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Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art
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Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752). This special issue belongs to the section "Visual Arts".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2023) | Viewed by 14418

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lesley A. Wolff

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Assistant Professor of Art and Design (Art History and Museum Studies), Ferman Center for the Arts Tampa, The University of Tampa, Tampa, FL 33606, USA
Interests: modern/contemporary arts of the Americas; decolonial theory; visual and material culture studies; art and ecology; museum studies and curatorial practice
Dr. Gabriela Germana Roquez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Independent Art Historian and Curator, Lima, Peru
Interests: modern and contemporary Latin American art; contemporary Indigenous art; decolonial theory; diasporic identities; theories of circulation and regimes of value; museum and curatorial studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As today’s fleeting spectacles of art fairs, biennials, and NFTs increasingly shape a global consensus of contemporary Latin American art, so, too, does multicultural neoliberalism promote an essentialized notion of Latin American cultural heritage. These mutable spheres—Latin American art and heritage—are deeply entangled through the gendered, racialized, and ecological contours of the “colonial matrix of power.” Argentine activist and scholar Rita Segato suggests that the “cosificación del patrimonio” [reification of heritage] conditions a colonial and racist gaze that negates the dynamism, fluidity, and sovereign qualities of object-making and creativity that are afforded to so-called fine art. Indeed, while 19th and early-20th century nationalism once served as the backdrop against which heritage was staged across the Américas, these performativities have today been reinscribed onto the globalized contemporary art market. Together, art and heritage construct values via negotiated cultural possessions and dispossessions—a process that, in the words of scholar Rick López, reifies the “ethnicization of the nation.”

Building upon the intersections of heritage studies, art history, visual culture, and performance studies laid by scholars such as Rick López, Terry Smith, Adriana Zavala, Rita Segato, Diana Taylor, and David Joselit, among others, this Special Issue of Arts seeks contributions that critically map the co-constitutive dynamics among art and heritage in contemporary Latin America. This may include essays dedicated to Latin American art in terms of: markets and globalization; critical examinations of maker categories (i.e. “folk art”) and Latin American positionality; dynamics among intangible heritage (i.e. foodways, spiritual rituals, dance) and visual artistic production; expressions of urban-rural or South-South artistic relationships; negotiations of indigeneity, indigenisms, craft, or vernacular making in contemporary art; the impact of migrations, mobility, and diasporic identities; gender parity and artistic “tradition” or labor; and/or object-centered museal and institutional practices as acts of constituting or resisting definitions of contemporary Latin American art and/or heritage.

Dr. Lesley A. Wolff
Dr. Gabriela Germana Roquez
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Latin America
  • decoloniality
  • contemporary art
  • heritage
  • Indigeneity
  • diaspora

Published Papers (7 papers)

