Botanical Readings: Erythroxylum Coca is an installation by the artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Peru... more Botanical Readings: Erythroxylum Coca is an installation by the artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Peru, 1980), presented at proyectoamil in Lima, 2019. The piece was composed by a hydroponic structure for the cultivation of coca plants, whose leaves—and their divinatory ancestral possibilities—answered the questions that visitors had about their own future. This publication reviews the different historical and visual layers that make up the installation, where the coca is inserted as an agent whose circulation, consumption and significance resist the impetus that, from the West, has tried to inventory the desires and stories contained within it; while at the same time continues growing as a living input of the colonial capitalist machine.
Candice Lin: Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory , 2023
Candice Lin’s multimedia installation juxtaposes a complex narrative of queer love,
toxicity, an... more Candice Lin’s multimedia installation juxtaposes a complex narrative of queer love,
toxicity, and labor. Emulating a precarious lithium battery factory, a large platform lies
at the center of the gallery at Canal Projects creating a vantage point from where
visitors can interact by taking on the surveillance gaze of a factory manager.
The demonic possession of factory workers has a basis in reality, as documented by
the anthropologist Aihwa Ong. In Lin’s work, however, these testimonies of toxicity
become entwined with a story of bodily desire in the spiritual world creating multiple
layers around labor politics, queer love, and the materiality of our contemporary world.
Touching on a complex web of issues that relate to the histories of mass production,
the installation highlights and complicates the extraction and production of lithium, a
mineral that powers global mass consumption.
Notes for a Horizon-tality: Toward the Possibility of Becoming Together as an Assemblage is an ed... more Notes for a Horizon-tality: Toward the Possibility of Becoming Together as an Assemblage is an editorial project that responds to our multiple and seemingly multiplying emergencies. Since the growing uncertainty of living in a world in crisis seems to continuously threaten the possibility of the future, this project seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on this topic from the perspective of Latin American contemporary art. We hope that by providing a take on the future, the initial artistic and curatorial imaginaries gathered here can help counter the defuturing narratives that stagnate our mobilizing potential for constructing other ways of being and existing in the world.
In the face of generalized pessimism, it is essential to remember that recent uprisings and social movements have opened the door to alternative imaginaries for thriving amid end-of-the-world scenarios. Especially as these imaginaries underscore the fact that looking back in time constitutes a powerful form of anti-colonial resistance. This proposal for engaging in an assemblage against extinction, however, prompts two different albeit related questions namely: where is the future? And whose world are we to imagine? We invited an array of collaborators from Latin America to provide a multiplicity of answers so that together we can foster the beginning of what could be a collective imaginary for Horizon-tality.
In the next few entries readers will find a variety of provocations: some propose other ways of telling time (past, present, future); others may incite us to follow new directions or assume new orientations; may offer imaginaries for what an indigenous, Black, queer, or feminist proposition for Horizon-tality would look like; additional ones may help us to think about what an interspecies Horizon-tality could entail, and lastly, they may altogether offer us an (aesth)et(h)ics for collaged and stitched-together assemblages for being and existing in the world outside of the modern-colonial world system.
En los últimos años hemos visto en el arte contemporáneo de América Latina un creciente interés p... more En los últimos años hemos visto en el arte contemporáneo de América Latina un creciente interés por la estética del perífodo colonial, especialmente una tendencia por cuestionar las sensibilidades del Barroco (siglo XVI al XVIII). Diferenciando la cultura y la política barroca del arte y el periodo Barroco, es más adecuado referirse a estas prácticas transhistóricas en el arte contemporáneo como expresiones de un “contra-Barroco”. Siendo que los intereses por la estética del Barroca varían entre artistas el presente artículo examinarán exclusivamente las piezas Con nombre y apellidos (2017) y Notabile y Nobicile (2017) de la artista ecuatoriana María José Argenzio (n. 1977). Estas obras, más allá de constituir dos trabajos diferentes, se analizan en conjunto bajo un marco expositivo. Es decir, en una puesta en escena, las obras hacen evidente la tensión entre lo real y el artificio, al mismo tiempo que retratan la construcción de la identidad en América Latina. A través de este análisis, propongo que la estética de un contra-Barroco surge como una propuesta contestataria a la visualidad moderna y la representación colonial.
