBRACIN
Guilherme Bueno, en la entrevista incluida en este libro, expone con mayor detalle
sobre la celebracin y el carnaval, especficamente en Brasil, y sus reflexiones pueden
asociarse a otras celebraciones de los pases del sur. Se trata de una potica sobre la
transformacin, de un viaje a lo desconocido, a una disrupcin del sentido, presente
en las antiguas culturas y que an se mantiene viva. El gran ejemplo es Hlio Oiticica
con su obra Parangols (19631969), que en esta muestra se expone de tal modo que
los visitantes puedan participar de una experiencia nueva al vestir los trajes que se
disponen en la sala. Los cuerpos son el soporte para extender as el color y la forma.
Esas capas, utilizadas en la danza de la samba, vibran con la extensin del cuerpo
hacia el arte; en palabras de Oiticica son una bsqueda de la dimensin infinita de
colores en su relacin con la estructura, el espacio y el tiempo.5
Demian Schopf, desde otra manera, presenta con sus fotografas
performticas la ambigedad inquietante de los momentos de fiesta y celebracin,
cuando nos escindimos de lo cotidiano en un rito de opulencia e intensidad, nos
trasvestimos para participar en un acto colectivo y sumergirnos as en una condicin
alegrica, neobarroca, sincrtica y andina en un escenario indescifrable. Esta misma
hibridez y ambigedad se refleja en la obra fotogrfica de Marcos Lpez, quien
presenta escenografas en las cuales se instalan personajes junto a un mestizaje que
multiplica y cuestiona el simbolismo de lo que podra llamarse una cultura neo-popular.
Pulsin de vida y pulsin de muerte se entrecruzan en la potica de
la celebracin. La atemporalidad del sueo nos permite preceder el delirio de estas
father in 1973; the search for his remains; and the possibility of identifying them
due to scientific advances following September 11 in New York, 2001). Corvaln,
from experience, is able to universalise his trauma and establish a connection with
our own grief, regardless of the way in which specific historical events marked the
life of each observer. He manages to transport us towards that empty space found
in dreams, where reality is seen dissolved.
Tragedy also becomes a collective experience in the work of Jonathas
de Andrade, 40 Nego Bom e 1 Real (40 black candies for R$1), 2013. Nego bom is
the name of a popular candy in the northeast of Brazil and in Portuguese the term
literally means good black, a colloquialism which has colonial and racial connotations. In the local markets of Brazil there is a popular slogan that says 40 nego
bom for R$1, something like 40 black candies for R$1. Through the appropriation
of this slogan, de Andrades project makes visible the discrimination that is still
present in our societies and the tragedy of inequality.
Juan Manuel Echavarra, meanwhile, in the series Silencios (Silences),
2010, photographs abandoned schools in areas affected by the Colombian guerrillas,
portraying the effects of extreme violence in small communities, which affect
generations for whom the right to education has been violated, as have other basic
human rights.
Tragedy, then, creates a radical connection with the viewer, relating
to their grief and establishing a bond with them. With small gestures, these artists
manage to express what in society has been slowly and constantly silenced.
SPACE TO DREAM
5. Hlio Oiticica,
The Supreme Order of Colour,
1961. En Hlio Oiticica,
The Body of Colour, Tate
Publishing, Londres, 2007, p.64.
21
SPACE TO DREAM
actual. Como dice Escobar, esa operacin es el sueo del arte contemporneo, de
toda forma de arte: conciliar la densidad de los contenidos con la fuerza de la imagen.
Otro ejemplo es la msica brasilea, en la cual no hay lmites rgidos
entre lo culto y lo popular (la obra de Heitor Villa-Lobos es un ejemplo de este rasgo),
como tampoco los hay entre la produccin de arte y las fiestas populares. En Brasil,
los artistas realizan diferentes acciones de arte en el contexto del carnaval. El mismo
sincretismo, la hibridez, la potencia del ruego, del deseo, es enorme en La Fiesta de
Jess del Gran Poder en Bolivia, por ejemplo, que puede observarse como una gran
performance. Si la potica del origen disloca el tiempo histrico, desde ese origen,
y desde otros lugares, aparece entonces la fuerza de lo desconocido.
LA POTICA DE LO DESCONOCIDO
Lygia Clark y Hlio Oiticica son los grandes exploradores que borran los lmites del
sueo en un deslizarse del vivir del sujeto sin gua, un extravo total de la percepcin
hacia lo nuevo. Ernesto Neto contina con su herencia: crea formas que remiten a
estados diferentes de ensoaciones e invita a una especie de rito inicitico muy propio
de los viajes sensoriales practicados en la Amazona, una experiencia holstica que
incluye la sensualidad. Neto crea un espacio para conquistar con cada uno de los
sentidos, con cada parte del cuerpo. Son formas orgnicas que al fin subvierten la
mirada hacia el horizonte por la mirada hacia lo alto.
Esta invocacin de lo desconocido puede tambin ser una reformulacin
material que, a pesar de su pragmatismo, es una bsqueda organizada de la utopa.
consider to be traditional or modern. As Escobar says, this exercise is the dream
of art, of all forms of art: reconciling the density of the contents with the strength
of the image.
Brazilian music is another example of this: in it there are no rigid
boundaries between high culture and popular culture (the work of Heitor VillaLobos illustrates this point), just as between art production and popular festivities.
In Brazil, artists perform different art actions in the context of the Carnival.
This same syncretism, hybridity, power of prayer, of desire, is grandiosely expressed
in the Fiesta de Jess del Gran Poder in Bolivia (The Festival of the Lord Jesus of
Great Power), which can be seen as a great performance. If the poetics of the origin
dislocate historical time, from that origin and from other places, the force of the
unknown appears.
THE POETICS OF THE UNKNOWN
Lygia Clark and Hlio Oiticica are the great explorers who erased the boundaries of
dreams in a way in which the subject lives without guidance, experiencing a total
loss of perception towards that which is new. Ernesto Neto continues this legacy,
creating forms that refer to different states of dreaming which invite participation in
a kind of initiation ritual typical of sensory trips practised in the Amazon, a holistic
experience that includes sensuality. Neto creates a space to conquer with each of
the senses, with each part of the body. They are organic forms that subvert gazing
at the horizon in order to look upwards.
AN INVITATION TO LOSE YOURSELF
23
24
Ignacio Gumucio usa la prctica pictrica del muralismo, recurso propio de las utopas
de transformacin social y de los habitantes de espacios urbanos que se expresan
a travs del grafiti. Gumucio interviene los muros de las salas con una pintura que
desafa la perspectiva, borronea la memoria y crea tensiones entre imgenes de lo
conocido y lo por conocer. Sus gestos hacen que el retorno de la memoria aparezca
fraccionado, discontinuo, y retrata la extraeza debido a la imposibilidad de asociar
y la necesidad de formular una nueva realidad. La memoria se disuelve y todo es
novedad para el desarrollo de otra arquitectura, como una revolucin persistente.
Los relatos del no saber, de la exploracin total, de nuevos comienzos,
se multiplican en el trabajo de Juan Fernando Herrn. Sus fotografas de escaleras,
inconducentes algunas, con bifurcaciones otras, sealan la importancia de dar
nfasis a la bsqueda por sobre la finalidad o el objetivo. Son esas mismas acciones
las que emprenden los habitantes que viven en los cerros que rodean la ciudad
de Medelln, Colombia, quienes creativamente han tenido que buscar modos de
subsistencia, desafiando la geografa para lograr construir una utopa de desarrollo
e inclusin social.
Kevin Mancera, en tanto, construye un relato al identificar aquellos
pueblos desperdigados por el continente llamados Felicidad. Sus bitcoras de viaje
revisan estos espacios de utopa, valoran las distintas formas de vida, y construyen
un mapa social con un parmetro diferente, por sobre indicadores materiales, para
derribar as lo que podramos llamar progreso. La incorporacin del trabajo de
Mancera en esta exposicin, categorizado como ilustracin, desacraliza tambin
SPACE TO DREAM
25
El espacio de
la conversacin
The Space of
Conversation
Dr Zara Stanhope
Y t me lo preguntas?
Antipoesa eres t.
NICANOR PARRA, 1997
1.The
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Bringing people together over art has consequences. Let me advocate for the curatorial idea that a collision or sharing of distinct practices of art and thought has
the potential to reconfigure a cultural future. Art is rooted locally and in specific
contexts, but also speaks regionally, globally, personally, collectively and across time.
South America and Aotearoa New Zealand are connected by the
living presence of colonial histories and their geographical positions at the south
of the globe. Beyond this, it can be argued that the cultures that comprise South
America and to some degree New Zealand are defined against those of the northern
hemisphere. The related concept of a significant southern region that avoids the
historical stigma of the third, underdeveloped, colonial or new world and denies any
sense of centreperiphery relations is known loosely as the Global South,1 a zone
juxtaposed against the United States, Canada, Western Europe and developed parts
of East Asia. Seen this way, the potential exists for innovative southsouth relations.
Such connections encourage a depth of cultural understanding and are opportunties
for artists and art to unsettle thinking and reorganise established canons.
Seen from the North, the countries and cultures in the South have been
only partially visible in the canons of Western knowledge. In the English-speaking
world, the story of art and its history has been told from the perspective of Europe
and the United States. This position, however, is increasingly contentious. Since
28
SPACE TO DREAM
Desde la perspectiva del norte, los pases y culturas del sur solo han
sido parcialmente visibles segn los cnones del conocimiento occidental. Para el
mundo angloparlante, el arte y su historia han formado un relato contado desde la
perspectiva de Europa y Estados Unidos. Esta visin, sin embargo, ha sido puesta
en cuestin. A partir de la dcada de 1970, crticos como Ticio Escobar, Nelly
Richard y Gerardo Mosquera, adems del curador Adrin Pedrosa y el artista Luis
Camnitzer, entre muchos otros, se han dedicado a rearticular la percepcin del arte
de Amrica Central y del Sur como algo diferente y menos relevante en comparacin
al pensamiento y las prcticas occidentales.2 Un enfoque ms contemporneo sita
y relaciona el arte creado desde diferentes visiones de mundo bajo el concepto de
arte mundial,3 a su vez un constructo occidental. La literatura latinoamericana se
volvi literatura mundial, por ejemplo, con el boom latinoamericano en los 60,
cuando aparecieron novelas sobre temas sociales, tnicos, de gnero y relativos
a otras tensiones reconocibles en las esferas capitalista, comunista o colonial, y
llamaron la atencin internacional, como la obra maestra del realismo mgico,
Cien aos de soledad, del colombiano Gabriel Garca Mrquez. La historia del arte
observada desde el propio terreno sudamericano sigue escribindose, la mayor de
las veces fuera del sistema de las instituciones pblicas. Pases como Argentina han
confiado esencialmente en colecciones e instituciones privadas para presentar las
obras y construir conocimiento sobre el arte nacional reciente. En Brasil, las galeras
comerciales han obtenido un poder prodigioso por sobre la impronta de la Bienal
de So Paulo y de varios museos. Hoy en el sur global tenemos la oportunidad de
the 1970s, for example, critics including Ticio Escobar, Nelly Richard, Gerardo
Mosquera, curator Adrian Pedrosa, artist Luis Camnitzer and many others have
worked to reposition the perception of art from Central and South America as
distinct yet equally important in comparison to Western thought and practice.2
A more contemporary approach that situates art from different worldviews in
relativity is the concept of world art,3 itself a Western construct. Latin American
literature became world literature, for example, before the Latin American boom
in the 1960s when novels written about social, ethnic, gender and other tensions
arising in situations existing between capitalist, communist and ex-colonial worlds,
such as the magical realist masterpiece Cien aos de soledad (One Hundred Years of
Solitude, 1967) by Colombian Gabriel Garca Mrquez, drew international attention.
The history of art comprehended from positions on the ground in South America
continues to be written, often outside a system of public institutions. Countries
such as Argentina have relied substantially on private collections and institutions to
present art and build knowledge of recent national art. In Brazil, commercial galleries
have gained prodigious power despite the presence of the So Paulo Biennial and a
number of museums. In the Global South today we have the opportunity to experience
and understand some of the social and cultural complexity of this expansive space
with its distinct flows of people, capital and communications.
The term South America, which is a generalisation referring to a
continent of 12 countries and three overseas territories lying between the Pacific
and Atlantic oceans, requires a brief explanatory note. I use the term South America
29
30
31
contrast to an apolitical Conceptual art from the United States.5 The avant-garde
art that arose in the late 1960s and 70s, under conditions of great contrast within
countries and to other world events, offers a counterpoint to the West.
Artists and writers alike faced the dilemma of whether to make
politically committed art or not, to write poesia para (poetry for) or poesia pura
(pure poetry), which was devoid of social or political significance.6 A significant
stream of art has been poetic and cross-disciplinary, following the artists interests
to connect personal and collective meaning. Such transformative practices
characterise the work of artists such as the Parra family in Chile, Uruguayan teacher
and artist Joaquin Torres Garca and artist, critic and curator Ferreira Gullar in
Brazil. In the state-driven optimism of late 1950s Brazil, Gullar succeeded in
generating a radical moment, identifying the phenomenological nature of art and
relations with the physical space occupied by the artwork. He did this through his
Neo-Concrete Manifesto (1959) and the essay Theory of the Non-Object in the So
Paulo broadsheet Jornal do Brasil, intending to define the Brazilian avant-garde
movement Neo-Concretism (a constructivist attitude in art practised by artists Lygia
Clark and Hlio Oiticica) from European Constructive art.7 Gullars own art, such
as the Poem Object, 1960, a blue cube that revealed the Portuguese word lembra
(remember) on its base when lifted by the viewer, was based on his experimental
poetry and broke with traditional syntax (the relationships between words, phrases
and clauses forming sentences) and structure to resemble ideograms. Although
Gullars ideas only came to influence subsequent generations of Brazilian artists
in the 1980s and 90s, his thinking informed the environmental and participatory
elements within Brazilian art, and anticipated Western art theory in the 1990s.8
Other artists from South America have similarly been important since
the late 1960s for their individual experimentation across media and the converging
of the roles of artist and participant that challenged conventional definitions of the
art object and the intersection of art with other sociopolitical hierarchies. Lygia
Clark is now internationally recognised for dissolving the boundaries between art
and daily existence. The Brazilian artists bichos or creatures signalled her ultimate
aim of art becoming part of the environment or the shared public space the polis.
Describing the experience of one of her sculptures with movable parts she says, It
changes me . . . Inside and out: a living being open to all possible transformations.
Its internal space is an affective space.9 The subsequent Objectos sensoriais (Sensory
Objects), 196668, Mscaras sensoriais (Sensory Masks), 1967 and Objectos relacionais (Relational Objects) of the late 1960s to mid-1970s are precedents for a
dialogic art and possibly emancipatory experiences, or, as Brett suggests, vehicles in
which spectators can let their own poetics flower.10 Turning to therapeutic practice
at a time in the late 1960s when art and psychiatry were joined in critical debates
about cultural production and therapy in Brazil and elsewhere, Clark established
an ethical position that dissolved the biographical and the collective.
Certain South American artists and projects are formative precedents for the ways art can be mobilised in times of intense political transformation.
Civil Society Collective in Peru or Edgardo Antonio Vigo with his manifestos for
32
SPACE TO DREAM
6. El pensamiento de Gullar
contribuy a la discusin
sobre la naturaleza del arte
de vanguardia y la industria
cultural, as como tambin a
la esttica relacional. Ver
Michael Ashbury, Neoconcretism and Minimalism: On
Ferreira Gullars Theory of
the Non-object, Cosmopolitan Modernisms, InIVA y MIT,
Londres, pp. 168189.
7. Lygia Clark, 1965: About
the Act, October 69, verano de
1994, p. 104.
33
8. Brett, p. 264.
9. Frases como NO+ miedo, NO+
violencia, NO+ dictadura, NO+
desaparecidos, NO+ hambre,
NO+ Pinochet, se volvieron
formas de resistencia social
que al fin contribuyeron a
vencer la dictadura en el
plebiscito de 1988. De igual
manera, las primeras acciones
del C.A.D.A., Para no morir de
hambre en el arte, de 1979,
condensaban la preocupacin
familiar y pblica por el
acceso a las polticas de
bienestar social iniciadas
por el gobierno de Salvador
Allende (la distribucin
diaria de leche para menores
de 15 aos) y su fin bajo la
dictadura, con el recuerdo de
restricciones alimenticias
ocurridas desde fines de los 60.
DISCORDANT SYNTAXES
Yet, art in South America has a relevance that extends beyond the symptoms of its
original context. The aesthetics of disobedience observed spread beyond resistance
to include the mobilisation of critical strategies of challenge of the status quo.12
The art of Brazilian Hlio Oiticica entered the Western art canon on the grounds of
34
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the artists disruption of expected meaning and the dissolution of individual and
collective experience and subjectivity. In a practice that has continuously evolved
from its beginnings in non-objecthood in the late 1950s and the influence of his
Brazilian background as well as his time spent in the United States and Europe,
Oiticicas work undermined conventional ideas of stasis and permanence as is
evident in his description of his Tropicalia projects: . . . all my work . . . has been a
development of the disintegration of formal concepts (starting with that of painting
itself) of art, and looking for a form of non-contemplative contact; the participation of the spectator (and participator) touching, wearing, penetrating the actual
pieces, developed toward actual propositions . . . something similar to practices of
the spontaneous self, non-ritualistic, as an actual anti-art permanent position, the
denial of the artist as a creator of objects, but turned into the proposer of practices . . .13
Part of Oiticicas thinking is evident in his prolific writing, from manifestos to increasingly autonomous and poetic works after 1970 when he moved to
New York City.14 Concerned to avoid the absorption of art into systematic ways of
life Oiticica identified his writing and his articulation of the concepts of Tropicalia
and works such as the Parangol with a return to myth and the consciousness of not
being conditioned by established structures, hence revolutionary in its entirety.15
With his Parangol (Cape), of the 1960s Oiticica embraced culture from the streets
the artist alleging the word itself came from a sign on a piece of sackcloth on a
beggars dwelling. The meaning of the slang term as sudden agitation, liveliness,
joy and unexpected situations amongst people16 evokes Oiticicas intentions for his
35
Juan Downeys videographies, such as Video Trans America, 1979 and The Laughing
Alligator, 197779 document the concurrance of the indigenous and mestizo, and the
co-existence of pre-modern and contemporary society that have a relevance beyond
the specificities of locale. The practice of contemporary Paraguayan artist Joaqun
Snchez activates different cultural and social crossings relating to the largely indigenous nation of Bolivia. An artist with an indigenous and Paraguayan background living
between his home country and Bolivia, Snchez often involves indigenous communities or participants whose societies experience the violence of border conditions.