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20 pages, 9789 KiB  
Article
Amazonian Indigenous Artists as Agents of Interface: Artworks, Networks, and Curation Strategies in the COVID-19 Crisis
by Giuliana Borea
Arts 2023, 12(6), 229; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060229 - 31 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1523
Abstract
In this article, I analyse how the COVID-19 crisis crystalised and fuelled the vigorous role of Amazonian indigenous artists as, what I call, “agents of interface”, enabling connectivity, translation, networking and bridging information, ontologies, claims, and aesthetics. With the pandemic’s spatial restrictions and [...] Read more.
In this article, I analyse how the COVID-19 crisis crystalised and fuelled the vigorous role of Amazonian indigenous artists as, what I call, “agents of interface”, enabling connectivity, translation, networking and bridging information, ontologies, claims, and aesthetics. With the pandemic’s spatial restrictions and the reduction of global activity in the arts with a return to focusing on the local, I argue that it is important to look at interfaces as arenas from which to understand further reconfigurations, actions, and values in the arts. Based on the project and exhibition Ite!/Neno!/Here!: Responses to COVID-19 co-curated by the indigenous artist Rember Yahuarcani and me, and on other various initiatives, this paper explores how Amazonian indigenous artists became crucial agents of the interface in four main arenas providing first-hand, real-time information of the impact of COVID-19 at Amazonian urban and rural settings, channelling networks of aid and curation, connecting different agents and worlds, and engaging in curatorial collaborations. I argue that by acting at the interface, artists have reinforced their voices, while pushing for redefinitions of and positions in the art system and suggest that the COVID-19 crisis has introduced a new moment in the configuration of Peru’s art scene. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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19 pages, 2954 KiB  
Article
The Community Museum of Sierra Hermosa (Zacatecas): Rethinking the Museology, Landscapes, and Archives from the Desert
by Natalia De la Rosa
Arts 2023, 12(5), 210; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050210 - 25 Sep 2023
Viewed by 2199
Abstract
This article presents the methodology and collective work strategies that constitute the Club de Lectura y Museo Comunitario de Sierra Hermosa (Sierra Hermosa Community Museum and Reading Club) in Zacatecas, Mexico, a space founded by visual artist Juan Manuel de la Rosa, a [...] Read more.
This article presents the methodology and collective work strategies that constitute the Club de Lectura y Museo Comunitario de Sierra Hermosa (Sierra Hermosa Community Museum and Reading Club) in Zacatecas, Mexico, a space founded by visual artist Juan Manuel de la Rosa, a native of this place. The museum emerged as a small library in 2000; and a short time after its founding, the museological program incorporated textile workshops and an exhibition gallery for a collection organized with local and external donations. It also operates with a system of rotation within the town. This article reviews the historical, theoretical, and critical implications around the conception and action of the museum, with a focus on the colonial and the migration status that sustains the reality and history of this rural locality, situated on the Tropic of Cancer in the north of Mexico. In the context of extreme violence, extractive politics, and migratory crisis in Zacatecas, this article analyzes two artistic productions by the local painter Luis Lara and artist Cristóbal Gracia, developed in the context of this experimental and rural museum curatorial program. Moreover, this article redefines concepts such as the border, mobility, and cultural contact in an artistic, museological, and pedagogical context, and proposes alternatives to study Sierra Hermosa’s memory, history, and landscape. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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29 pages, 9111 KiB  
Article
The Tree of Abundance: On the Indigenous Emergence in Contemporary Latin American Art
by Miguel L. Rojas-Sotelo
Arts 2023, 12(4), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040127 - 25 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1891
Abstract
The Tree of Abundance is an origin story for many nations in the Amazon basin. It recounts a time when all people(s) lived under a mother tree, until those with an ax arrived and the tree collapsed. This is the act of coloniality, [...] Read more.
The Tree of Abundance is an origin story for many nations in the Amazon basin. It recounts a time when all people(s) lived under a mother tree, until those with an ax arrived and the tree collapsed. This is the act of coloniality, which produced a new landscape. The story serves as a conceptual metaphor to analyze the production of an emerging generation of contemporary visual makers of indigenous origin. These cultural producers are set in a historical context, which represents long temporalities of cultural-production resistance and re-existence in Latin America (called here Abya Yala). The text introduces a way to rethink contemporary art in the region under conditions of coloniality and names the artists “embodied territories” since they have particular connections to the places they live and work. This article is organized into three parts presenting artwork by several indigenous and intercultural subjects (with emphasis on those living in indigenous territories of Colombia): (1) A short genealogy from modernity to contemporaneity brings indigenous cultural production to the academic space as another source for a critical understanding of the lived experience in Abya Yala. (2) An account of themes derived from the contested histories highlights how indigenous and intercultural artists produce responses to them. (3) The genealogy and themes are then set in spatial terms offering two case studies, on one hand, the toppling of historical figures by indigenous activists as performance in the public space and, on the other, the exhibitions “Visual Sovereignty” and the “Indigenous Salon Manuel Quintín Lame”. The article concludes stressing how this emerging generation builds on long genealogies of sovereign representation, responding with a wide range of contemporary means (visual, textual, bodily, and multimedia) to issues that still affect their communities (land grabs, resource extraction, racialization, marginality, etc.). Adaptation, resistance, and re-existence occur when embodied territories recognize historical realities (time), location (space), and forms of liberation (action) within coloniality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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17 pages, 2284 KiB  
Article