arts. Decolonizing Contemporary Latin American Art , 2019
Recent art history studies have delved into notions of futurity as it relates to indigenous appro... more Recent art history studies have delved into notions of futurity as it relates to indigenous approaches to environmental destruction in the face of ongoing colonial oppression. Building on the concept of indigenous futures, the present investigation focuses on the Kichwa artist Manuel Amaru Cholango's decolonial critique of technology. Since the 1990s and in response to the quincentennial celebration of the "discovery" of America in 1992, Cholango has developed an oeuvre that criticizes the instrumentalization of modern technology for the exploitation of the earth and the perpetuation of colonialism. By advancing the notion of Andean technology, Cholango brings to bear other ways of relating to the environment that can help create, once again, the possibility of the future.
With the promise of a progressive post-revolutionary future, Mexican Secretary of Public Educatio... more With the promise of a progressive post-revolutionary future, Mexican Secretary of Public Education, Jose Vasconcelos, financed public art projects to reinforce the meaning of a new Mexican Identity. The use of native figures and iconography helped idealized the native past as a strategy to root the new “Mexicanidad” within a powerful cultural heritage. While there was a genuine effort to embrace the pre-Hispanic past to build on the greatness of the heritage of Mexico and its new mestizo race, this was a particular selective narrative that continued to reject and discriminate the indigenous communities.
The lack of self-representation of the Indian in the consolidation of “Mexicanidad” reveals the complexity of establishing an identity founded in an imagined cultural heritage that rejected the Indian nation, while appropriating and idealizing its image. This paper uses the works of Saturnino Herran, Fernando Leal and Diego Rivera to highlight how the indigenous image was appropriated and idealized by artists of the Mexican Renaissance to create a strong sense of nationalism based on a specific mestizo identity. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how despite its inherent contradictions this pictorial indigenism inspired the consolidation of indigenist movements in other parts of the hemisphere.
Botanical Readings: Erythroxylum Coca is an installation by the artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Peru... more Botanical Readings: Erythroxylum Coca is an installation by the artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Peru, 1980), presented at proyectoamil in Lima, 2019. The piece was composed by a hydroponic structure for the cultivation of coca plants, whose leaves—and their divinatory ancestral possibilities—answered the questions that visitors had about their own future. This publication reviews the different historical and visual layers that make up the installation, where the coca is inserted as an agent whose circulation, consumption and significance resist the impetus that, from the West, has tried to inventory the desires and stories contained within it; while at the same time continues growing as a living input of the colonial capitalist machine.
Candice Lin: Lithium Sex Demons in the Factory , 2023
Candice Lin’s multimedia installation juxtaposes a complex narrative of queer love,
toxicity, an... more Candice Lin’s multimedia installation juxtaposes a complex narrative of queer love,
toxicity, and labor. Emulating a precarious lithium battery factory, a large platform lies
at the center of the gallery at Canal Projects creating a vantage point from where
visitors can interact by taking on the surveillance gaze of a factory manager.
The demonic possession of factory workers has a basis in reality, as documented by
the anthropologist Aihwa Ong. In Lin’s work, however, these testimonies of toxicity
become entwined with a story of bodily desire in the spiritual world creating multiple
layers around labor politics, queer love, and the materiality of our contemporary world.
Touching on a complex web of issues that relate to the histories of mass production,
the installation highlights and complicates the extraction and production of lithium, a
mineral that powers global mass consumption.
Notes for a Horizon-tality: Toward the Possibility of Becoming Together as an Assemblage is an ed... more Notes for a Horizon-tality: Toward the Possibility of Becoming Together as an Assemblage is an editorial project that responds to our multiple and seemingly multiplying emergencies. Since the growing uncertainty of living in a world in crisis seems to continuously threaten the possibility of the future, this project seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on this topic from the perspective of Latin American contemporary art. We hope that by providing a take on the future, the initial artistic and curatorial imaginaries gathered here can help counter the defuturing narratives that stagnate our mobilizing potential for constructing other ways of being and existing in the world.