Contemporary art can also offer a lens onto the existences in which
hundreds of years of ethnic, linguistic and cultural changes cohere in ways that are
poetic rather than emancipatory. The work of Jonathas de Andrade, for example,
often considers aspects of the complex histories, situations and attitudes toward
non-urban Brazilians. His recent projects have suggested how the lives of workers,
often African Brazilians, are subject to the economic and political power base of the
country. Perspectives on the Andean syncretism that is also a historical condition in
South America can be discerned in the works of Argentinian Marcos Lpez and Chilean
Demian Schopf.21 Lpez and Schopf offer their own unique blends of documentary and
socio-poetic image making which fuse the truth and fictions of the colonial baroque
influence of Catholicism, indigenous myth and rapidly evolving popular culture and
media. The images of Lpez often also present the raw life and sexualised body that
is prevalent in popular culture globally today, encouraged by a commercialism that
we recognise has no regard for moral values, life or the environment.
36
SPACE TO DREAM
37
Such artists make clear certain inner contradictions of grand historical narratives that resonate well beyond South America. Similarly, in the moving
image works of Cristbal Len and Joaqun Cocia the imaginative fusion of myth
and childlike memory suggest the unreliability of both truth and fiction. Their works
combine the wit of a poet such as Nicanor Parra, the originator of anti-poetry, and
the fantastical excess of magical realism that subverts meaning and established
structure. Other artists deploy and blend different methodologies drawing on culturally diverse synergies of knowledge, practices and forms. Having studied weaving
traditions in her own Brazil, Maria Nepomuceno fuses past and present in intricate
assemblages of beads, ropes, weaving, clay and other objects. Nepomucenos installations suggest sociality and colonisation in their spanning, combining, ingesting,
permeating, fusing and intersecting components. These tactics of reclaiming and
converting traditions and languages can be observed in different ways in the works
of Catalina Bauer from Chile and Brazilian Lenora de Barross multisensory art. Both
explore gendered practices of the body and language as forms of social and cultural
knowledge in male-dominated cultures in which the masculine is the absolute power.
De Barros is known for works that contest the meaning of semiotics as both personal
and cultural symbolic domains through performance and objects.
when we can perceive many histories of recent art from the Global South in their
co-existence? This synchronicity, I suggest, underlines the heterogeneity and
divergence of cultures and artistic practices yet indicates a desire for recognition
of collective social realities. Learning about alternative creative strategies, such as
the dematerialisation of art into actions,22 offers ideas that can infect and redefine
art elsewhere. In the way that Gullar readapted syntax for the purposes of his avantgarde research, I propose that recent art in the Global South has the potential to
change traditions as it comes into contact with other cultures.
As we have seen, art from South America is significant for actively
creating spaces of freedom in complex economic, political and cultural conditions.
Notably, Rosenfelds crosses and C.A.D.A.s actions are today more potent and
transgressive internationally than at home. Artists have also been catalysts for the
reconsideration of hegemonic perceptions in Europe and America. Alfredo Jaars
1987 electronic billboard A Logo for America, screened in New Yorks Times Square,
intended to provoke recognition of stereotypical assumptions about the designation of the America between the United States and Central and South America. 23
Artists exiled from South America during the 1970s, 80s and 90s are reminders
of the price some are willing to pay for a critical art. Argentinian Len Ferraris
strategies of caustic poetic and visual commentary on the behaviour of state and
church remain aide-mmoires of the value of freedom and the ability of artists to
avoid instrumentalisation as well as the canonisation of art. Luis Camnitzer also
pursues art as a force to resist subordination to hegemonic order, and as the only
38
SPACE TO DREAM
39
alternativas, tal como la desmaterizalicin del arte hacia la accin,18 genera ideas
que pueden contaminar y redefinir el arte en cualquier lugar. De la misma manera
en que Gullar readapt la sintaxis a propsito de su investigacin vanguardista, el
arte reciente en el sur global tiene el potencial de cambiar las tradiciones al entrar
en contacto con otras culturas.
Hemos visto que el arte de Amrica del Sur es relevante en su creacin
activa de espacios de libertad dentro de condiciones econmicas, polticas y culturales
complejas. Las cruces de Rosenfeld y las acciones del C.A.D.A. resultan hoy ms
potentes y trasgresoras en el mbito internacional que en Chile. Los artistas tambin
han sido catalizadores para cuestionar las percepciones hegemnicas de Europa y
Estados Unidos. A logo for America, el panel electrnico de Alfredo Jaar proyectado
en Times Square de Nueva York, pretendi provocar la suposicin estereotipada
respecto del uso del nombre Amrica entre Estados Unidos, y Amrica Central y del
Sur.19 Artistas exiliados de Sudamrica en las dcadas de los 70, 80 y 90 recuerdan
el precio que algunos estn dispuestos a pagar por ejercer el arte crtico. Las estrategias del argentino Len Ferrari, custicos comentarios poticos y visuales sobre el
comportamiento del Estado y la Iglesia, se mantienen como recordatorios del valor
de la libertad y la habilidad de los artistas para evitar la instrumentalizacin tanto
como la canonizacin en el arte. Luis Camnitzer tambin persigue formas de arte
como fuerzas de resistencia a la subordinacin bajo el orden hegemnico, y como el
nico medio para una pedagoga creativa.20 Nacido en Alemania y criado en Uruguay
antes de vivir en Estados Unidos, Camnitzer, como muchos artistas de Amrica del
means for a creative pedagogy.24 Born in Germany and raised in Uruguay before
living in the United States, Camnitzer, like many South American artists, has been
internationally influential for his Conceptual art and thinking that is reflected in
poetic yet strident manifestos which argue for the sociopolitical power of art.25 Yet
even in writing a manifesto Camnitzer relies on the modality of humour which, in
its many forms but especially irony, satire and play, is important across art forms
in South America for creating spaces that all feel equally able to enter.
Art has also been shown to be a foil to singular versions of the past and
cultural or social identity. Alejandro Thornton in the video Eva Rebelde (Rebel Eva),
2012, for example, playfully revisits the symbol of Evita Pern, a popular figure who
embodied Peronist Argentina as it entered the era of neo-liberalism. Evita Pern is
immortalised as an allegory in South America and the West (in Andrew Lloyd Webbers
musical Evita, 1978) for her association with the ability of the lower classes, women
and the nation to triumph. By contrast, art can also unpick the seams of dreams that
conceal reality. Patrick Hamiltons revisiting of geometric abstraction in sculptures
such as Intersecciones (Intersections), 2014 is symbolic in reflecting the underbelly
of the copper-mining boom in Chile, an industry associated with the countrys
economy that also produced other devastating effects, including accentuating
socioeconomic divides. The work also conveys a humorous aside at value systems.
Juan Fernando Herrans photographs of self-made settlements in Colombia on the
one hand depict the harsh realities of societies that have been abandoned to rely on
their own autonomy. However, such environments are also understood to comprise
40
SPACE TO DREAM
41
place in the movement of art in the South, I suggest, might offer a way of developing
an alternative history or production of knowledge in opposition to centreperiphery
models of absorption. Speculative, multi-vocal, a product often of inequality and
precarious relations and resistance to ideology or form, art in South America can
be understood as functioning with a different syntax. However, like the novels of
Chilean writer Roberto Bolao, art can cross borders and transcend the local, the
North, the West. Repositioning an essentially colonial worldview with multiple,
contrasting and fluid spaces from and in the South opens existing ideas, ethics
and aesthetics to a mutual contamination or rethinking. Art is part of the language
through which we see and understand the world around us. To immerse oneself in
different spaces of freedom, of possibility and of a positive indeterminacy, spaces
recognised as connecting with our own conditions, is to enter into conversations
across the volatile and dynamic situation of the Global South.
42
SPACE TO DREAM
43
La exhibicin
The Exhibition
Previous page:
Alfredo Jaar
A Logo for America 19872014
public intervention
digital animation commissioned
by The Public Art Fund for
Spectacolor sign, Times Square,
New York, April 1987
Courtesy Times Square Alliance,
New York and the artist, New York
48
Lotty Rosenfeld
Registro de cruces (Register
of Crosses) 1987
SPACE TO DREAM
Eugenio Dittborn
Restos (Remains) 1998
THE EXHIBITION
49
Carlos Castro
El que no sufre no vive (That
Which Does Not Suffer Does Not
Live) (video still) 2009
Len Ferrari
LOsservatore Romano 2007
50
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Antonio Manuel
Guerra do consumo/Vampiro
insacivel (War of Consumption/
Insatiable Vampire) 1975
THE EXHIBITION
51
Juan Downey
The Laughing Alligator
(video still) 197779
Estate of Juan Downey,
courtesy of Marilys B Downey
52
Rosngela Renn
Boots 19962000
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THE EXHIBITION
53
Lenora de Barros
Pregao (Nail Action)
(performance documentation)2014
54
Juan Castillo
Huacheras (video still)
201516
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Mira Schendel
Ondas paradas de probabilidade
(Still Waves of Probability)
(installation view, 2014) 1969
Photo: Max Schendel
THE EXHIBITION
55
C.A.D.A.
Documentation of an intervention on
the north bank of the Mapocho River,
Santiago, 23 September 1983, 14:30 hrs
Photo: Jorge Brantmayer
56
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Fernando Arias
Se busca donante de cenizas
(Donor of Ashes Wanted) 2009
THE EXHIBITION
57
Jonathas de Andrade
40 nego bom 1 real (40 black
candies is R$1) (detail) 2013
58
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Liliana Porter
Man Drawing 2015
Ignacio Gumucio
Salvar la Navidad. Murales sin
Moraleja (To Save Christmas. Murals
without a Moral) (in progress) 2014
THE EXHIBITION
59
Luis Camnitzer
The Discovery of Geometry 1978, 2008
Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates,
New York 2015 Luis Camnitzer /
Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York
60
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Joaqun Snchez
Chaco 2012
THE EXHIBITION
61
Marcos Lpez
Reina. Iquitos, Per (Iquitos
Queen, Peru) 2012
62
Bernardo Oyarzn
Ekeko (detail) 2014
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Mara Nepomuceno
Grande Boca (Big Mouth) (detail) 2013
Image courtesy of the artist and Victoria
Miro, London Maria Nepomuceno
THE EXHIBITION
63
Mximo Corvaln
Proyecto ADN (DNA Project)
(detail) 2012
64
Kevin Mancera
La Felicidad (Happiness)
(photograph) 2012
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Cinthia Marcelle
Cruzada (Crusade)
(video still) 2010
Patrick Hamilton
Traba Volante #1
(Wheel Lock #1) 2014
THE EXHIBITION
65
Virginia Errzuriz
Serie seales (Signal Series)
(detail) 1993
Photo: Maya Errzuriz
66
Paulo Bruscky
Atitude do artista/Atitude do
museu (Attitude of the Artist/
Attitude of the Museum) 1978
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Lygia Clark
O Eu e o Tu (The I and the You)
1967, 2016
THE EXHIBITION
67
Hlio Oiticica
Documentary photo of a person
wearing a Parangol (Cape) c196369
68
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Lygia Clark
Mascara Sensorial (Sensorial Mask)
1967, 2016
Demian Schopf
La Nave (Chuta Mariachi) (The Nave
(Chuta Mariachi)) 2015
THE EXHIBITION
69
Joaqun Snchez
Lnea de agua (Line of Water)
(video stills) 2010
70
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Fernando Arias
Cantos de viaje (Chants of a
Journey) (video still) 2014
THE EXHIBITION
71
Ronald Duarte
Fogo Cruzado (Crossfire)
(video still) 2002
72
Ernesto Neto
Just like drops in time, nothing
(installation view, Art Gallery of
New South Wales) 2002
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THE EXHIBITION
73
Martn Sastre
U from Uruguay (video still)
2012
Eduardo Navarro
Monuments (detail) 2016
74
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THE EXHIBITION
75
Guilherme Bueno,
Entrevista con
Beatriz Bustos
Oyanedel
Gente triste en una
tierra radiante
Guilherme Bueno,
Interview with
Beatriz Bustos
Oyandel
Sad People in a
Radiant Land
78
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79
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Paulo Prado comienza su libro con una frase tan cuestionable como fascinante: En una tierra radiante, donde
vive gente triste. Sintetiza con ella los sentimientos
ambiguos ante la celebracin, ya sea por su aspecto a
veces institucional o su esquivez fugaz. Estas celebraciones maravillosas tambin ocultan una sensacin de no
conducir a nada, pues llevan a un retorno hacia la vida
corriente, moralista y opresiva. Su intensidad puede ser
proporcional a un discurso posterior de autorepresin.
Pero si escudriamos en esto un poco ms, en el contexto
de las artes visuales, algunas obras de Ronald Duarte y
Antonio Manuel enfatizan la paradoja que mencionas.
Duarte propuso, al comienzo de la dcada del 2000,
una serie de performances en Santa Teresa (un barrio
bohemio de Ro, en ese entonces peligroso) en las cuales
su sentido inicial, colectivo y comunal, gatill perturbadoras manifestaciones contra la violencia: junto a sus
amigos, y la gente que se uni espontneamente, Duarte
puso fuego en lo rieles de los tranvas, como metfora
de un lugar que se est incendiando; en otra accin,
rent un camin aljibe y roci las calles con un lquido
SAD PEOPLE IN A RADIANT LAND
81
Excess is one of the characteristics of some celebrations, such as is seen at carnivals or football games,
and a sense of excess, as well as precariousness, can
also be found in art.
82
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83
El sentido de lo
contemporneo en la
era de la globalizacin
Sergio Rojas
On the one hand racism no longer exists and, on the other hand,
there has never been so much racism as now. DIPESH CHAKRABARTY
The globalisation of the economy and networks of worldwide communication have
had the effect of an invasion on the planets borders, causing a lucrative transnational
86
SPACE TO DREAM
soberana del Estado-nacin parece perder poder en este nuevo orden de cosas. Sin
embargo, dadas estas condiciones, surge la idea de que por primera vez en la historia
los seres humanos seran realmente contemporneos entre s; proliferan por doquier
las fronteras amuralladas para el trnsito de los individuos y se hace manifiesta
la imposibilidad de una sociedad mundial. Esto implica una crisis de los ideales
de la Ilustracin que han orientado durante los dos ltimos siglos al pensamiento
poltico y en buena medida han definido lo que cabe denominar humanismo (tanto en
Occidente como en los territorios cuya historia ha estado dramticamente marcada
por procesos de colonizacin). Enfrentados a la imposibilidad de comprender de
manera no abstracta las condiciones materiales de existencia de los individuos en
perspectiva planetaria, dos preguntas resultan fundamentales: cul es el estatuto
del humanismo en la actualidad? Qu significa contemporneo?
La idea de frontera se ha naturalizado en el imaginario occidental
y se concibe como una especie de lmite infranqueable, asociado a la imagen de
gruesos muros en altura, controles policiales, sistemas de vigilancia y mecanismos de
proteccin contra todo tipo de peligros que acechan sobre el cuerpo y la mente. Por
cierto, sabemos que la representacin de la frontera no necesariamente ha de ser una
lnea, pues aquella es tambin un territorio, un espacio en donde distintos sistemas
de referencia y parmetros identitarios se tocan y superponen. La frontera es, ante
todo, una zona de contacto. Pues bien, dnde podemos reconocer hoy la localidad y
dnde el margen? En un universo que se caracteriza por procesos ininterrumpidos de
produccin y consumo, flujos de capital financiero desterritorializado y circulacin
flow of capital. The nation states modern sovereignty seems to have lost power
in this new networked order of things. However, even given these conditions, the
concept of humans really being contemporaries remains an ideal; walled borders
increasingly bar the transit of individuals, and a global society remains an ideal.
This implies a crisis within Enlightenment ideas which have orientated political
thought over the past two centuries, and which have largely defined what we
call humanism (both in the West and in the territories whose histories have been
dramatically marked by the process of colonisation). Faced with the impossibility
of understanding the existing conditions of individuals from a global perspective,
two essential questions come to mind: What is the actual status of humanism?; and
What is the meaning of contemporary?