Roda and Terreiro: The Historiography of Brazil’s Visual Arts at the Crossroads of Globalization
by Roberto Conduru
Arts 2023, 12(3), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030103 - 16 May 2023
Viewed by 1416
Abstract
The article focuses on Brazil’s visual arts historiography from the 1990s onwards when institutions in Europe and the U.S. began to present Brazil’s art more frequently amid the growing globalization of the art system. Edge cases are highlighted to demonstrate how scholars based [...] Read more.
The article focuses on Brazil’s visual arts historiography from the 1990s onwards when institutions in Europe and the U.S. began to present Brazil’s art more frequently amid the growing globalization of the art system. Edge cases are highlighted to demonstrate how scholars based outside Brazil are helping to build a canon of that country’s visual arts that contrasts and surpasses the canon of Brazil’s visual arts outlined in Brazil’s collections, exhibitions, publications, and scholarly production. The image of roda (circle) in Ronald Duarte’s Nimbo/Oxalá and Ricardo Basbaum’s image/idea of “terreiro de encontros” (terrace of encounters) are proposed as Afro-Brazilian references with which to face the challenges of these historiographic crossroads. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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21 pages, 5768 KiB  
Article
“Small Is Viable”: The Arts, Ecology, and Development in Peru
by Claire F. Fox
Arts 2023, 12(2), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020061 - 21 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1825
Abstract
This essay examines three Lima-based cultural projects dating from the 1980s through the 2000s that creatively adapt ideas and iconography associated with large-scale 1960s-era modernization initiatives to forge an alliance between “nature” and “culture” against capitalist development. Lima en un árbol (1981), an [...] Read more.
This essay examines three Lima-based cultural projects dating from the 1980s through the 2000s that creatively adapt ideas and iconography associated with large-scale 1960s-era modernization initiatives to forge an alliance between “nature” and “culture” against capitalist development. Lima en un árbol (1981), an action and video by Rossana Agois, Wiley Ludeña, Hugo Salazar del Alcázar, and Armando Williams, and the installation and video Árbol (2002–2008) by Carmen Reátegui present trees as individuated, bearers of collective memory, and subjects of ritual interaction, while also contesting extractivist economies. The Micromuseo, founded in 1983 by Gustavo Buntinx and Susana Torres Márquez, conceptualized cultural networks as an ecosystem to articulate an “alternative museality” in the capital during eventful decades marked by devastating civil conflict and the implementation of austere neoliberalism. Inviting direct interaction with diverse publics, each of these ecologically oriented projects anticipates “cultural sustainability” as an emerging concept in cultural policy arenas. By drawing attention to how these cultural producers deliberately embrace the small and the everyday in opposition to elite institutional presentation, I want to bring greater recognition to cultural placemaking as a source of knowledge and a conduit for often marginalized perspectives to enter ongoing public conversations about human-environmental interactions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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18 pages, 5479 KiB  
Article
The Many Lives of Oscar Niemeyer’s Column: The Legacy of Brasília, Coloniality, and Heritage in the Works of Lais Myrrha and Talles Lopes
by Alice Heeren
Arts 2023, 12(2), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020056 - 14 Mar 2023
Viewed by 2119
Abstract
This article examines contemporary artists’ appropriation of the city of Brasília to critique Brazil’s continued reliance on the “unfinished” project of modernity. Exploring the construction of the scenography of Brasília and its resonance with the architecture and organization of space in the colonial [...] Read more.
This article examines contemporary artists’ appropriation of the city of Brasília to critique Brazil’s continued reliance on the “unfinished” project of modernity. Exploring the construction of the scenography of Brasília and its resonance with the architecture and organization of space in the colonial plantations, the works of contemporary artists Lais Myrrha (Estudo de Caso [Case Study], Estudo para um Futuro Construído [Study for a Constructed Future]), and Talles Lopes (Construção Brasileira [Brazil Builds]) allows us to reconnect Brasília with the backdrop that gave rise to this ideal. These works invoke the reconciliation of the colonial matrix of power in Lucio Costa’s discourse about modernist architecture in Brazil, of which Brasília is the culmination. Myrrha’s and Lopes’ works show that the history and legacy of Brasília, not only as an idea but also as form, are embedded in the Brazilian imaginary and built environment in the contemporary moment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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16 pages, 5451 KiB  
Essay
Artistic Responses to Crossing the Kālā Pānī
by Grace Aneiza Ali
Arts 2023, 12(1), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010030 - 13 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1524
Abstract
Between 1838 and 1917, a British system of indentured servitude replaced the enslavement of African peoples with Indian labor in the Americas and the Caribbean. Almost a quarter of a million indentured Indian laborers came to British Guiana and would form the foundation [...] Read more.
Between 1838 and 1917, a British system of indentured servitude replaced the enslavement of African peoples with Indian labor in the Americas and the Caribbean. Almost a quarter of a million indentured Indian laborers came to British Guiana and would form the foundation of the majority of the Indian population in present-day Guyana. These men and women would spend nearly eight decades toiling on sugar plantations and rice fields before the brutal system of labor was abolished. This curatorial essay explores the work of three key contemporary artists of Guyanese heritage—Maya Mackrandilal, Michael Lam, and Suchitra Mattai—who underscore St. Vincent-born poet Derek Walcott’s seminal words “the sea is history” with an exploration of the sea as a weapon of rupture. Collectively, their artworks return us to a British past to offer a visceral reminder of the perilous kālā pānī crossing [Hindi for “black waters”], marking the sea the place where ancestral histories, trauma, and survival all share space. Grounding us in the present and pointing us to a future, I illustrate how these artworks also function as contemporary tools of remembrance and repair. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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