In the face of generalized pessimism, it is essential to remember that recent uprisings and social movements have opened the door to alternative imaginaries for thriving amid end-of-the-world scenarios. Especially as these imaginaries underscore the fact that looking back in time constitutes a powerful form of anti-colonial resistance. This proposal for engaging in an assemblage against extinction, however, prompts two different albeit related questions namely: where is the future? And whose world are we to imagine? We invited an array of collaborators from Latin America to provide a multiplicity of answers so that together we can foster the beginning of what could be a collective imaginary for Horizon-tality.
In the next few entries readers will find a variety of provocations: some propose other ways of telling time (past, present, future); others may incite us to follow new directions or assume new orientations; may offer imaginaries for what an indigenous, Black, queer, or feminist proposition for Horizon-tality would look like; additional ones may help us to think about what an interspecies Horizon-tality could entail, and lastly, they may altogether offer us an (aesth)et(h)ics for collaged and stitched-together assemblages for being and existing in the world outside of the modern-colonial world system.
En los últimos años hemos visto en el arte contemporáneo de América Latina un creciente interés p... more En los últimos años hemos visto en el arte contemporáneo de América Latina un creciente interés por la estética del perífodo colonial, especialmente una tendencia por cuestionar las sensibilidades del Barroco (siglo XVI al XVIII). Diferenciando la cultura y la política barroca del arte y el periodo Barroco, es más adecuado referirse a estas prácticas transhistóricas en el arte contemporáneo como expresiones de un “contra-Barroco”. Siendo que los intereses por la estética del Barroca varían entre artistas el presente artículo examinarán exclusivamente las piezas Con nombre y apellidos (2017) y Notabile y Nobicile (2017) de la artista ecuatoriana María José Argenzio (n. 1977). Estas obras, más allá de constituir dos trabajos diferentes, se analizan en conjunto bajo un marco expositivo. Es decir, en una puesta en escena, las obras hacen evidente la tensión entre lo real y el artificio, al mismo tiempo que retratan la construcción de la identidad en América Latina. A través de este análisis, propongo que la estética de un contra-Barroco surge como una propuesta contestataria a la visualidad moderna y la representación colonial.
arts. Decolonizing Contemporary Latin American Art , 2019
Recent art history studies have delved into notions of futurity as it relates to indigenous appro... more Recent art history studies have delved into notions of futurity as it relates to indigenous approaches to environmental destruction in the face of ongoing colonial oppression. Building on the concept of indigenous futures, the present investigation focuses on the Kichwa artist Manuel Amaru Cholango's decolonial critique of technology. Since the 1990s and in response to the quincentennial celebration of the "discovery" of America in 1992, Cholango has developed an oeuvre that criticizes the instrumentalization of modern technology for the exploitation of the earth and the perpetuation of colonialism. By advancing the notion of Andean technology, Cholango brings to bear other ways of relating to the environment that can help create, once again, the possibility of the future.
With the promise of a progressive post-revolutionary future, Mexican Secretary of Public Educatio... more With the promise of a progressive post-revolutionary future, Mexican Secretary of Public Education, Jose Vasconcelos, financed public art projects to reinforce the meaning of a new Mexican Identity. The use of native figures and iconography helped idealized the native past as a strategy to root the new “Mexicanidad” within a powerful cultural heritage. While there was a genuine effort to embrace the pre-Hispanic past to build on the greatness of the heritage of Mexico and its new mestizo race, this was a particular selective narrative that continued to reject and discriminate the indigenous communities.
The lack of self-representation of the Indian in the consolidation of “Mexicanidad” reveals the complexity of establishing an identity founded in an imagined cultural heritage that rejected the Indian nation, while appropriating and idealizing its image. This paper uses the works of Saturnino Herran, Fernando Leal and Diego Rivera to highlight how the indigenous image was appropriated and idealized by artists of the Mexican Renaissance to create a strong sense of nationalism based on a specific mestizo identity. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how despite its inherent contradictions this pictorial indigenism inspired the consolidation of indigenist movements in other parts of the hemisphere.
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Books by Sara Garzón
toxicity, and labor. Emulating a precarious lithium battery factory, a large platform lies
at the center of the gallery at Canal Projects creating a vantage point from where
visitors can interact by taking on the surveillance gaze of a factory manager.