The idea of borders has become assimilated into Western imagination
and they are conceived as impassable limits, associated with the image of thick,
high walls, police checks, surveillance systems and mechanisms of protection
from all kinds of dangers those lurking in the mind and body. We know that the
representation of the border does not necessarily have to be a line, because a border
is also a territory, a space where parameters meet and overlap. The border is, above
all, a zone of contact. Therefore, how today can we recognise what is local? And
what is the border itself? In a world characterised by uninterrupted production and
consumption, financial capital has no definite territory; nor does the circulation
of information: we are always in the locality and, at the same time, on the margin
that is, we are always in proximity to some kind of border. Chakrabarty was right
THE SENSE OF THE CONTEMPORARY
87
1. Dipesh Chakrabarty, El
humanismo en la era de la
globalizacin. La descolo
nizacin y las polticas
culturales (Humanism at
the Age of Globalisation:
Decolonisation and Cultural
Policies), Katz, Buenos
Aires, 2009, p 15.
when he stated that increasingly we are in contact with people very different from
ourselves, which should promote a spirit of worldwide cosmopolitanism.1
It is true to say that the new possibilities that the Internet brings are
a reality that overwhelmingly confirms this expectation, the modern ideal of interchange and knowledge. However, what does it actually mean to be in contact with
very different people? I think that the Internet is not the route to cosmopolitanism;
rather it is responsible for generating the flow of differences that enter into peoples
everyday lives. The volume, speed and accessibility of network transmissions are
such that it is impossible to process and understand the magnitude of their content,
because the processes of subjectivity (which allow the individual to understand the
reality beyond their immediate interests) are inhibited by the wealth of information
available, and also by the impact of these transmissions on the parameters which
represent reality.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Italian intellectual Norberto
Bobbio exposed what he called a crisis of democracy (The Future of Democracy, 1984), stressing that the concept which is defined according to the
notion or degree of popular participation and representation since the Enlightenment of the 18th century did not address the challenges that power
imposes on citizens today. Currently, differences of North/South, East/West,
democracy/repression, left/right, centre/periphery, government/opposition
have become unstable within a context which blurs their meaning. We live, therefore, in a world we do not understand.
88
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1. Dipesh Chakrabarty, El
humanismo en la era de la
globalizacin. La desco
lonizacin y las polticas
culturales. Katz, Buenos
Aires, 2009, p. 15.
89
90
91
resolve. The reality of networks has become a dense body of information. Manuel
Castells, a specialist in communication technology, has developed the concept of
the social network to refer to the kind of global community generated thanks to the
autonomy which allows the Internet to relate to power. In social networks communicative autonomy is fundamentally built on networks of Internet and wireless
communication platforms.8 According to Castells, social movements connected
by the Internet would be local and global at the same time and would manifest a
knowledge of the general problems shared by humanity and [show] a clear cosmopolitan culture, although they remain rooted in their specific cultural identity.9
The optimism of this author with respect to the double local/global relationship
made possible by digital networks is stimulating, but the question to be answered
is, What is the nature of that cosmopolitan culture?
In Spanish, the mode in which economic and technological global
isation generates a supposed cross-cultural global understanding is called
mundializacin a worldwidesation. Globalisation would be a paradoxical
universality whose protagonist would be a hypothetical global society or simply
humanity. We are far from this outcome. Globalisation is part of the imagery that
allows living in that magnitude of unpresentable factuality, which is globalisation.
It results in deviations and translations from the hegemonic cultural sphere. Such
globalised content is processed by people in their own realities and interpreted in
accordance with local or specific codes. The reception at one point of the planet is
active in comprising what comes from another point and is never passively received.
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but consists of a powerful ability to interact with foreign elements and give them
meaning, which is a continuous process of semiotic assimilation. Indeed, the culture of
a particular town always relates to that which has not yet been assimilated; therefore,
even the most stable elements are tested in the global relationship and are altered
in this process.
What critical expectations exist towards art today, when operating
in such a dynamic? The Spaniard Iria Candela, who recently assumed the position
of curator of Latin American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
points out as especially relevant the fact that contemporary Latin American artworks
do not promise any redemption [but] tend to activate the discrepancy in the public
sphere, through mechanisms of disillusion and disenchantment. 11 Art persists in
the relationship between criticism and self-awareness.
Currently two elements characterise artistic production: the circulation of artists and works; and the conceptualisation of thematic fields, set forth in
the perspective of global interest in the theme of the exhibitions. Why is it that the
conceptual dimension of a work operates as a condition of movement of contemporary art? This condition of movement corresponds to a sort of pre-understanding
of reality that takes place in networks of all types (economic, social, academic,
et cetera). It is not about networks that cross or cover reality, but about a kind of
reality that is constituted in such networks, including those which demand time,
making permanent displacement possible. According to this pre-understanding,
it is not that reality is always somewhere else, but that it only exists in the move-
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ment between different points on the international circuit. Where is the concept
of international art production? Young artists, writes Raymond Moulin, move
around the art circuit and the art market, trying to move from place to place, and
scholarship to scholarship, to obtain the qualification of an international artist.12
An international reality would, therefore, first and foremost, be a mobile reality,
in continuous displacement. An artist is not international by being here and there,
but by being in transit from one point to another.
The importance of the conceptual-discourse articulation of exhibitions is a clear sign of contemporaneity in the arts. The general objective
is to make exhibitions privileged occasions so that the general public can reflect
on conflicts contained within them (associated with issues such as migration,
sexuality, pollution, war, technology, police state, et cetera). There is no doubt
that the subjects about which art is expected to reflect come from what we
call the reality. Then, what should be examined is the reality of this global
platform to which art arrives. The same themes are carriers of a potential for
transversality which enables arts global circulation. And what theme would
not today be part of the elaborate speeches of art? Well, the nature of the platform is the economic globalisation of the planet and digital networks. Thus,
insofar as art aspires to enter the anonymous wave of globalisation, the need for
a speech, for a discourse, is assumed. One of the fundamental agents of this
phenomenon is the curator. For two decades, writes Christian Viveros-Faune, the
international curator has been located at the top of the pyramid of art, watching
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and curator Fernando Castro Flores points out, the biennial performs, at a conceptual level, a hegemony that would cancel out all alternative or dissenting spaces.
However, you might also think that, precisely because of the effect of hegemony,
there would be defined and permanently enhanced areas of difference in artistic
production. These areas would be primarily of a discursive-critical character at
least this is the hallmark of their contemporary credentials. Against prevailing
cynical irony, I venture to propose that the multiplication of zones of dissent with
conceptual density in art generates a kind of thought that never leaves the borders
of origin. The sense of the contemporary in the present is a situation of borders.
Only at the border, faced with the contingency of my own categories of perception
and representation, am I contemporary.
Perhaps the true reflective potential of the current status of contemporary art consists in its relationship with borders of all types: social, economic,
racial, sexual and technological. The critical place of the arts would today correspond
to those zones of intensity that proliferate in the era of networks.
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Colectivo
Sociedad Civil,
Historia larga
Civic Society
Collective,
History for Long
Gustavo Buntinx
Gustavo Buntinx (Buenos Aires, 1957, vive y trabaja en Per) es un historiador, crtico
y curador destacado por su exploracin en las dimensiones polticas, colectivas y
rituales del arte. En Lima fue miembro del colectivo Sociedad Civil, que en 2000
articul la accin colectiva Lava la bandera, para derrocar culturalmente la dictadura
de Alberto Fujimori y Vladimiro Montecinos.
Adems de dar clases en la Universidad de San Marcos, ha sido profesor
en posgrados de la Universidad de Sao Paulo en Brasil, la UBA de Argentina y la UNAM
en Mxico. Buntinx ha dirigido diversos centros culturales de Per; ha sido curador
en la Bienal de Venecia, la Trienal de Santiago, la Bienal de Fotografa de Lima, entre
otras muchas exposiciones. Ha participado en debates, ctedras, catlogos y revistas
por todo el continente americano. Desde 1998 lidera el proyecto Micromuseo (al fondo
hay sitio) que rescata el arte popular peruano actual y una visin cultural crtica como
alternativa de archivo pequeo, porttil y pblico.
The overthrow of a dictatorship is not usually the result of a single master blow,
but the slow decisive creation of democratic consensus in every sector of civil
society. An overthrow by cultural means can take the form of a disruption of public
consciousness, the product of multiple individual minds. It is part of a turn in the
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2. Translator note:
Yuyachkani is a radical and
popular theatre company in
Peru, and has been active
for more than 30 years. The
name means I am thinking
in Quechua, Perus main
indigenous language.
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106
en particular los barrios populares, con miles de afiches del llamado estilo chicha que
desde su estridente formalidad y realizacin tcnica (a cargo de un grfico callejero)
revertan en sus propios trminos el sentido mismo de esa manipulacin. CAMBIO
NO CUMBIA era el lema principal de un cartel cuyos vibrantes colores flor adems
exclamaban: NO AL TECNO-FRAUDE y QUE NO NOS BAILEN MS.
Se trataba, obviamente, de responder a la bastardizacin y cooptacin
de aspectos emblemticos de una modernidad popular que el rgimen pretenda
convertir en sustento cultural de la dictadura. Pero el inters en la reapropiacin de
esos aspectos no era estrictamente irnico ni pardico, sino por el contrario postulaba
la posibilidad de reivindicar un sentido emancipador en ellos. Su promesa cultural
incumplida. Poltico-cultural: relatos diversos de miembros de mesa revelan que un
nmero interesante de los votos democrticamente viciados durante la llamada segunda
vuelta de aquel ao 2000 exhiba la inscripcin cambio no cumbia.
Esa promesa era, sin duda, la del encuentro liberador de lo pequeoburgusilustrado con lo popular-emergente. Pero tambin la de una genuina colectivizacin de
la produccin simblica. Contra lo que algn medio confundido desinform en cierto
momento, aquella campaa fue producto de una praxis radicalmente colectiva de
concepcin y realizacin material. La propuesta de cada uno de los elementos de ese
afiche cada color, cada lema, cada tipografa surgi de personas distintas que articularon
as (no sin naturales discusiones) sus visiones diversas a un mismo proceso creativo.
Proceso adems dispuesto a fundirse en una esttica mayor, aunque aparentemente
ajena: el diseo grfico final fue pautado por el habitual de los afiches chicha, que
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LAVA LA BANDERA
La estrategia del Colectivo Sociedad Civil alcanza su realizacin plena en Lava la
bandera: un ritual participativo de limpieza patria iniciado por el CSC bajo la relativa
proteccin de la Feria por la Democracia que organizaciones cvicas armaron el 20
y 21 de mayo de 2000 en el cntrico Campo de Marte. Ese mismo 24 de mayo, sin
embargo, a solo cuatro das de la mal llamada segunda vuelta electoral, el Colectivo
asume los altos riesgos de trasladar Lava la bandera a la Plaza Mayor de Lima,
reiterando luego el ritual todos los viernes en la pileta colonial de este ltimo y tan
emblemtico espacio.
Ubicacin determinante para la fundacin simblica del sentido redentor
postulado por el ritual. Un acto de dignificacin de los emblemas nacionales y al mismo
tiempo un gesto propiciatorio de transparencia y honestidad en un proceso histrico
marcado por graves y turbias irregularidades. Los instrumentos litrgicos son mnimos
pero significativos: agua (el agua lustral), jabn (marca Bolvar: un militar patriota), y
vulgares bateas de plstico (rojo) colocadas sobre bancos rsticos de madera (barata
pero dorada: el altar de la patria, y la frase clebre de Antonio Raimondi).1
Estos elementos esperan all a todos aquellos que traen banderas peruanas,
de cualquier tamao pero confeccionadas en tela, para ser lavadas por los ciudadanos
mismos, y luego tendidas en cordeles hasta convertir al centro simblico de los poderes
pblicos de la ciudad (palacio, catedral, concejo) en un gigantesco tendal popular. Y a
la plaza pblica ms resguardada del pas en una prolongacin del patio domstico.
Los trapos sucios se lavan en casa, se quejaba en tono indignado Martha
Hildebrandt, la presidenta del sometido Congreso nacional, sin percatarse de su admisin
all implcita de la turbiedad impuesta por el rgimen al que tan autoritariamente serva.
Sin percatarse tampoco de que uno de los mltiples sentidos de Lava la bandera es
precisamente la reivindicacin de la Plaza Mayor como la casa de todos: un gora ciudadana.
Hay sin duda una emocin esttica ondeando entre cientos de banderas
que flamean las humedades de sus pliegues bajo la gara limea. Pero igualmente
emotivo es el espectculo de la palabra recuperada por personas de toda condicin que
se agrupan en corrillos diversos para acompaar la accin con discusiones mltiples
que an no cesan. Y cuando los agentes del Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional pretenden
infiltrar a la multitud instigndola a reaccionar violentamente contra el lavado patrio,
esta opta ms bien por debatir y rebatir sus desatinos y sinrazones, desbordndolos con
una prctica democrtica que les resulta desconcertante y termina por ahuyentarlos.
driven away by the democratic discussion and the refutation of their blunders and
injustices by the crowd.
This was not the only repressive strategy, of course. Repeatedly the
water supply was cut off, but the water still arrived in bags, bottles and bowls,
brought by neighbours and merchants in the area. Other days, noisy military bands
intended to stifle the protest with martial sounds: the population answered by
adapting the oppositions songs to theirs. On 7 July the police guard warned that
all the lines and washing would be forcefully pulled down. Under the symbolic
protection of the national anthem the flag is inviolable by the law the participants draped the flags over their bodies to form a giant human clothesline in
a poignant and powerful action. A dialectical overcoming of repression. And a
radical projection of energies. Lava la bandera was a politically symbolic gesture
but also a liturgical ablution or even a baptism, with all its connotations of rebirth
and return to life. A ritual gesture for the recovery and defense of citizens rights.
A social shamanism.
Lava la bandera was a symbolic investment that served as an effective
strategic rearguard for the reunification of the democratic forces during the worst
repressive times. This was immediately after the Marcha de los Cuatro Suyos (March
of the Four Suyos)4 convened to protest at the pathetic swearing in of the corrupt
dictator in the final days of July 2000. This massive demonstration, unprecedented
in the country, was brutally repressed. Six died tragically in spectacular fires caused
by the National Intelligence Service but blamed on the opposition.
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un par de miembros del Colectivo venan fotografiando desde hace varios aos en la
Carretera Central de Lima para otros fines. Y la realizacin material del grabado le fue
confiada a un serigrafista popular especializado en ese tipo de avisos comerciales, quien
inevitablemente tambin marc al trabajo con su propia y deseada impronta cultural.
En coherencia con ese modus operandi, el afiche se proyectaba adems
como una accin dialgica antes que como una obra cerrada. De all la necesidad
sentida de incluir en l una direccin de correo electrnico para opinin, discusin
y consulta, as como de una pgina web con links pertinentes a medios de prensa y
organismos de defensa de los derechos humanos. Un cartel interactivo.
1. El Per es un mendigo
sentado en un banco de
oro. Aunque algunos desde
hace tiempo proponen la
inversin precisa de ese
dicho (El Per es un banco
de oro sentado sobre un
mendigo). En el siglo XIX el
italiano Antonio Raimondi
explor buena parte de la
geografa peruana dejando
un impresionante legado de
observaciones y colecciones
cientficas, adems de
apreciaciones sociales.
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With political parties in withdrawal and many politicians on the defensive, overwhelmed by guilt if not directly corrupted by the regime, Lava la bandera
gave the citizens the will not to give up. And it grew beyond all expectations. In
the following weeks tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, in the whole
country and abroad, joined those who had already taken as their own the collective
initiative. The result was a collective ritual in all Peru: A symbolic and silent ritual
extends to the length and breadth of the country, stated the newspaper Liberacin,
claiming: Lava la bandera: a protest that does not cease.
Lava la bandera is a cancer, Vladimiro Montesinos, the dark brain
of repression and corruption after Fujimori, purportedly said, alluding to the
actions metastatic growth without a centralised focus. Since mid-September
there was virtually no city across the country, or district in the vast Metropolitan
Lima (eight million inhabitants), where the flag was not ritually washed. This also
happened in at least 20 Peruvian communities abroad. Certain politicians and
democratic parties promptly joined the action. Reservists of the army, journalists,
womens organisations, unions, neighborhood committees and institutions of all
kinds also participated in or organised their own washes.
In moments of greatest despair, the flag of Peru was not only washed,
but also the emblems of institutions that were put to the service of the dictatorship.
The district banners of places as politically significant as Callao and Miraflores, for
example. And eventually a dishonoured Japanese flag, due to the protection given by
that country home of Fujimori ancestors to the fugitive leader. Army uniforms
were also washed in front of the commander. Fujimoris constitution and documents
from trials for murder and torture were washed on the steps of the Courthouse, along
with caps and gowns of the judges. There was even a striking face wash, in allusion
to the shamelessness of certain members of Congress.
Lava la bandera became incorporated into the common sensibility
and cultural landscape. An advertising campaign for an encyclopedia showed a child
reading in the Plaza Mayor with the patriotic flags hanging in the background. The
television advertisement of an airline depicted the hands of a worker carefully cleaning
the flag painted on an aircrafts fuselage. Even glamour and celebrity publications used
actresses images identified with the CSC (Mnica Snchez: a womans flag, was the
headline). The most read newspaper supplement in the country stamped on its cover
a dramatic picture of the washing with the headline: Friday: the homeland soaks.
The extent and intensity of the phenomenon seriously worried the regime.
The rants of Martha Hildebrandt and other spokesmen added to that of the corrupt
press with the intent to discredit and ridicule Lava la bandera. The then Minister of the
Interior (who is now in jail), offered a faulty interpretation of the regulations issued
over half a century ago by General Odra (a dictatorship cites another dictatorship),
intending to declare illegal a ritual explicitly defined as an act of patriotic purification.
This situation was understood by the society as a whole, who
quickly endorsed basic but powerful metaphors of hygiene. An effective lesson in
cleaning, in the words of the main newspaper of the country, for which the best
detergent is democracy.
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se le sumaron las pullas alteradas con que la prensa corrupta pretenda deslegitimar
y ridiculizar Lava la bandera. Y los argumentos pseudo jurdicos del entonces ministro
del Interior (hoy en la crcel), quien haciendo una lectura torpe de reglamentaciones
emitidas hace medio siglo por el general Odra (una dictadura cita a otra dictadura)
pretenda declarar ilegal y vejatorio para la nacin un ritual que sin embargo se define
explcitamente como acto de purificacin patritica.
As lo entendi la sociedad civil en su conjunto, que rpidamente hizo
suyas las elementales pero poderosas metforas de higiene tan deliberadamente
explcitas en Lava la bandera. Su eficaz leccin de limpieza, en las palabras del
principal peridico del pas, para el cual el mejor detergente es la democracia.
Pero esta metfora de limpieza lo es tambin de regeneracin e incluso
de inocencia recuperada, de renacimiento bautismal. No es de extraar que en los
continuos reportajes fotogrficos de Lava la bandera se privilegiara frecuentemente
imgenes enternecedoras de nios participando en el lavado de la esperanza, por
decirlo con uno de los lemas periodsticos caractersticamente utilizados: la revista
Caretas resume el trnsito al nuevo milenio en el dibujo de una pequea que, al lavar
la bandera, limpia a la patria de la sombra ominosa de Montesinos y Fujimori, dejando
atrs esa imagen sumisa de geisha que durante aos encarn la pasividad de tantos.
Cleaning is also a metaphor for regeneration, the recovery of innocence, for baptismal rebirth. It is not surprising that the photoshoots of Lava la
bandera frequently include images of children participating in the washing of
hope. The magazine Caretas summarised the transit to the new millennium in the
drawing of a little girl who, while washing the flag, is cleaning the ominous shadow
of Montesinos and Fujimori, leaving behind the image of a geisha, which embodied
the passivity of so many.
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EL PODER DE LO SIMBLICO
Lava la bandera le dio imagen colectiva y propia a un cambio epocal que urgentemente
precisaba significar la emocin de su momento histrico. Como aquella inslita fotografa
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que el 25 de noviembre de 2001, poco despus de la fuga del dictador, fue portada a
color de todos los peridicos de Lima, incluyendo el diario oficial y rganos fujimoristas
que, hasta apenas unos das antes se haban ensaado con el Colectivo Sociedad Civil.
Era para no creerlo, relataba la muy leda revista Somos: All, dando el balconazo,
estaba no solo el flamante presidente Valentn Paniagua y el nuevo primer ministro
Javier Prez de Cuellar, sino tambin un puado de personas que, hace algunos meses,
jams hubieran imaginado arengar a las masas desde Palacio, las gorritas rojas, las
voces roncas de tanto gritar y, entre las manos, el mismo pedazo de tela blanca y roja
que es un testimonio y es tambin una bandera.
Una bandera percudida y rota que exhiba, como heridas sanadoras, las
huellas de miles de abluciones rituales ejercidas durante seis meses sobre ellas. El pao
estaba siendo entregado a los mximos dignatarios del nuevo gobierno como prenda del
compromiso que ellos deban asumir con la agenda democrtica exigida por la ciudadana.
Simultneamente un estandarte inmenso era elevado a los cielos por cien globos blancos
y otros doscientos de encendidos rojos (justicia potica). Era el momento culminante de
la despedida ritual de Lava la bandera convocada por el Colectivo apenas instaurado el
nuevo gobierno. Bailando y lavando, miles participaron eufricos en ese cierre festivo
del tendal semanal de banderas limpias.
Pero estas fueron all tambin planchadas, dobladas y cosidas para
mejor cuidarlas a la espera del momento en que sean otra vez necesarias para la
reivindicacin de la democracia, como reza el manifiesto redactado para la ocasin
y precisamente intitulado: Lava, plancha, cose, dobla, cuida.
the moral authority of 1000 washing rituals. The collective exercise acts religiously
(symbolically) as well as patriotically. It was its easy access and immediacy that
made Lava la bandera ritualise the country. Hence perhaps its ability to get into
the emotional memory of a citizenship in construction.
Lava la bandera: a ritual that Peruvians wont forget wrote La
Repblica at the end of the Millennium. And El Comercio: The year 2000 will be
remembered as the year in which the flag was washed.
matic flag is perhaps the one taken by Christ in the process of his resurrection,
the resurrection whose only sign is an abandoned shroud in the empty sepulchre.
The Holy Shroud.
The banner is thus related to clothing, as the recurrent legends that
speak of the origin of the flag in terms of a transformation of dress sacred or
heroic. And in that way it is also linked to the idea of a purification, as the Lamb of
God taking away the sins of the world.
The mythical resonances may take other forms, in the same way as the
symptomatic obsession in Peru converts the countrys founders into cleaning products San Martn soap, Bolvar soap.6 Does this reveal a certain unconsciousness of
the unfinished foundations? And the ideological image of the Baroque fountain in
the main square, with its Iberian Lions sodomising Inca serpents: a relentless allegory of the conquest that is now also our colonial condition, even if it is apparently
thawing. A shift that Lava la bandera wanted to contribute to through the ritual
act of liberation.
The density of this chain of associations, however, escapes everyday
readability. Cheap symbolism is the term used by Martha Hildebrandt to disqualify
politically and culturally Lava la bandera. She was right, however, in at least
two ways: the resources needed for the ritual; and the apparent literalness. But both
aspects were conscious decisions.
The broad and radical modification of consciousness the CSCs
required transformative experiences that are only obtainable through the incorporation
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por Cristo en el trance supremo de su resurreccin. Esa resurreccin cuya nica seal
es la mortaja vaca abandonada en el sepulcro. El santo sudario.
El estandarte se relaciona as con la ropa, como lo sealan las recurrentes
leyendas que hablan del origen de la bandera en trminos de una transformacin del
vestido heroico
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118
incorporacin viva de la poblacin a una praxis simblica que supere la simple recepcin
de discursos y consignas, o la participacin en actos estrictamente polticos. Que recupere
la reprimida iniciativa cultural de nuestros pueblos. Y de esa manera tambin la autoestima
ciudadana. De all la estructura elemental pero abierta y participativa en cada una de las
acciones del Colectivo. Se busca generar no obras sino situaciones a ser apropiadas por una
ciudadana que abandona as el papel pasivo del espectador para convertirse en coautora
y regeneradora de la experiencia. Y de la historia misma. De all tambin su realizacin
preferencial en los espacios ms pblicos y simblicamente cargados antes que en los
mbitos protegidos (y por ello mismo restringidos) de circulacin estrictamente artstica.
No han faltado esfuerzos crticos por apreciar Lava la bandera desde
las sugerencias ofrecidas por el happening, la performance, el arte procesal... Pero la
valoracin de sus acciones en tales trminos artsticos le es por lo general indiferente
a un Colectivo cuyos miembros se asumen primeramente como ciudadanos y solo en
segundo trmino como autores culturales, sin por ello perder de vista la importancia
de esa capacidad profesional que en la lucha por el poder simblico le otorga un
evidente plus diferencial.
Los referentes destacados en la discusin interna no suelen provenir
de la historia del arte, tradicionalmente entendida, sino de aquellas instancias que
la fracturan hacia una sociabilidad poltico-cultural ms amplia. Como en ciertas
intervenciones de elementos de la Avanzada chilena en el plebiscito contra Pinochet.
O en las estrategias simblicas de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo en Argentina.
No es difcil ubicar antecedentes propiamente artsticos que informan las
propuestas del Colectivo Sociedad Civil, incluso entre sus propios miembros. Susana
Torres, por ejemplo, quien en 1995 inaugura una muestra precisamente denominada
La Vandera, en un juego ortogrfico que es tambin pictrico al incorporar a los
estandartes que ella misma cose y borda cuadros intervenidos de la lavandera popular
lavando precisamente banderas. (Un abismamiento patrio). O Emilio Santisteban,
quien cuatro aos despus personaliza radicalmente el retorizado saludo a la bandera
en una performance ritual reiterada sacrificialmente mil doscientos treinta y cinco
veces para igual nmero de espectadores uno por vez (Crisis, 1999). Un despertar
individualizado de la dormida conciencia nacional.
Tales sealamientos aislados, sin embargo, desvirtan el procesamiento
colectivo donde la tormenta grupal de ideas transforma y drsticamente rearticula cada
propuesta. Y adems lo que en este tipo de experiencias importa no es la condicin
artstica sino la intervencin de sus recursos modificados para la redefinicin crtica
del poder y de lo poltico. La construccin de un contra poder, simblico que capitaliza
pero trasciende cualquier referencialidad estrictamente plstica. Entrar y salir del
arte podra ser la frmula aqu operativa. No una liquidacin sino una transfusin
artstica hacia el agnico cuerpo social.
ready to hem a new community which does not repress, but takes into account the
difference. The new citizenship.
Lets make history. Long.
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SANA TU PAS
Pues lo que est finalmente en juego es la significacin y pertenencia de una emblemtica
paradigmtica que es ahora tambin un campo de batalla. Una sacralidad retorizada
que la lucha por el poder simblico reactiva en algunos de sus sentidos ms vitales
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Ticio Escobar,
Entrevista con
Beatriz Bustos
Oyanedel
La fuerza de
la diferencia
Ticio Escobar,
Interview with
Beatriz Bustos
Oyanedel
Strength Lies in
the Difference
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Los artistas
The Artists
Fernando
Arias
Born 1963, Armenia, Colombia /
Lives and works in Colombia
and United Kingdom
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Fernando Arias
Se busca donante de cenizas
(Donor of Ashes Wanted)
(detail) 2009
THE ARTISTS
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Catalina
Bauer
Born 1976, Buenos Aires,
Argentina / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
Chilean artist Catalina Bauer makes use of different media such as video, choreography, sculpture and techniques in elementary crafts like braiding, weaving,
knotting, netting and knitting. At times the materials Bauer uses, such as rubber
bands, cords, laces and strings, come from donations by members of the community in which she is working, who are encouraged to participate and collaborate.
To this extent, her art has been read as a fusion of ancient textile traditions with
the Bauhaus principles of colour, form and scale, while also having a meditative and
transformative effect. The act of knitting, for instance, embodies a preoccupation
with both the rhythm and patterns of the process almost as a form of breathing at
the same time as expressing an awe-inspiring creation of forms. Her works suggest
an engagement with slow and labour-intensive techniques, an antidote to the fast
pace of contemporary production, yet could also feature industrial elements and
therefore propose a poetic dialogue between them.
In Chacra, 2009 the word alludes to the concept of a bodily power
centre as well as the Chilean name for a small piece of land Bauer created a large
crocheted textile with nylon string. The artwork was made alongside a group of
women at the weaving workshop in La Casa de la Mujer Huamachuco (Huamachuco
Womens House) in Renca, Santiago, and it reflects both the performative and social
engagement dimensions of her work. Each group member received a ball of string to
weave into a circle with the instruction that it must be joined to another members
when complete. This process was multiplied until everyone was working together
on the same blanket, which became a metaphor for solidarity and self-reliance.
In Networkshop, 2012, the artist organised an actual workshop in the context of a
residence in Gasworks (London). Once again, she worked with a group of women,
this time artists, teachers, mothers and housewives, who became involved in a series
of rounds of collective weaving that acted almost like a group dance.
Such choreographic elements are most obvious in the video Primeras
Palabras (First Words), 2014, part of a larger collaborative project with the dancer
Amelia Ibez. As Bauer explains, this piece refers to the process of learning a
language through the creation of an alphabet of movements and postures performed
with the body. We used the letters to form words and brief sentences that were
presented as a simple choreography.1 The work is based on the book El Silabario
(The Syllabary, 1945) by the Chilean teacher Adrian Dufflocq, who aimed to reduce
illiteracy. The black and white video brings together the movements of both females
(who dance in separate frames) with those of a hand writing on a chalkboard, and
combines the performative aspects of both dancing and tracing. L V
1.See www.catalinabauer.com/
artwork/primeras-palabras/,
accessed 19 Jan 2016.
138
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THE ARTISTS
139
Paulo
Bruscky
Born 1949, Recife,
Brazil / Lives and works
in Recife, Brazil
140
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Paulo Bruscky
Aerograma #1 (Aerogram #1)
1975
THE ARTISTS
141
Colectivo
de Acciones
de Arte
(C.A.D.A.)
Santiago, Chile 197989
Fernando Balcells, Born 1950,
Santiago, Chile / Lives and
works in Santiago, Chile
Juan Castillo, Born 1952,
Antofagasta, Chile / Lives and
works in Stockholm, Sweden
Diamela Eltit, Born 1949,
Santiago, Chile / Lives and
works in Santiago, Chile
Lotty Rosenfeld, Born 1943,
Santiago, Chile / Lives and
works in Santiago, Chile
Ral Zurita, Born 1951,
Santiago, Chile / Lives and
works in Santiago, Chile
1. Claudia Calirman,
Interventions in the Social
Landscape: Parallels Between
Brazilian Artistic Actions
and the Chilean Avanzada,
Note in the History of Art,
vol 31, Spring 2012, p 36.
2. As transcribed in Fernando
Balcells, c.a.d.a. there is
art and life, yet, Artlink,
vol 27, no 2, p 30.
3. Joanne Pottlitzer, Lotty
Rosenfeld, Visual Artist,
Literature and Arts of the
Americas, vol 36, iss 66,
p 6263.
142
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C.A.D.A.
Intervention on the north bank
of the Mapocho River, Santiago,
23 September 1983, 14:30 hrs
Photo: Jorge Brantmayer
THE ARTISTS
143
Luis
Camnitzer
Born 1973, Lbeck, Germany /
Lives and works in New York
City, USA
Since moving to New York in 1964 Luis Camnitzers work has been marked by a
synergistic coalescence of South American and various other influences. Prior to his
self-imposed political exile in the early 1960s, Camnitzer worked as a printmaker
and caricaturist; finely tuning a critical sensibility that would inform his practice.
During the 1970s, the artist deployed art as a pointed political instrument, inspired
by a growing wave of South American military regimes taking root in the late 1960s.
Later pieces, such as the Uruguayan Torture Series, 198384, developed added
complexity as both protests against suppressed civil liberties in South America as
well as commentaries on the dissemination and reception of news relating to the
deprivation of human rights.
Camnitzers is an art concerned with promoting critical thinking but
not exclusively around regional geopolitics. Several of his works have a personal
inflection and an eye toward arts dematerialisation, as in the ironic Portrait of the
Artist, 1991/2010 and Self Portraits, 1968, 1970, 1972 where no image of the artist
is shown. In fact, it is in Landscape As an Attitude, 1979 that we actually encounter
Camnitzers person: shot lying down, up close, in profile, with a set of plastic miniatures arranged on his face. The image constitutes a pastoral scene in which the
artists body functions as both figure and ground, sculpture and environment, object
and subject in a playful deconstruction of art tropes that is typical of his approach.
Highlighting a playful yet critical perspective based on a found
object, The Discovery of Geometry, 1978, is one of several images by Camnitzer
somewhat dislocated from the real world and its material constraints. Something
of a visual sleight of hand, the work draws inspiration from the logic-defying
methods of Surrealism and the movements dismissal of rationality. Along with The
Invention of the Postcard, 1972 and The Craftsmanship of Landscape, 1972, The
Discovery of Geometry forms a series relating to particular fictive moments of origin.
Once viewed in light of 1960s and 70s Conceptualism, such works become allegories
for artistic practice concerned with providing material existence to the otherwise
immaterial realm of ideas.
Camnitzers promotion of an important political note for art is
reinforced in one particularly memorable interview, where he refers to his mode
of operation as art thinking in contrast to the more familiar mode of art making.1
The former rubric, he states, characterises a way of organising and acquiring
knowledge that is opposed to promoting object production as the pinnacle of
artistic research. His art embodies methods shared across his parallel pursuits as an
educator, essayist and critic one that is firmly grounded in approaching pedagogy
as a political instrument and art as an intellectual provocation. J M
Luis Camnitzer
The Discovery of Geometry 1978, 2008
Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates,
New York Luis Camnitzer/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
144
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THE ARTISTS
145
Juan
Castillo
Born 1952, Antofagasta,
Chile / Lives and works in
Stockholm, Sweden
Juan Castillo was member of C.A.D.A. (197985), one of the most vigorous art collectives operating during the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile. Works by C.A.D.A.
feature prominently in the contemporary art circuit, as exemplified by their presence
in the collection of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, which also
holds an open digital archive of the group. Its short name stands for Colectivo de
Acciones de Arte (Collective of Art Actions), and indeed the notion of art of action
was central to its operations: the multidisciplinary group would carry out different
events in public spaces aiming to disrupt the Pinochet dictatorship apparatus and to
question the traditional spaces and mechanisms for the production of art. As Robert
Neustadt noted in CADA Da (a title that plays with the phrase every day, 2001),
arguably the most authoritative book on the group, they were driven by a real political
desire and by an attempt to redefine the exclusionary parameters separating artistic
creation from public interpretation and the corresponding creation of meaning.1
The engagement of the public was a key dimension of C.A.D.A.s actions,
during a time of restricted political participation and extreme surveillance. Examples of this are the well-known: Para no morir de hambre en el arte (In Order Not to
Starve to Death in Art), 1979, a performance of several art actions addressing hunger,
poverty and civil needs in the country, which included the distribution of milk to
people in Santiagos slums, a parade of milk trucks, a paid blank page published in the
periodical Hoy and other satellite actions; and Ay Sudamrica! (Oh South America!),
1981, an action that consisted of six small airplanes flying in perfect formation over
Santiago and dropping 400,000 flyers that discussed the relationship between art
and society an artwork that references the bombardment of La Moneda, Chiles
House of Government, in the context of the military coup led by Pinochet.
Castillos individual work expresses both concern about the strategies
and objectives of visual arts and an engagement with audience. Technology, another
very important dimension of C.A.D.A.s pieces, is also essential in Castillos interrogation of art and life, as is the use of video and neon lights in his different installations.
His most recent work explores the processes of modernisation experienced by
different cultures and the undefined zones that configure our identities as global
citizens. Very often the artist works with ideas and elements that he might abandon
and take up again later; he considers these open works. A previous piece shown in
New Zealand reflects this way of working: Minimal Baroque, 200611 was initiated
with a project in Auckland, for which he interviewed marginal inhabitants of the
city about the meanings of art, dreaming and travelling. The responses were gathered
in a video that was projected in the back of a truck which drove around the city.