The demonic possession of factory workers has a basis in reality, as documented by
the anthropologist Aihwa Ong. In Lin’s work, however, these testimonies of toxicity
become entwined with a story of bodily desire in the spiritual world creating multiple
layers around labor politics, queer love, and the materiality of our contemporary world.
Touching on a complex web of issues that relate to the histories of mass production,
the installation highlights and complicates the extraction and production of lithium, a
mineral that powers global mass consumption.
In the face of generalized pessimism, it is essential to remember that recent uprisings and social movements have opened the door to alternative imaginaries for thriving amid end-of-the-world scenarios. Especially as these imaginaries underscore the fact that looking back in time constitutes a powerful form of anti-colonial resistance. This proposal for engaging in an assemblage against extinction, however, prompts two different albeit related questions namely: where is the future? And whose world are we to imagine? We invited an array of collaborators from Latin America to provide a multiplicity of answers so that together we can foster the beginning of what could be a collective imaginary for Horizon-tality.
In the next few entries readers will find a variety of provocations: some propose other ways of telling time (past, present, future); others may incite us to follow new directions or assume new orientations; may offer imaginaries for what an indigenous, Black, queer, or feminist proposition for Horizon-tality would look like; additional ones may help us to think about what an interspecies Horizon-tality could entail, and lastly, they may altogether offer us an (aesth)et(h)ics for collaged and stitched-together assemblages for being and existing in the world outside of the modern-colonial world system.
See the entire project at https://www.coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/featured/notes-horizon-tality
Papers by Sara Garzón
The lack of self-representation of the Indian in the consolidation of “Mexicanidad” reveals the complexity of establishing an identity founded in an imagined cultural heritage that rejected the Indian nation, while appropriating and idealizing its image. This paper uses the works of Saturnino Herran, Fernando Leal and Diego Rivera to highlight how the indigenous image was appropriated and idealized by artists of the Mexican Renaissance to create a strong sense of nationalism based on a specific mestizo identity. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how despite its inherent contradictions this pictorial indigenism inspired the consolidation of indigenist movements in other parts of the hemisphere.
toxicity, and labor. Emulating a precarious lithium battery factory, a large platform lies
at the center of the gallery at Canal Projects creating a vantage point from where
visitors can interact by taking on the surveillance gaze of a factory manager.
The demonic possession of factory workers has a basis in reality, as documented by
the anthropologist Aihwa Ong. In Lin’s work, however, these testimonies of toxicity
become entwined with a story of bodily desire in the spiritual world creating multiple
layers around labor politics, queer love, and the materiality of our contemporary world.
Touching on a complex web of issues that relate to the histories of mass production,
the installation highlights and complicates the extraction and production of lithium, a
mineral that powers global mass consumption.
In the face of generalized pessimism, it is essential to remember that recent uprisings and social movements have opened the door to alternative imaginaries for thriving amid end-of-the-world scenarios. Especially as these imaginaries underscore the fact that looking back in time constitutes a powerful form of anti-colonial resistance. This proposal for engaging in an assemblage against extinction, however, prompts two different albeit related questions namely: where is the future? And whose world are we to imagine? We invited an array of collaborators from Latin America to provide a multiplicity of answers so that together we can foster the beginning of what could be a collective imaginary for Horizon-tality.
In the next few entries readers will find a variety of provocations: some propose other ways of telling time (past, present, future); others may incite us to follow new directions or assume new orientations; may offer imaginaries for what an indigenous, Black, queer, or feminist proposition for Horizon-tality would look like; additional ones may help us to think about what an interspecies Horizon-tality could entail, and lastly, they may altogether offer us an (aesth)et(h)ics for collaged and stitched-together assemblages for being and existing in the world outside of the modern-colonial world system.
See the entire project at https://www.coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/featured/notes-horizon-tality
The lack of self-representation of the Indian in the consolidation of “Mexicanidad” reveals the complexity of establishing an identity founded in an imagined cultural heritage that rejected the Indian nation, while appropriating and idealizing its image. This paper uses the works of Saturnino Herran, Fernando Leal and Diego Rivera to highlight how the indigenous image was appropriated and idealized by artists of the Mexican Renaissance to create a strong sense of nationalism based on a specific mestizo identity. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how despite its inherent contradictions this pictorial indigenism inspired the consolidation of indigenist movements in other parts of the hemisphere.