Different versions of this project have been carried out in Stockholm, Fuerteventura,
Santiago, Antofagasta and Valparaso. L V
Juan Castillo
Huacheras (video stills)
201516
1. Robert Neustadt,
(Con)fusing Signs and
Postmodern Positions:
Spanish American
Performance, Experimental
Writing, and the Critique
of Political Confusion,
Garland, New York and
London, 1999, p 30.
146
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THE ARTISTS
147
Carlos
Castro
Born 1976, Bogot,
Colombia / Lives and works
in Bogot, Colombia
Carlos Castros work combines diverse media including painting, video, objects and
installations. Through the recontextualisation of images and objects Castros art
examines stories that over time have been set aside or ignored, and thus reflects on
how icons and ideas that have been culturally accepted become redefined within
the contemporary context. Castro reflects on what is considered culturally appropriate or clandestine, and searches for moments when these concepts intersect.
The way these notions are perceived, particularly within the conservative context
of Colombia and Latin America, where certain inherited colonial notions prevail, is
a key theme in the artists work.
Risus Sativus (Laughter Music), 2011, one of Castros most well-known
works, is an installation that includes knives that were seized by the police from the
outskirts of Caracas and Bogot. Castro used these everyday weapons to construct
experimental music boxes that play old Italian military marches tunes that despite
their foreign origin are a familiar sound in the Colombian context.
Another one of his well-known works titled El que no sufre no vive (That
Which Does Not Suffer Does Not Live), 2009, is a video showing a statue of Simn
Bolivar made of edible material that is being devoured by pigeons. The figure was
placed in front of the original statue in the Plaza de Bolvar in Bogot on 7 August
2009. Pigeons gradually began to devour the liberation hero, who is considered
the founder of the Republic of Colombia and Bolivia, and who also contributed
greatly to the emancipation of present-day Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama,
Peru and Venezuela.
El que no sufre no vive, conveys the artists interest in inherited values
that have prevailed over time and on how their influence on society today becomes
evident. Castro explains: I am interested in how icons representing cultural values that
have been accepted as a given are redefined in contemporary society when faced with
unrecognizable or unwanted aspects of society. In other words, I have an interest
for that moment where the established and the clandestine overlap and create a
kind of social schizophrenia.1
It can be said that Castros objects and images are like open bodies
which are in a constant process of adaptation a readjustment to established
cultural prejudices found in every context where the artists work is presented.
At first glance they appear to comprise simple elements, yet upon a closer viewing
various juxtapositions become evident and in doing so present meanings that reveal
the artists ironic and critical spirit. A I & M E
Carlos Castro
El que no sufre no vive (That Which
Does Not Suffer Does Not Live)
(video still) 2009
148
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THE ARTISTS
149
Lygia
Clark
Born 1920, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil / Died 1988, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
The articulated structure and sharp geometric planes of Lygia Clarks Bichos, 1960,
recall the cool restraint of Minimalist sculpture, but the works are inherently unstable
and were designed to be handled. Their hinges reminded the artist of a spinal column,
and this vertebral animal characteristic is reflected in the artworks name, which
translates to creature. With no fixed shape or front or back, the sculptures can be
reconfigured in multiple ways and are activated through the folding and unfolding
of their related planes, whose movement is interdependent. For Clark, each Bicho
had its own spirit and individuality that revealed itself within its inner time of
expression.1 The creation of the Bichos precipitated Clarks evolution towards
greater active audience participation, and to more body-based work. Clark wrote:
The animal has his own and well-defined cluster of movements which react to the
promptings of the spectator . . . his parts are functionally related to each other, as if he
were a living organism; and the movements of these parts are interlinked . . . The first
movement (yours) does not belong to the animal. The inter-linking of the spectators
action and the animals immediate answer is what forms this new relationship, made
possible precisely because the animal moves i.e., has a life of its own . . .2
As a founding member of the Neo-Concrete movement in the late 1950s,
Clark developed her interactive art experiences in response to the rationalism of
Concrete art and its mythologies of the transcendental and universal. As Clarks
practice evolved, she increasingly refused the value of the art object, turning to
ephemeral material to create sensorial and haptic experiences in which participants
would become more aware of themselves and their inner consciousness.
In an image from Clarks 1965 exhibition at Signals London, Bichos
sit on the floor and on plinths surrounded by her paintings, and a collection of
Estuturas de caixas de fsforos (Matchbox Structures), 1964. Like the Bichos, the
matchbox works were mutable objects. Their structure, comprising small coloured
square compartments, recall the geometric abstract painting of Piet Mondrian and
Theo van Doesburg, but they were designed to be held, and the action of opening
and closing the drawers suggested the objects making and unmaking.
Clark further developed the role of touch with the Nostalgia del cuerpo
(Nostalgia for the Body) series in which she created Luvas sensoriais (Sensorial
Gloves), 1968, where participants rediscovered their sense of touch by handling
objects with gloves of different textures and thicknesses. This work challenged
traditional roles and hierarchies: the viewer was no longer passive; the status of
the art objects shifted; and the object itself was more difficult to collect or exhibit.
Over the course of her career Clark increasingly subverted the identity of the artist
and the notion of authorship and the nature of art through experiential works and
practices that folded the categories of artist and viewer and self and public into
each other. J W
Lygia Clark
Bicho (Creature) 1960, 2016
150
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THE ARTISTS
151
Mximo
Corvaln
Born 1973, Santiago,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
152
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Mximo Corvaln
Proyecto ADN (DNA Project)
(detail) 2012
THE ARTISTS
153
Jonathas
de Andrade
Born 1982, Macei,
Brazil / Lives and work
in Recife, Brazil
Jonathas de Andrade
40 nego bom 1 real (40 Black
Candies Is R$1) (detail) 2013
154
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THE ARTISTS
155
Lenora
de Barros
Born 1953, So Paulo,
Brazil / Lives and works
in So Paulo, Brazil
For the 2014 work Pregao (Portuguese for nail action), Lenora de Barros pins
the letters SILNCIO onto a bare wall and hammers nails into the letters, one after
another, with percussive strikes that mark a negation of the central word. Seconds
later, members of the audience join her in hammering. Before long the space is
made to reverberate with the brutal sonority of metal against metal. At the actions
conclusion there emerges a rather curious-looking sculptural concrete poem.
De Barros adopted a poetic and feminist investigation of the role of
language during the 1970s that was marked by an avant-gardist leaning dating back
to the 1950s.1 Since 1983 Concrete poetry has had a presence in de Barros practice.
That same year marked her turn towards more visually oriented explorations around
language with the publishing of the artist book Onde Se V (Where One Sees), a
compilation of Concrete poems and photo sequences. The precise configuration
of words into typographic designs as a means of foregrounding their verbal, vocal
and visual qualities has since been a feature in much of her art.
In other works approaching the politics of who is speaking, mouths and
tongues have assumed a position of significance, and these appear as both metonyms
for language as well as politically and socially constitutive organs. In Homenagem
a George Segal (Homage to George Segal), 1984, these concerns are made manifest
through a performative tribute in which the artist is recorded frantically brushing
her teeth. This otherwise simple act of ablution is performed repeatedly with such
intensity that de Barros head and upper body are covered in layers of foam to resemble
the stark white figurative sculptures of the titular artist, George Segal.
Through Homenagems protracted gesture, de Barros situates
herself amid a lineage of labouring female bodies in performance art; enacting a
reinsertion of the living body into Segals deathly hollow casts. But even beyond
its feminist implications, one can discern further political strands permeating
the work: including a subtle polemic against North Americas stranglehold on
the canonical discourses of American art. And perhaps another, rather sobering
exegesis might posit the artists vanishing act as calling to mind the voiceless and
invisible victims of persecution.
For de Barros, audiovisual interplays, where the aural converges with
the graphic, allow for conceptually generative encounters with text and speech.
Through her work we witness the mechanics of language fold and collapse by way
of contortions, stretching beyond semiotic boundaries to unlock new affective
registers. It should therefore come as no surprise that de Barros is a former student
of linguistics. As an artist, her greatest facility lies in deploying a range of media
(video, performance, photography, installation, sound art, object-poems) to unveil
the dynamics of speech and language as embodied phenomena, which form the
locus of subjectivity. J M
Lenora de Barros
Pregao (Nail Action)
(performance documentation)
2014
156
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THE ARTISTS
157
Eugenio
Dittborn
Born 1943, Santa Cruz,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
158
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Eugenio Dittborn
Viajar II (Travel II) 1989
THE ARTISTS
159
Juan
Downey
Born 1940, Santiago, Chile /
Died 1993, New York City, USA
The well-known anthropologist Michael Taussig has noted that there are too many
stories about Juan Downeys The Laughing Alligator, 197779 narratives about
the actual laughter of the Yanomami Indians, and those about Downeys near-death
experience when, on a hunting expedition, several Indians turned their poisonous
arrows on him and he defended himself by grabbing his camera as if it were a weapon.
So many stories, Taussig implies, that at times the artwork is forgotten. Yet Taussig
reminds us of the extraordinary qualities of the video itself: he notes, for instance,
the rhythms of light and shade, flicker and sheen; the collage of images telling many
stories simultaneously; the human faces and the nearly naked bodies in loving
close-up; the importance of the absent sound. Recorded while Downey and his
family were living among the Yanomami people of Venezuela, this compelling series
of anecdotes tracks the artists search for an indigenous cultural identity and his
interest in the funerary customs of the Yanomami community, who ritually consume
the pulverised bones of their dead in a banana soup, giving rise to outsiders claims
that they are cannibals.
Downey trained in Santiago and Paris, and developed his career in
New York. He is mostly known for his innovative autobiographical and anthropological
approaches to the documentary genre, exploring both European myths and the roots
and rituals of a contested Latin American identity in complex and layered videos
based on non-linear narratives. He searched for an alternative view of the Americas,
and of his own place within it. The term invisible architect seems an apt way of
describing his working method. The fact that Downey trained as an architect in
Santiago appears anecdotal; at a more profound level, he weaved different traditions
and multiple channels to explore and rethink connections between society, history,
information and the environment. The invisible architect becomes one (interweaves
his life) with energy and manipulates this wave material, he said.1 These ideas were
first explored through paintings; later through animated electronic and kinetic
sculptures; and then in happenings and performances. For the latter he used closedcircuit television systems to record the action and audience, who were encouraged
to participate. Later on he purchased a video camera and started to experiment with
the expansion of space and time using mirrors, light, shadow and the radiant nature
of electro-magnetic energy, making him an early pioneer in the exploration of how
cities replace physical connections with virtual exchanges in the information age.
Through his association with the Raindance collective and the magazine Radical
Software, he was also at the forefront of the theorisation of video work in the 1970s,
aiming to relate the medium to political, social and ecological issues.
The Laughing Alligator is arguably his most personal video work and
the climax of his art; a combination of methods of anthropological research with
journaling, it is a liminal space of objective and subjective visions. L V
Juan Downey
The Laughing Alligator
(video still) 197779
Estate of Juan Downey,
courtesy of Marilys B Downey
160
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THE ARTISTS
161
Ronald
Duarte
Born 1962, Barra Mansa,
Brazil / Lives and works in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1. Oxal is an orisha, a
spirit that reflects one
of the manifestations of
God. In this case Obatal is
the Sky Father and creator
of human bodies of the
Yoruba religion.
2. An African religious
belief that was introduced
into Brazilian culture
though the Atlantic slave
trade migration.
162
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Ronald Duarte
Nimbo Oxal (Nimbus Oxal)
(video still) 2004
THE ARTISTS
163
Juan Manuel
Echavarra
Born 1947, Medelln,
Colombia / Lives and works
in Bogot, Colombia
164
Before becoming an artist Juan Manuel Echavarra was a writer. He published two
novels: La gran catarata (The Great Waterfall) (1981) and Moros en la costa
(The Coast Is Not Clear) (1991). This literary background perhaps enhances Echavarras
ability to narrate stories through images, particularly photographs and videos. The
artist views his artwork as short stories which are told through images.
Echavarra uses literary devices such as metaphor and metonymy to
help portray the pain and grief of his country in an attempt to provide hope to the
Colombians who live in a context filled with devastation and brutality. Echavarras
work explores reality to examine the tragedy of a country at war while attempting
to preserve the memory of the Colombian conflict. Visiting sites of conflict and
searching for scenes that can convey the situation to those who have not witnessed
what is occurring in remote locations, places Echavarra has come to call cemeteries,
is part of the artists working method.
In 2010 Echavarra was invited to visit Mampujn in the Montes de
Mara, Colombia. The local community gathered to commemorate 10 years since
their exile, which was brought about by the actions of the paramilitary group Heroes
de los Montes de Mara. During this visit Echavarra began his photographic series
Serie Silencios (Silence Series), 2010ongoing. As he was walking by the abandoned
remains of the Escuela Rural Mixta de Mampujn, one of the municipal schools of
this community whose roofs are broken and floors covered in vegetation, Echavarra
spotted vowels written on a chalkboard. He was lured by the handwriting and colour
of the letters, which seemed as if they were dancing on the board. Individual letters
were still visible, despite the humidity and passing of time, except for o the letter
that became the title of the first photograph in this series.
Another discovery Echavarra made during his walk around Mampujn
was the phrase Lo bonito es estar vivo (Being alive is what is beautiful), also written
on a chalkboard. These barely legible words were clear enough to be read and they
conveyed to Echavarra the essence of what had become the daily struggle in this
place: to be alive.
The photographs of these empty spaces touch the collective memory
of all those who were forced to leave their towns and villages and provide at least
a brief restoration of the time before this exodus. The series includes images from
schools belonging to more than 60 towns and cities in Colombia, the majority located
in the Montes de Mara, and the project is ongoing. A I & M E
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THE ARTISTS
165
Virginia
Errzuriz
Born 1941, Santiago,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
166
Virginia Errzurizs art making has from the outset of her practice focused on the
use of print, drawing, photographs and especially found objects which she collects
and combines to create diverse installations. Her approach when selecting materials
is analytical and her arrangement of a works constituent parts rigorous. Items in
Errzurizs art include discarded cardboard, industrial waste, newspaper clippings,
postcards and other such ubiquitous everyday objects. The artist defines her work
as pieces to be put together, and she reduces the elements present in her artworks
to the point that they offer only small signals for the viewer to employ in their interpretation of what they are seeing.
In 1974, Errzuriz founded along with her husband and fellow artist
Francisco Brugnoli the Taller de Artes Visuales (TAV, Visual Arts Workshop).
The workshop, which was formed in response to the Chilean military dictatorship,
was created after more than half of the professors teaching at the Arts Faculty of
the Universidad de Chile lost their teaching positions. The TAV was created as a
place that could house a printing workshop and it promoted the freedom to make
art, which was at the time restricted. The importance of the TAV in the context
of the 1970s lies in the fact that it allowed the dissemination of works by new
artists. Besides being a member of this group, Errzuriz has been an art educator
for decades, and her way of thinking and her visual work have provided important
inspirations for many generations of young artists.
Among Errzurizs artworks her textiles are noteworthy, particularly
the tapestries created in the late 1960s during her youth. Errzuriz was at that
time searching for new materials to use and in this quest began to create textile
collages. The first of these works had a strong connection with femininity and
motherhood, and related also to the time of its creation. Much in the same way as
she composes installations with collected objects, the method of embroidery the
way she was able to return to it periodically to include found pieces of fabric, old
clothes even some of her own bras or petticoats appealed to the artist. The tapestry
collage gradually becomes completed during an extended process of reflection.
The characters depicted within Errzurizs collages allude to personal references,
including caricatures of her family. These are, in a way, an approximation of folk or
popular art. Through her work Errzuriz questions art, especially the traditional
means of artistic production and how the representation of reality is conceived
and realised. A I & M E
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Virginia Errzuriz
Tapices/Bordados
(Tapestries/Embroideries)
196667
THE ARTISTS
167
Len
Ferrari
Born 1920, Buenos Aires,
Argentina / Died 2013,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
168
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Len Ferrari
LOsservatore Romano 2007
THE ARTISTS
169
Ignacio
Gumucio
Born 1971, Via del Mar,
Chile / Lives and works in
Santiago, Chile
170
In recent years mural painting has become a characteristic aspect of the work of
Ignacio Gumucio. Trained as an engraver, he has dedicated himself to painting and
creating a body of work that comprises images of great compositional simplicity
a small figure in an empty room, for example and which simultaneously possess
overwhelming complexity, such as his representation of immense architectural
structures whose graphic elements approach abstraction.
Gumucios tendency to geometrical abstraction was displayed in the
exhibition Lo fcil y lo difcil (The Easy and the Difficult, 2010). This aesthetic did
not develop in the same way as those of the modern avant-garde through the choice
of basic materials and the need to build a programmatic oeuvre. Gumucio states
that he works with a mental image of models that lose their relevance, and that he is
more interested in the pictorial resolution of distorted images which, paradoxically,
bear closer relationships to a certain space or environment. The plain, analytical
character of some of his artwork is just one of the aesthetic solutions Gumucio has
found for the problem presented by abstraction. In Gumucios practice we find a
complementarity at work between his graphic composition of shapes and the close
attention he pays to the abstract qualities of matter, such as brightness or transparency,
which he achieves through the combination of varnishes, enamels, acrylics, oils and
photocopies of figures.
Gumucio also tackles the issue of abstraction in an exact opposite
manner, as seen in Sauce mental (Mental Willow), 2012. In this case the model, the
starting point, is its own abstraction, the idea of something generic here, a willow
tree. Gumucio paints the idea of a willow by letting paint trickle along the picture
plane and then tips the work horizontally so a puddle forms, which he leaves to dry.
Thus, the same issue regarding abstraction is solved by the different technique
of dripping. This method was also used by Gumucio in his latest murals, such
as Superacin (Improvement), 2015 and Salvar la Navidad. Murales sin moraleja
(To Save Christmas. Murals without a Moral), 2014.
Gumucio created his first mural after being commissioned by the
Parsito Gallery in Prague. Everybody Knows that Our Cities Were Built to be
Destroyed, 2008 was exhibited for just one day, after which it was wiped clean.
This was a formative moment in the artists practice. Talking about his creative
process, Gumucio has indicated that the murals offer a counterpoint to working in
his studio, where painting has a different rhythm because a work can be returned to
repeatedly over time. With murals, Gumucio subjects himself to an intensive regime
of working to a short deadline a strategy borne out of necessity. Following the
Prague work he painted five other murals, all ephemeral, for which he employed
different materials and worked in varied spaces. The mastery of Gumucios combination of aesthetic decisions and technical methods in his latest artworks show the
maturity of his practice. D S
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Ignacio Gumucio
Salvar la Navidad. Murales sin
Moraleja (To Save Christmas. Murals
without a Moral) (in progress) 2014
THE ARTISTS
171
Patrick
Hamilton
Born 1974, Leuven,
Belgium / Lives and works
in Madrid, Spain
Patrick Hamiltons work, which re-examines and assembles art historical forms
and architectural features, is tethered at its foundations to the social and political
climate of contemporary Chile. Hamilton creates a framework from which to
look critically at the influence of the neo-liberal economy on social and cultural
fields since its imposition under the Pinochet regime in the 1980s alongside the
Chilean economists known as the Chicago Boys. The three interlaced diamonds of
Intersecciones (Intersections), 2014, are an example. Lying expansively across the
gallery wall, these spike drawings are reminiscent of the geometric minimalism of
Sol Le Witt or Donald Judd. The material is modelled on the spikes that border and
provide security for middle and upper-class homes in Santiago. The work, with the
diamonds representation of delimitation and confinement, throws social divisions
into plain view. Referring to the traditions of Constructivism, geometric abstraction
and Minimalism, Hamilton made the observation, In this sense it is a series that
joins an extreme formalism of minimal shapes, with social context.1
Understated and eloquent, Hamiltons work has been continually
influenced by the context of his upbringing. Manifest in the three Traba Volante
(Wheel Lock), 2014, pieces is an exploration of the fragility of Chiles image of wealth
and prosperity a sort of societal aesthetic that acts to mask the many pitfalls of
economic and cultural globalisation. Brought to a fluid copper patina, the wheel
locks themselves the product of inequality call into question Chiles profound
social and economic divides. Copper accounts for over half of the nations exports
and represents a significant portion of the economys turnover. In 2014, a steady
drop in the copper price caused the Chilean peso to slip and drew attention to the
instability of the popular rhetoric of advancement and exultation. Employing material weighted with significance Hamilton translates everyday objects into a site of
questioning. The copper and the wheel locks are used as two sides of the same coin:
affluence and disparity.
Two earlier series Proyecto de Arquitecturas Revestidas (Project of
Coated Architectures), 200709, and Santiago derive, 2008, show a consistency
in this narrative, as the artist delicately shines a light on two differing aspects of
Santiago. In Proyecto de Arquitecturas Revestidas, by replacing the silhouettes of
banking houses and skyscrapers in Sanhattan with a plastic film of imitation marble
or exotic wood, Hamilton playfully exhibits the bland homogenisation of the citys
corporate architecture and Chiles place in the global market. While Santiago derive,
an exhibition almost in homage to the tricycle used commonly by street vendors
in central Santiago, speaks of the socioeconomic dislocation of the working class.
Each of his objects, installations, photographs and pieces of collage
induce thoughtful reflection. Appropriating utilitarian materials or images, visual
metaphor, and popular myth, the artist questions their cultural and sociopolitical
value. Hamilton presents an intelligent and often scathing critique of postdictatorship Chile, veiled behind an immaculate visual and conceptual aesthetic. R G
Patrick Hamilton
Intersecciones (Intersections)
(detail) 2014
1. Patrick Hamilton,
artist statement, www.
abstractioninaction.com/
patrick-hamilton/, accessed
6 Jan 2016.
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173
Juan
Fernando
Herrn
Born 1963, Bogot,
Colombia / Lives and works
in Bogot, Colombia
174
The work of Colombian artist Juan Fernando Herrn proposes a direct encounter
with the existing world. His visual reflections focus primarily on the Colombian
context and his work generally speaks of concerns revolving around geography and
the changes human beings impose on the environment. Herrns mode of work varies
between the activation of found objects as if he were some kind of archaeologist
and photography or drawing.
Escalas (Steps), 2008 is based on the artists experience of walking
through the slums of Medelln, in Colombias mountainous Antioquia province, and
questioning the processes of construction that define public spaces. Medelln is
surrounded by hillsides inhabited by a low-income population. The construction of
the city reflects the basic needs of having to claim and occupy a space. Medellns
urban fabric is mainly formed by the stairs and walkways that were gradually and
organically built by its inhabitants to access their homes. Herrns project also
refers to the widespread presence of public sculptures in Medelln, resulting from
a government initiative that began in 1982. For more than a decade, the government
supported and promoted the installation of sculptural works in urban spaces. Herrn,
aware of how this policy would influence the relationship a city holds with sculpture,
developed a photographic series which portrays his interest in three-dimensional
elements, or compositions, that are not necessarily labelled as art.
At a primary level, the images that comprise the series Escalas portray
how the inhabitants of these marginalised areas have managed to claim sections of
the terrain and create accesses to their homes, defying the geography of the area.
On a second level, the work reflects how citizens contribute to the construction
of public spaces as a result of the need they have for private space that may be
adjusted to their personal requirements. Thus, as suggested by the artist, the idea
of public and private implicate and depend on each other. Herrns photography
makes obvious the way in which the practical, idiosyncratic and symbolic aspects of
a population are manifested in the construction of the stairs. The artwork reflects
how public spaces are responses to individual and collective needs and, most importantly, may sometimes create a utopia of social inclusion and development. A I & M E
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THE ARTISTS
175
Alfredo
Jaar
Born 1956, Santiago,
Chile / Lives and works
in New York City, USA
Alfredo Jaar
A Logo For America 1987
Digital Animation commissioned by
The Public Art Fund
Times Square, New York, April 1987
1. www.youtube.com/
watch?v=hYacuiq6PbE,
accessed 18 Oct 2015.
2. www.news.artnet.com/
art-world/alfredo-jaars1987-video-interventionretakes-times-square69623,accessed 18 Oct 2015.
176
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177
Cristbal
Len
Born 1980, Santiago,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
Joaqun
Cocia
Born 1980, Concepcin,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
Like New Zealand, Chile is a land with a history of natural disasters where buildings
are constructed with the knowledge that they may eventually collapse. The permanent
threat of this and the social and political breakdown that exists across South America
places the continent and its people in a constant state of vulnerability. Chilean
artists Cristbal Len and Joaqun Cocia consider this precarious situation, where
there is no solid base on which to build culture, as being a release: When one is not
always aware of where to step you are seen liberated from falling into consistency,
correctness and a constant preoccupation with transcendence.1 Inspired by this
sense of instability, Len and Cocia explore processes of creation through a focus
on construction, bringing layers of production to the surface of their work.
In Len and Cocias considered yet playful approach they acknowledge
the context in which they work, embracing the sometimes chaotic environment of
museums and galleries while asserting arts status as a living entity. The handmade
aesthetic of their video works and temporary installations, along with their inclusive
way of working, refutes the slick, excessively formal and the marketable nature of
a lot of contemporary artwork, which privileges product over process. Their recent
projects involve collaborating with students and audiences to develop and construct
new artworks, and take the form of studio-sculptures. Their decision to make the
creative process and artworks construction more visible for audiences developed
through the artists observation that the process is often more interesting than the
finished result.
The video work Los Andes (The Andes), 2012, is the first chapter
of Len and Cocias personal Bible, in which the artists attempt to create a new
Latin American religion using stop-motion animation, tape, cardboard and paint.
The work is centred inside a dark, innocuous-looking office where basic materials
come to life as a paper mouse scuttles across the floor and a forest and mountains,
made of paint and cellophane, burst from the computer screen. The homemade quality
of the work reinforces the duos strong interest in performance and the transformation of materials, and alludes to the constructed nature of South Americas own
creation stories. Stepping outside of their comfort zones, Len and Cocia adopt the
role of prophets using the writing of Chilean poet Miguel Serrano, author of esoteric
and nationalistic texts, to suggest how easy it is to create myths and religions. J W
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179
Marcos
Lpez
Born 1958, Santa Fe,
Argentina / Lives and
works in Buenos Aires,
Argentina
1. Valeria Gonzlez,
The Photography of Marcos
Lpez in the context of
Argentinean art of the
Nineties, http://www.
marcoslopez.com/en/textosacerca-gonzalez-contexto.
php, accessed 6 Jan 2016.
180
When Marcos Lpez began to use colour in his photography in the early 1990s
his work underwent a sudden and immense shift. No longer satisfied with the
iconographic, black and white documentary style that had tended to typify Latin
American photography, Lpez began to employ an explicitly theatrical language.
These photographs, heralded by the 1993 photograph La Ciudad de la Alegra, came
to be known as his Pop Latino work. The aesthetics are easily recognisable, yet
filled with dualities tribute and criticism, the individual and the universal, vibrant
humour and restrained seriousness they resist simple categorisation.
Lpez picks up on the prosaic, the unsophisticated, the common
and, often, those with clear aspirations for something more. The queen in Reina.
Iquitos, Per, 2012, offers an example of this. She is reticent and her attire lies
in stark contrast with her surroundings. Posed ahead of a painted mural of the
Amazon, the figure joins a cast of grinning characters: a bare-chested mermaid, a
jaguar and a garishly pink dolphin, and an indigenous archetype hauling a fish from
the river. As in many of Lpezs works the viewer is given little by way of explanation, yet the story builds, perhaps, as an allegory of the increasing degradation of
local culture in the face of a global world. In Reina. Iquitos, Per, as in Cementerio.
Iquitos, Per, 2012, an underlying political current is evident, an illustration of the
uneven progress and visibility of modernity in Latin America. You see the dualities
of cultures in transition, where the aesthetics of mass consumerism are contrasted
with traditional dress or a historic setting. In this disparity Lpez positions the
viewer in an uncertain space we are left to contemplate our own assumptions of
Latin American identity.
This language of society in transition presents itself as a common
thread in another 2012 work, Terraza. San Pablo, Brasil. The tableau is precariously
positioned on the edge of a terrace high above the city. The scene is littered with
excess and each of the vapid figures is adorned with the paraphernalia of commercial
culture. Terraza. San Pablo, Brasil acts as a sociopolitical chronicle that questions
the promises of modernity and neo-liberal economy. The vibrancy of the foreground
lies in opposition with the view to the figures backs, where a construction site tears
down the old remains of the city, and a skyline of bland, late 20th-century highrises
speaks to the realities of dense urban living in the metropolis of So Paulo.
In recent years, following a teaching position in Latvia, Lpezs
approach has expanded. This is evident in his 2014 series, Riga. In these Latvian
works the kitsch, the colour and the scale are reminiscent of the Pop aesthetic
of the 1960s and yet the artist employs this language as a way of foregrounding
particularities of behaviour, beliefs and lifestyles. Lpez uses this model as a site
of transgression, exaggerating the Pop and transforming his images into a kind of
theatrical performance for the viewer to consume.1 R G
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Marcos Lpez
Terraza. So Paulo, Brasil
(Terrace, So Paulo, Brazil)
2012
THE ARTISTS
181
Kevin
Mancera
Born 1982, Bogot,
Colombia / Lives and works
in Bogot, Colombia
182
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Kevin Mancera
La Felicidad (Happiness)
(sketchbook) 2012
THE ARTISTS
183
Antonio
Manuel
Born 1947, Avels de Caminha,
Portugal / Lives and works
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
184
Antonio Manuel started working during the 1960s and became familiar with
some of the most well-known Brazilian artists of the second part of the century,
including Lygia Clark, Hlio Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Ivan Serpa, and also the
critic Mrio Pedrosa. Oiticica, in particular, was a mentor to Manuel when he was
based in Rio de Janeiro, where Manuel has lived for several decades. Key elements
of Oiticicas works lie at the core of Manuels practice the commitment to make
work outside traditional art institutions and an active engagement with the audience.
Like many of the artists of this generation, Manuel expanded the limits of art practice.
He used his own body to challenge the Brazilian dictatorships social and political
repression with boldness and irreverence. At other times his challenges were more
covert. Ignoring the restrictions of the 1960s and 1970s, Manuel emphasised the
randomness of military decisions regarding censorship.
Artworks from the 1960s illustrate Manuels interest in mass media,
cultural dissemination and strategies of appropriation of mainstream circuits. These
were expressed by the use of newspapers and sensationalist headlines that mirror the
language and fake truths of popular journalism. A number of his artworks from 1968
feature student riots and other political events. During this time, Manuels actual
process of production involved a semi-clandestine access to the newspaper O Dias
printing workshop, which led to his interference in certain runs of the newspaper
itself. The resulting series, Clandestinas (Clandestines), 1973, comprised altered
news and images of front pages. These were produced in limited runs which followed
the usual circulation of the official newspaper. The Clandestinas highlight a key
concern of Manuel and other artists working in the same cultural milieu: exploring
new routes for social activism while being immersed in the aesthetic and poetic
dimensions of the everyday; and finding new forms of artistic practice that would not
fit into the traditional repertoire of the left. His interest in the actual mechanisms
of the production of mass media is evident in Contra represso (Against Repression),
1968, Clero define situao (Clergy Defines the Situation), 1968 and Guerra do
Consumo / vampiro insacivel (War of Consumption / Insatiable Vampire), 1975, all
of which expose the high and low relief matrices used for the printing process of
periodicals, and therefore highlight the newspaper as a graphically constructed site.
Other examples of the use of mass media as a political and playful
tool in Manuels work are drawings of silhouettes with black ink crayon over printed
newspaper headlines and images. Some of his untitled drawings show cut-out doll
figures, a form of automatons, looking at bureaucrats who stand in front of the iconic
Brazilian flag with the slogan Ordem e Progresso (Order and Progress) followed by
a question mark. A similar questioning and subversion of the well-known Brazilian
motto is present in Sem represso h ordem (Without Repression There Is Order),
1968, which makes a less direct but still obvious reference to the historical modernising narrative of the country, hampered in this context by a restrictive government
that limits the political agency of its citizens. L V
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Antonio Manuel
Sem represso h ordem (Without
Repression There Is Order) 1968
THE ARTISTS
185
Cinthia
Marcelle
Born 1974, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil / Lives and works in
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
O Sculo (The Century), 2011 opens with the view of an empty street. You soon
hear sounds: running and an echoing crash. Rocks are thrown from the right, then
helmets, buckets, shoes, crates and videotapes. The sound, now louder, is unceasing.
Fluorescent tubes shatter into dust. Artists Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Machado
create a conflict between two unseen sides as brooms, chairs, a barrel and clothing
join the rubble which builds to the left. Gas bombs are thrown back to the other end
of the square. The whole scene slows under the fog and sirens ring out. The screen
turns black a pause for reflection then, in a mirrored copy of the first half, debris
rains down to the right.
The title O Sculo was drawn from French philosopher Alain Badious book The Century (2005), which also influenced the ideology of the artwork.
It alludes to Walter Benjamins conception of divine violence a violence that does not
seek an end, but instead acts as a pure and freeing anger which creates a new order.1
Conceived of in the context of the 2010 Arab Spring, the work reflects Benjamins
freeing anger in its disorderly action, which contains within it a generative power.
The interplay in Marcelles choreographies and installations between harmony and
chaos raises questions over participation in and resistance against the status quo,
and at times borders on affirmative calls for civil disobedience.
If O Sculo is an exercise in disorder, perhaps Cruzada (Crusade),
2010 is one of cooperation. Greeted by an empty crossroads, the viewer hears
the faint clanging of cymbals. Sixteen musicians march into the frame, four by four.
Each group comes from a different arm of the cross and performs a disorganised and
incomplete tune on percussion and wind instruments. A challenge of sorts begins,
which soon dissolves into a synchronised exchange that forms four groups of different
instruments. As the clusters take shape, the music becomes harmonious. As in much
of her film work for example, Automvel (Automobile), 2012 the viewer holds
a unique position above the fray, reinforcing the idea of a larger structuring force
playing a part in the choreographies. Here, too, the movement of vehicles, people and
objects all that initially appear to be insignificant or slight translate into poetic
manifestations of exchange.
Common threads run through Marcelles practice. For installations
such as Dust Never Sleeps, 2014, the focal point was a vast room coated in a dense
layer of black soot. The only strip left bare for visitors was starkly defined against the
black. This again presented a dichotomy between order and disorder, and embodied
Benjamins notion of history being in an inexorable state of decline.
Marcelle describes her work as a synthesis of the world around her. She
elevates the everyday small acts that may have greater ramifications, now or in the
future. Inheriting the uncertainties of a generation marked by economic, ideological
and political upheaval, Marcelles work skirts the prescribed relationship to this
history, and offers a poetic yet subversive reflection on social behaviour and societal
structures. RG
186
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THE ARTISTS
187
Eduardo
Navarro
Born 1979 Buenos Aires,
Argentina / Lives and works
in Buenos Aires, Argentina
188
The bronze walnuts in Eduardo Navarros Monuments, 2016 are modest in scale
and they contrast the indestructible metal containers of officially sanctioned time
capsules, which interest the artist and which the works title goes some way to
evoke. Burying and reopening time capsules is traditionally steeped in ceremony, as
carefully chosen artefacts and stories of the present are packaged for storage, and
then unlocked by later generations. The unearthing of these containers of historic
information, which are often secured under plaques or set into the foundations
of state monuments and buildings, is rarely left to chance. This also differs from
Navarros Monuments project. His walnut time capsules are buried, but their locations
are known only to those who bury them there is no public record or set date for their
opening. The completion of the artwork a series of completions, not a single one
occurs only when the walnuts are discovered.
Time capsules act like temporal full stops. Encapsulating a defined
period, they punctuate the seeming endlessness of time. In Navarros work, it is as
if time has been transferred onto the little bronze nut and paused until someone
finds the object and reactivates it by carrying it into their life. The walnut, with its
familiar ridged surface of two fused halves, also acts as a poetic metaphor for the
unknowable mysteries of life. Its kernel, invisible in Navarros work but present
by suggestion, strongly resembles the convoluted topography of the human brain,
the site of planning, reasoning, abstract thought and memory the unknowable
essence of the individual.
Navarro associates his early understanding of time with his childhood
experience of Ecuadors landscape, particularly its mountains and lakes. For the
artist, that landscape had an immutable, enduring quality, and Navarro has said
that he often thought about the billions and billions of invisible particles that form
mountain peaks. In a performance-based work, Timeless Alex, 2015, he explored the
way a human might phenomenologically experience a different kind of time from
the perspective of a tortoise, famous for its slowness and long life. Donning a paper
shell inspired by Lonesome George, the last documented member of the Chelonoidis
abingdoni species, Navarro gave a two-hour performance in which he embodied a
tortoises feeling of time by slowing down his metabolism.
Navarros practice often involves collaboration with specialists from
different fields to explore alternative solutions to environmental and social issues.
In Tratamiento homeoptico para el Rio de la Plata (Homeopathic Treatment for the
River Plate), 2013, for example, a rivers wellness was measured after a specific
homeopathic treatment was administered to it. Navarro collaborated with the
active volcano Guagua Pichincha in Poema volcanico (Volcanic Poem), 2014, which
painted with its gas emissions.
The modest hand-made quality of many of Navarros artworks creates
a feeling of accessibility a counterpoint to the technical expertise and abstract
conceptual framework that underpins his practice. Navarro questions environments
and structures, drawing on cross-disciplinary knowledge to test ideas and present
new possibilities for now, and for the future. J W
SPACE TO DREAM
Eduardo Navarro
Monuments (detail) 2016
THE ARTISTS
189
Maria
Nepomuceno
Born in 1976 in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil / Lives and
works in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Maria Nepomuceno
Grande Boca (Big Mouth)
(installation view) 2013
1. Corinne Julius,Time
to Breath The Work of
Maria Nepomuceno, Craft
Arts International no 87,
2013, p 82.
2. As above, p 82.
3. As above p 82.
190
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THE ARTISTS
191
Ernesto
Neto
Born 1964, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil / Lives and works in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Ernesto Netos large-scale installations are arresting and sensuous, with biomorphic
forms that evoke the otherworldly labyrinths of subcellular structures. Composed
of elaborate web-like constructions and soft globular shapes that stretch and
droop through space, they present counterpoints of lightness and weight, tactility
and ethereality.
The immersive installation Just like drops in time, nothing, 2002,
invites a heightened engagement with our sensing selves. The installations scale
and simplicity is visually mesmerising heavy droplet-like forms hang at different
levels from a canopy of finely stretched white fabric. You are likely to smell the
work before you see it. Highly scented spices seep through the white gauze filling
the gallery with the fragrant aromas of turmeric and cloves, and creating dusty
pools of colour.
Netos practice is in dialogue with Brazils culture and history, and it
continues the legacy of Neo-Concretism and the experiential work of Hlio Oiticica and
Lygia Clark. This earlier generation of artists inverted modernist ideas of rationalism,
which they considered colonialist, and redefined the role of the artist and art object
through the dynamics of participatory experiences that actively engaged the body.
Netos interactive installation Anthropodino, at the Park Avenue Armory, New York
in 2009, layered ideas from anthropology with references to the Brazilian concept
of Anthropfagia. Poet Oswald de Andrade coined the term in the 1920s to express
the idea of Brazils history of cannibalising other cultures as a sign of strength over
colonial powers. Inspired by Oiticicas engagement with Tropiclia in the 1960s,
which also referenced de Andrades ideas, Neto constructed a cavernous dreamscape
with flexible fabrics, spices and Styrofoam that recalled a microscopic view of a cell.
Neto said: When I do a large work like that, I think about how to put humanity in it.
The whole anthropodino idea considers the human being in a scientific way, not only as
an individual or as a part of society, but in the sense of an organ. In society, the human
being must be an organ or cell. So this is a cell.1
The artists soft sculptures have been installed in a range of architectural settings, from the modern white cube to more historic sites including the
Panthon in Paris. Inside hard industrial shells, Netos organic installations strike a
dynamic tension which mirrors the relationship between Brazils modern cities and
the countrys primordial jungle. He explains, Im not trying to make design-based
works. I try instead to create a kind of fantasy of nature, and a hypothesis about a
structure of a body.2 J W
Ernesto Neto
Just like drops in time, nothing
(installation detail, Art Gallery
of New South Wales) 2002
1. Jess Wilcox,Anthropodino:
A Conversation with Ernesto
Neto, Art in America, 27 May
2009, accessed 21 Dec 2015.
2. Ralph Rugoff,An Interview
with Ernesto Netoin Ernesto
Neto: The Edges of the World,
Cliff Lauson (ed), et al,
Hayward Publishing, London,
2010, p 22.
192
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THE ARTISTS
193
Hlio
Oiticica
Born 1937, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil / Died 1980, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
194
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Hlio Oiticica
Documentary photo of a
Parangol (Cape) wearer
c196369
THE ARTISTS
195
Bernardo
Oyarzn
Born 1963, Llanquihue,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
Bernardo Oyarzn
Ekeko (installation view)
2014
196
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THE ARTISTS
197
Nicanor
Parra
Born 1914, San Fabin de
Alico, Chile / Lives in
Las Cruces, San Antonio
province, Chile
Violeta
Parra
Born 1917, San Fabin de
Alico, Chile / Died 1967,
Santiago, Chile
198
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THE ARTISTS
199
Liliana
Porter
Born 1941, Buenos Aires,
Argentina / Lives and works
in New York, USA
200
Originally from Argentina, Porter studied art in both Buenos Aires and Mexico City
before settling in New York, where she has lived since 1964. She began her artistic
practice as a printmaker. However, in addition to photography and video work, in
recent years she has been making works on canvas, prints, drawings, collages and
creating small installations, such as the ones shown in this exhibition. Most of
these date from 2015.
Scale and size seem very important in these miniature worlds, which
provide a counterpart to the very large and total experience installations that are
often found in contemporary art. A number of these pieces feature a central character,
a toy or figurine, executing an apparently minute task, such as a figure in blue
dungarees making a graphite line on the wall in Man Drawing, 2015 or a woman also
dressed in blue holding a string in To Hold a String, 2015, which the artist sources
from places such as flea markets, antique shops, garage sales and airport stores.
As often happens with childrens toys, the figures can look intriguingly unique
despite being mass-produced commodities, and whimsical in spite of the banal
activities they perform. According to Porter, these objects have a double or even
contradictory character: On the one hand they are mere appearance, insubstantial
ornaments, but, at the same time, have a gaze that can be animated by the viewer,
who, through it, can project the inclination to endow things with an interiority and
identity. The artist calls them theatrical vignettes that, with humour and at times
concealed agony, become observations about labour, time and the contemporary
human condition.
In her now classic book On Longing (1992) about miniatures, souvenirs
and collections, Susan Stewart discusses how everyday objects are narrated to
animate or realise certain versions of the world. The miniature works as a metaphor
for interiority and as the embodiment of a certain ambiguity; though small in scale,
much labour is involved in their making. Miniatures are also able to transform
their context by disrupting our familiar notions of scale, precisely as happens
with Porters small figurines and their settings. This question of size in relation to
the environment recalls the artists interest in the central character from Alice in
Wonderland (first published 1865). In The Book of Alice, 1980 a toy sailboat rests
casually against the bottom of Lewis Carrolls book, which has been opened to the
chapter that includes an illustration of Alice swimming in her own pool of teardrops.
Porter has also referred to Carroll by combining fragments of his book Through
the Looking Glass (first published 1871) with reproductions of books by Jorge Luis
Borges, whose work features prominently in her work. This interest in both Carroll
and Borges speaks of the artists desire to explore the extent to which reality itself
is a form of representation and to her playful dismantling of the conventions of
fiction and truth. L V
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Liliana Porter
The Task 2015
THE ARTISTS
201
Rosngela
Renn
Born 1962, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil / Lives in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
202
Rosngela Renn has created a strong body of work in which photography and
video oscillate between documentation and fiction. Photographs belonging to
family albums, prison documents, official communications and press cutouts are
some of Renns findings in her visits to flea markets. Working with files and found
photographs since the late 1980s, Renn retouches and manipulates each article to
transform common everyday images into works of art, and in the process essentially
resignifies photography in a world saturated by images.
In Srie Vermelha (Militares) (Red Series), 19962000 Renn digitally
alters old photographs of men and boys dressed in uniform, and amplifies the
photographs into red monochrome images, thereby transforming quotidian pictures
into art. Through the simple act of changing an images colour its perception and its
available meanings are altered. The red opens a range of possible reflections with
respect to the role the military played in Brazil and throughout history as well as
the emblematic meaning of red within a socialist context. Renn also questions the
role of photography and its purported truth in the making of history and memory.
Renns repurposing of other peoples imagery also underpins her
triptych series, Operao Aranhas/Arapongas/Arapucas (Operations Spiders/
Arapongas (a type of bird)/Traps), 2014. This series includes Operao A3-2
(Operations A3-2) and Operao A3-3, each consisting of a combination of three
images made by three photographers at specific times and depicting specific
events in Brazilian history. Twelve photographs were taken by Jos Inacio Parente
during the protest known as the Passeata dos Cem Mil in Rio de Janeiro in 1968,
a popular march against the Brazilian dictatorship. Renn herself contributes 12
images made during the demonstration known as the Comcio das Diretas J in Belo
Horizonte in 1984, a protest to allow direct elections in Brazil. And the remaining
12 were taken by Cia de Foto at the social movement protest called Movimento
Passe Livre in So Paulo in 2013. The images are covered by a sheet of embossed
tissue paper, resembling how old photographs are protected in albums. Images
from each of the three photographed events are then combined to form triptychs
uniting depictions of all three events in which individual faces within the crowds
are visible through the addition of a lens. This series considers the agency of both
individuals and the public, and the role of the people in the articulation of social
and political communication and change.
Questions of authorship, documentation and appropriation of images
in regard to the technology of photography are common in Renns work. This logic
of appropriation assumes that the past is irretrievable and considers all acts of
memory to be acts of reinvention. A I & M E
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Rosngela Renn
Untitled [Little Balls]
19962000
THE ARTISTS
203
Miguel
ngel Ros
Born 1943, Catamarca,
Argentina / Lives and works
in Mexico City, Mexico and
New York, USA
Miguel ngel Ros Crudo, 2007 begins as a close examination of a figure dancing.
Sporting a loose-fitting white suit that rhythmically trails each movement of his
body, we track over the dancer as he performs a combative Argentine dance, complete
with leaps, stomps and skilful pivots of the body from one foot to another. He taps
the floor in sharp heal-toe movements and sweeping actions and then incorporates
a pair of long tethered weights called boleadoras into his routine which similarly
rap the floor. But as the boleadoras are brought to an abrupt halt they are revealed
to be not standard weights but two hefty slabs of raw meat. The sound of barking
is heard as a pack of dogs emerge salivating after the meat.
The dancer glares at the dogs, enticing them into his routine. Excited
by the raw flesh the dogs quickly succumb and begin to lunge at both the meat and his
alluring suit as if drawn by a matadors cape. Yet even as the dogs lock jaws onto the
dancers clothing and are swung about from his waist and wrists, the dance continues
and the dogs actions are further incorporated into his tango. The dogs give chase as
he hurls the meat from the hip and rebounds it back again. As two canines fight over
a steak the dancer flails a leg in the air in a kicking action. Once the meat is devoured
the pack subsides and the sequence draws to a close with the dancer continuing his
dance in marked defiance against the dogs base animalistic tendencies.
The Spanish word crudo translates to English as raw. In the context
of Ros video, this candid title not only describes the steaks being hurled about
but our experience of the artwork served cold. The contact between performer and
animal constitutes a punishing juxtaposition that lays bare the harsh reality of the
body-as-flesh, the dogs easy manipulation from a state of domestication to wild
fervour, and our own attraction to power nature as red-in-tooth-and-claw. But the
humour of this absurdist scenario also suggests a poetic that is routed in violence
as an unpredictable but natural force. The combative movements of the performer
seem to embody the dogs autonomous actions as much as they assert a form of defence.
Ros black humour and attraction to chance were foreshadowed in A
Morir (til Death), 2003, one of a number of videos showing a game of spinning-tops
called trompos. None of Ros players are in view but the competitiveness is plainly
witnessed as the tops jostle for dominance within a marked grid on the pavement.
The equilibrium of the dancer in Crudo is prefigured here by the residual human
energy in the revolving tops as they smash, waiver and topple. As Raphael Rubinstein
put it, A Morir was a quasi-abstract video-ballet that underscores Ros attempt
to convey a dramatic meditation on the uncertainty and brevity of human life.1 S C
1. Raphael Rubinson,
A Serious Game, Art in
America, Jun/Jul 2005,
iss 6, p 171.
204
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THE ARTISTS
205
Lotty
Rosenfeld
Born 1943, Santiago,
Chile / Lives and works
in Santiago, Chile
206
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Lotty Rosenfeld
Registro de cruces (Register
of Crosses) 1987
THE ARTISTS
207
Joaqun
Snchez
Born 1977, Barrero,
Paraguay / Lives and works
in La Paz, Bolivia and
Asuncin, Paraguay
Joaqun Snchez has a strong interest in the iconographies and cultural expressions
of ethnic groups from South America. The artist adopts these and produces new
meanings to portray the cultural syncretism that many South American countries
experience today. This is also a reflection of his personal story as a mestizo (mixedethnicity) Paraguayan-Guaran artist living in both Bolivia and Paraguay.
Political, social, cultural and personal conflicts are formulated by
Snchez into narratives, such as in Margarita, 2009. In this video work, Margarita, a
maid who works in the artists house, is seen transformed into a movie star costumed
in the dress and shoes worn by an aristocratic character in the Bolivian film Zona
Sur (Southern Zone), 2009. Subtitles reveal her desires, longings and frustrations.
In another work, Jiwasa (meaning us in Guaran), 2009, a group of women from the
Quechua community of Mollo in the Apolobamba Mountains are shown un-weaving
the Bolivian flag and forming a yarn ball with its remains. Shown simultaneously
alongside these women in Snchezs videos are documentary images of historic
Bolivian culture and social movements from the 1950s until today.
Snchezs most recent work focuses on the themes of war and frontiers,
particularly the Uruguayan Civil War, Guerra Grande in Spanish (183951), a conflict
between Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay; the War of the Pacific, Guerra del
Pacfico (187983) between Chile and Bolivia; and the Chaco War, Guerra del Chaco
(193235) between Bolivia and Paraguay. These influences and the stories Snchezs
grandfather used to tell him as a child can be seen in Chaco, 2012 in which the artist
portrays a native Guaran1 whose heart has been replaced with an embroidered anduti
or spider web, a traditional Paraguayan embroidered lace introduced by the Spaniards,
which has been made by women of a Guaran community. References to the conflicts
are also evident in his video Lnea de agua (Line of Water), 2010, in which Bolivian
immigrants living in Chile are seen forming a phrase that reads I dont know how to
swim as a commentary on the existing conflict between Bolivia and Chile concerning
sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean.
The combination of these works by Snchez faithfully portrays the
diverse realities, conflicts and difficulties experienced by all of South Americas
societies. M E
Joaqun Snchez
Margarita (video still) 2009
208
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THE ARTISTS
209
Martn
Sastre
Born 1976, Montevideo,
Uruguay / Lives and works
in Montevideo, Uruguay
210
U from Uruguay, 2012 opens with a low-angle view of the faade of Banco de la
Repblica Oriental del Uruguay a state-owned bank in Uruguay. An enigmatic
masked figure, wearing a black cape and carrying a briefcase, enters the buildings
grand entrance. Seeming to use magical powers, the figure opens the doors, walks
into an empty, low-lit marble foyer and creeps, dances and hurdles his way towards
the vault stripping off his clothes along the way. Using a set of heavy keys he opens
the large safe and we see a purple, shard-shaped perfume bottle. The now unmasked
figure the artist himself sprays himself with the fragrance in slow motion. These
first scenes co-opt the visual codes of luxury advertisements, working to subvert the
commercially focused strategies of mass media and at the same time drawing attention
to a range of social issues related to wealth disparity and social disadvantage. The
scent contained in the opulent bottle was made from owers grown by Uruguayan
president, Jos Mujica, who appears in the video harvesting flower heads from his
farm on the edges of Montevideo. Mujica has been described as the worlds poorest
president. He gives much of his salary to charity, so his presence in the artwork imports
a perspective that is at odds with the depicted symbols of wealth the bank and the
economy of luxury goods. Inspired by Mujicas spirit of altruism, Sastre organised
for one of the scent bottles to be auctioned during the 2013 Venice Biennale to raise
money for a National Fund for Contemporary Art.
As a child Sastre was an avid film viewer and he is now fluent in the
visual languages of popular culture and celebrity, which he often humorously critiques.
In Tango con Obama (Tango with Obama), 2010, he again cast himself in the lead
role as Barack Obamas dance partner. They perform an uneasy tango, and the
complicated footwork and intense dynamics of the dance evoke the complex
relationship and mutual reliance shared between North America and South America.
Phrases announcing political controversies flash onto the screen Brazil develops
atomic submarines for security defence, UNASUR is created for security and military
defence. Punctuating the dance, these messages remind viewers of ongoing tensions
existing between North and South America. In the short film Diana: The Rose
Conspiracy, 2005, Sastre borrows techniques of journalism and satire mockumentary
to construct a conspiracy theory in which Princess Diana was not killed, but instead
lives with her lover in the slums on the outskirts of Montevideo. Recasting world
affairs and representing key personalities from a South American perspective is a
strategy through which Sastre explores the vacuous sensationalism of mass media.
The artists practice confronts issues from a socially engaged
perspective, which is strongly informed by his South American identity. In 2003, he
established the Martin Sastre Foundation for the Super Poor Art using the provocative
slogan, Adopt a Latin American Artist to raise support for artists at the periphery.
Such creative acts are typical of Sastres interest in generating opportunities for
South American artists, while critiquing an unthinking celebration of status, fame
and success. J W
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Martn Sastre
U from Uruguay (video stills)
2012
THE ARTISTS
211
Mira
Schendel
Born 1919, Zurich,
Switzerland / Died 1988,
So Paulo, Brazil
212
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Mira Schendel
Ondas paradas de probabilidade
(Still Waves of Probability)
(installation view, 2014) 1969
THE ARTISTS
213
Demian
Schopf
Born 1975, Frankfurt am
Main, Germany / Lives and
works in Santiago, Chile
Demian Schopfs work can be divided into two main veins of research that converge
in an area related to the Baroque movement of the 17th century. On the one hand
Schopf re-signifies specific manifestations of the historic Baroque and Latin American
Neo-Baroque movements in photography, video and writing, specifically working
with the postmodern condition of Neo-Baroque heritage and its syncretism with
the postcolonial Andean world. And on the other hand Schopf has also developed
two major investigations into the relationship between computer sciences, the
philosophy of language and computer word processing, which concern the literary
texts and the poetry of Spanish Baroque writer Luis de Gngora.
Schopfs photographic series La Nave (The Nave), 2015, consists of
images taken inside an unfinished building known as a cholet, a term resulting from
the combination of the mestizo (mixed-ethnicity) expression cholo and the French
term chalet. These structures also belong to cohetillo architecture, which was
created by Bolivian autodidact architect Freddy Mamani. The cholets are the most
notable expression of a social class the new Aymara or cholo bourgeoisie in the
city of El Alto, Bolivia that has emerged and consolidated under the government
of Evo Morales. The images reflect Schopfs fascination for Baroque and Andean
elements and demonstrate his ability to fuse folkloric forms with contemporary art.
Three photographs from La Nave Chuta Mariachi, Moreno and Rey
Moreno (all titles are proper names or variations on them) portray dancers dressed
in typical costumes of Bolivian popular folkloric dance. These are worn primarily
at the Carnival of Oruro and the Festival of Lord Jesus of Great Power in La Paz.
Schopfs dancers costumes show references ranging from cultural globalisation
(such as the Chinese dragons, dinosaurs and Bolvars shields) to unique local symbols,
including spiders, lizards and toads, belonging to ancient myths of the Uru1 culture.
The strong contrast between the dancers costumes and the space
in which they are placed recalls artist Matthew Barneys films or science fiction
imagery from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and portrays an updated concept of syncretism
that challenges spectators to define the images different elements. It is not easy
to discern where the photographs were taken and in this, too, lies a liberation of
preconceived definitions, temporalities and hierarchies a gesture that can be
considered political when reflecting on postcolonial behaviour that aims to portray
a globalised contemporaneity. M E
Demian Schopf
La Nave (Rey Moreno) (The Nave
(King Moreno)) 2015
214
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THE ARTISTS
215
Alejandro
Thornton
Born 1970, Buenos Aires,
Argentina / Lives and works
in Buenos Aires, Argentina
216
Alejandro Thornton has said that as a child he used to play the same three albums
to get to sleep: one by Neil Diamond, and the two operas Carmen (1965) and Evita
(1976). It was not until he saw The Sound of Music again with his children that the
link was made and the idea came together for Eva Rebelde (Rebel Eva), 2012. Panning
across a brilliant landscape, Eva Rebelde is at once familiar in its appropriation of the
opening scene from The Sound of Music. Onto this scene Thornton and co-creator
Paula Pellejero impose the song Dont Cry for Me, Argentina, from Evita, which
is arranged so that Julie Andrews appears to be in a struggle to vocalise the ballad.
Parallels exist between The Sound of Musics main protagonist and Eva Pern, on
whom Evita was based: a taste for performing, their perceived strong and rebellious
characters, the love of a military figure, and the mountainous landscapes of their
homes, the Alps and the Andes. These connections illustrate Thorntons interest in
the possibilities of language and reformulating the codes of culture.
Eva Pern, the wife of President Juan Pern, and a political figure in
her own right, occupied a unique place in Argentinas history and remains a touchstone. Thornton provides a contemplative space for viewers to consider Argentinas
political history and a figure who became symbolic in South America and beyond.
The exploration of signs in Eva Rebelde is characteristic of Thorntons
practice. Through photography, film, visual poetry, painting and intervention,
he looks to alter modes of representation and to disturb existing formal structures.
While his painted and drawn works invite comparison to Cy Twombly, their calligraphic
scrawl is used to elicit new meanings from linguistic conventions and the ways in
which we communicate. An example is the printed series AmericA, 2014, created
during his residency at the Kansas City Artist Coalition. Thornton takes the same
printed A and repeats its form in black and red across the paper. Grouped in threes,
turned upside down, or crowding the page, the A starts to lose its original value and
take on other associations: from Concrete poetry to a study of social interaction.
This playful and often humorous exploration of language is further
evidenced in the titles that Thornton chooses: Eva Rebelde is a play on the Latin
American title for The Sound of Music La Novicia Rebelde which translates as The
Rebellious Novice. In This is an unfinish line, 2014, a strip of paper, hung slackly
from the ceiling, forms a loop. A graphite line following the length of the exterior
face is interrupted like a blip on a heart monitor by the title scrawled in cursive.
Seamlessly joined, the title and line form a continuous circuit around the paper:
an unfinish line. Yet, Thorntons works are more than just play on words: they
deconstruct, examine and recreate. Drawing from the historical and ideological,
Thornton presents loaded signs and symbols as something new, creating his own
artistic language as the results of a semiotic study and explaining the accepted
knowledges and systems of their signs. R G
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Alejandro Thornton,
Paula Pellejero
Eva Rebelde (Rebel Eva)
(poster) 2013
THE ARTISTS
217
Joaqun
TorresGarca
Born 1874, Montevideo,
Uruguay / Died 1949,
Montevideo, Uruguay
218
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THE ARTISTS
219
Biografas
de artistas
The Artist
Biographies
FERNANDO ARIAS
CATALINA BAUER
PAULO BRUSCKY
222
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The Colectivo de Acciones de Arte C.A.D.A. (Collective of Art Actions) was an interdisciplinary group of
Chilean artists that came together in 1979 to critically
reflect on the dilemma of art and politics. Formed by
sociologist Fernando Balcells, C.A.D.A. included the
visual artists Juan Castillo and Lotty Rosenfeld, and
writers Ral Zurita and Diamela Eltit. During the 1980s,
under the dictatorship of Pinochet, C.A.D.A. created a
series of interventions that sought to propagate a new
aesthetic aimed at reformulating the artistic scene under
the dictatorship by appropriating and transforming
mass media forms of communication into art discourse.
Their work incorporated theatrical and performance
strategies as essential elements for art actions which
questioned and denounced the practices and political
institutions of the dictatorship. C.A.D.A. conceived art
as a necessary social practice and sought to break down
the traditional space that existed between artist, art and
viewer. Their art operations intended to disrupt and
alter the standard routine of daily urban life through
de-contextualisation and semantic restructuring of
urban behaviours, locations and symbols.
Selected interventions: Para no morir de hambre en
el arte (In Order to Not Die of Hunger in Art) (1979);
Inversin de escena (Scene Inversion) (1979); Ay
Sudamrica! (Oh South America!) (1981).
223
LUIS CAMNITZER
JUAN CASTILLO
CARLOS CASTRO
LYGIA CLARK
224
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Selected exhibitions (solo): Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art 19481988, Museum of Modern Art,
New York, NY (2014); Retrospective, Museu de Arte
Contempornea da Universidade de So Paulo (1987);
Retrospective, Venice Biennale (1968); Signals Gallery,
London (1965).
Selected exhibitions (group): Tropiclia: A Revolution
in Brazilian Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago, IL (2005); Documenta, Kassel (1997); Retrospective (with Hlio Oiticica), Pao Imperial, Rio de
Janeiro (1986); So Paulo Biennial (1967); Pao Imperial,
Rio de Janeiro (1965); Mouvement II, Paris (1964); So
Paulo Biennial (1963); Venice Biennale (1963); So Paulo
Biennial (1961); Konkrete Kunst, Zrich (1960); Venice
Biennale (1961); So Paulo Biennial (1959).
225
MXIMO CORVALN
JONATHAS DE ANDRADE
LENORA DE BARROS
EUGENIO DITTBORN
226
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227
JUAN DOWNEY
RONALD DUARTE
VIRGINIA ERRZURIZ
228
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229
LEN FERRARI
IGNACIO GUMUCIO
PATRICK HAMILTON
230
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231
ALFREDO JAAR
CRISTBAL LEN
MARCOS LPEZ
KEVIN MANCERA
JOAQUN COCIA
232
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233
ANTONIO MANUEL
CINTHIA MARCELLE
EDUARDO NAVARRO
MARIA NEPOMUCENO
234
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235
ERNESTO NETO
HLIO OITICICA
BERNARDO OYARZN
NICANOR PARRA
236
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237
VIOLETA PARRA
LILIANA PORTER
ROSNGELA RENN
238
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239
JOAQUN SNCHEZ
MARTN SASTRE
MIRA SCHENDEL
240
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241
DEMIAN SCHOPF
ALEJANDRO THORNTON
242
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243
Beatriz
Bustos
Oyanedel
244
Beatriz Bustos Oyanedel is an independent curator who lives and works in Santiago,
Chile. She has curated, co-curated, produced and managed cultural initiatives
for museums and cultural centres in Latin America, Asia and Europe. She carries
out her work both independently and through her consulting organisation, BBO
Desarrollo Cultural, which was founded with the aim to implement projects that
activate expression of thought with a consideration of context.
Selected exhibitions and projects as an independent curator include:
La Nave, Demian Schopf, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago (2015); Christian Boltanski en Chile, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago and Animitas, a
site-specific work in the community of Talabre, San Pedro de Atacama (201415);
Marca no registrada, Livia Marn, Espacio Oden, Bogot (2013); Coordinator of
Chilean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (201213); Nuestro Sitio: Artistas de Amrica
del Sur, Museum of Contemporary Art of Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro and Museum of Visual
Arts, Santiago (2012); collaborative curator of Post Project, Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2011); Umbraculum, Jan Fabre, touring exhibition,
Museum of Modern Art, Medelln, Museum Tambo Quirquincho, La Paz and Tomie
Ohtake Institute, So Paulo (200910); Evolucin de mi obsesin, Jaime Vial, Isabel
Aninat Gallery, Santiago (2010); Founder of Cmo Vivir Juntos, implementation of a
cultural centre and programme in Tubul, Arauco (2010); Desde el Otro Sitio/Lugar
(From the Other Side/Site), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (2005);
Correspondencias, with Universitt der Knste Berlin, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin
(2002). Selected exhibitions as Head of Program and Curatorial Advisor at Museum
of Contemporary Art, Santiago: Passage to the Future (2008); Peppermint Candy,
National Museum of Contemporary Art of Korea (2007); Multiplication (2007);
Cobra et Cie (2007); Cmo vivir juntos, selection of the So Paulo Biennial with So
Paulo Biennial Foundation, (2007).
Bustos Oyanedels institutional roles have included International
Coordinator of Visual Arts, Photography and New Media departments for the
National Council for Culture and the Arts, Santiago (201213); Head of Program and
Curatorial Advisor for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago (200508). She is
currently a Culture, Art and Education Adviser for Fundacin Mar Adentro, Santiago
(2015ongoing); member of the advisory board of Key Performance, Sweden (since
2010); and was member of the editorial collective for Mapping South: Journeys in
SouthSouth Cultural Relations, Anthology of Contemporary Art (201113).
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Dr Zara
Stanhope
CURATORS BIOGRAPHIES
245
Fernando Arias
List of
Works
Cantos de viaje
(Chants of a Journey) 2014
video
43:00 min
courtesy of the artist,
Colombia
Se busca donante de cenizas
(Donor of Ashes Wanted) 2009
charcoal drawing on wall,
documentation of the donation
of human ashes, video
courtesy of the artist,
Colombia
Catalina Bauer (in
collaboration with Amelia
Ibez)
Primeras palabras
(First Words) 2014
video
4:42 min
courtesy of the artist, Chile
Paulo Bruscky
246
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Luis Camnitzer
Huacheras 201516
video
courtesy of the artist, Chile
Carlos Castro
C.A.D.A.
Lygia Clark
Bicho Em Si (Creature
In Itself) 1960, 2016
aluminium
330 x 500 x 420 mm (variable)
on loan from the Cultural
Association of The World of
Lygia Clark (Associao
Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark)
Bicho (Creature) 1960, 2016
aluminium
430 x 250 x 600 mm (variable)
on loan from the Cultural
Association of The World of
Lygia Clark (Associao
Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark)
Mascara Sensorial
(Sensorial Mask) 1967, 2016
steel wool, fabric
650 x 500 x 70 mm
on loan from the Cultural
Association of The World of
Lygia Clark (Associao
Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark)
Mascaras Sensorial
(Sensorial Mask) 1967, 2016
gauze, fabric, glass
650 x 500 x 20 mm
on loan from the Cultural
Association of The World of
Lygia Clark (Associao
Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark)
O Eu e o Tu (The I and the You)
1967, 2016
Acrilon, industrial rubber,
foam, fabric, vinyl, zipper,
plastic brush, horsehair,
plastic
1700 x 680 x 80 mm each
on loan from the Cultural
Association of The World of
Lygia Clark (Associao
Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark)
Mximo Corvaln
Serie Silencios
(Silence Series) 201015
colour photographic prints
410 x 610 mm (x40)
courtesy of the artist and
Galera Nueveochenta, Bogot,
Colombia
Virginia Errzuriz
Poesa, costura,
proxenetismo y caligrafa
(Poetry, Needlework,
Procuration and Calligraphy)
1979
mixed media
570 x 880 mm
on loan from Museo de Artes
Visuales, Santiago, Chile
Len Ferrari
Jonathas de Andrade
Ronald Duarte
Fogo Cruzado (Crossfire) 2002
DVD format NTSC
4:39 min
courtesy of the artist,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
LIST OF WORKS
247
Marcos Lpez
Itinerarios 2 (Itineraries 2)
2008
inkjet print
1630 x 1080 mm
courtesy of the artist
and Galera Nueveochenta,
Bogot, Colombia
Ignacio Gumucio
248
Patrick Hamilton
Intersecciones
(Intersections) 2014
copper-plated spike wall
protectors
2800 x 5600 mm
courtesy of the artist,
Madrid
Kevin Mancera
Traba Volante #1
(Wheel Lock #1) 2014
copper
150 x 550 x 130 mm
courtesy of the artist,
Madrid
Traba Volante #3
(Wheel Lock #3) 2014
copper
80 x 520 x 115 mm
courtesy of the artist,
Madrid
Traba Volante #4
(Wheel Lock #4) 2014
copper
100 x 550 x 90 mm
courtesy of the artist,
Madrid
Cristbal Len,
Joaqun Cocia
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Guerra do consumo/
Vampiro insacivel (War
of Consumption/Insatiable
Vampire) 1975
newspaper matrix with high
and low reliefs (paste)
and ink
542 x 383 mm
Collection of So Paulo
Museum of Modern Art, Credit
Suisse donation (Coleo
Museu de Arte Moderna de So
Paulo, doao Credit Suisse)
Eduardo Navarro
Monuments 2016
bronze
45 x 35 mm, 50 x 40 mm, 60 x 45 mm
courtesy of the artist,
Argentina
Maria Nepomuceno
Bernardo Oyarzn
Parangol Rouge
(ParangolRouge) 1979, 1986
plastic
2920 x 680 mm
Collection of Museum of Modern
Art, Rio de Janeiro. Gift
of Hlio Oiticica Project.
Exhibition copies held 2014.
( Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio
de Janeiro Collection. Gift
of Projecto Hlio Oiticica.
Exhibition copies held 2014.)
Documentary material,
ephemera
LIST OF WORKS
Ekeko 2014
mixed media
2140 x 1800 x 1900 mm
courtesy of the artist, Chile
Nicanor Parra
Documentary material and
publications
Violeta Parra
Liliana Porter
249
Rosngela Renn
Boots 19962000
from: Srie Vermelha
(Militares) (Red Series)
(lightjet) on Fuji Crystal
archive paper, laminated
1800 x 1000 mm
on loan from Marcio Lobo,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Untitled [Little Balls]
19962000
from: Srie Vermelha
(Militares) (Red Series)
digital lightjet print on
Fuji crystal, archive paper,
laminated
1800 x 1000 mm
on loan from Pedro Barbosa,
So Paulo, Brazil
Miguel ngel Ros
Crudo 2007
video
3:31 min
courtesy of the artist and
Noire Gallery, Torino, Italy
Lotty Rosenfeld
Ondas paradas de
probabilidade (Still Waves
of Probability) 1969
nylon thread, wall text on
acrylic sheet
Mira Schendel Estate,
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Demian Schopf
Chaco 2012
photograph on cotton with
embroided anduti
9866 x 3000 mm
courtesy of the artist,
Bolivia
250
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Alejandro Thornton,
Paula Pellejero