About Change, in Latin America and caribeean

cover / portada Both Worlds CECILIA PAREDES (detail / detalle) back cover / cubierta trasera Carcelero / Jailer ADÁN VALLECILLO previous page / página anterior. El Enigma del Río / The Enigma of the River AGUSTÍN PATIÑO The Vice Presidency for the Latin America and the Caribbean Region at the World Bank and the World Bank Art Program, in partnership with the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank and the AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Organization of American States, are honored to present: First Edition, 2011 Contemporary artists from the region portray in different forms the ongoing economic and social change. In this respect, the selected artists of About Change bring to the spotlight the concerns and achievements of a unique time for Latin America and the Caribbean. Pamela Cox World Bank Vice President for Latin America and Caribbean Acknowledgements About Change is not “simply” an art exhibition. It is a visual platform to promote a vibrant dialogue among people in Latin America and the Caribbean, the World Bank, and the international community on the achievements and hopes of the region. About Change is a clear call for embracing our social responsibility as citizens of this globe. About Change is cultural diplomacy at its best. Marina Galvani Art Curator, the World Bank Art Program It is impossible to fairly acknowledge the contribution that every person and institution brought to the table to make all this possible. To all who helped, critiqued, praised, and encouraged us, our deepest gratitude. Our warm gratitude goes to: our partners, AMA | Art Museum of the Americas and the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank, who accepted our invitation to join in this exciting adventure and who shared with us their expertise; the artists, who generously agreed to cross a cultural and psychological “barrier” and shake hands with the Bank to tell the stories and the hopes of their countries; the collectors, who agreed to share with us part of their personal vision into art, among them we want to single out Miguel Alexander, Curaçao; Joseph Bijo, Panama; Yannick Bourguignon, Brazil; Mark R. Mendell, USA; and Luiz Guilherme Schymura, Brazil. We are deeply indebted to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington DC, that shared our vision and provided every possible help to facilitate the participation of the artists from its country; in particular, we are grateful to Alexandre Vidal Porto, Minister-Counselor for Cultural Affairs, for the pleasure of his vibrant and generous personality and contribution; and to André Dunham Maciel Siaines de Castro, Cultural Attaché, and Ingrid Thurler da Silva, Attaché, for their kindness. But most of all, we want to thank the two visionaries without whose support we would not be here: Pamela Cox, regional Vice President of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean and Robert Van Pulley, Vice President for Corporate Finance and Risk Management, and—in a previous incarnation—director of the General Services Department, in which the Art Program is housed. For their essential contribution in disseminating information about the project among the countries, our special thanks go to: ARGENTINA Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA): Fundación Costantini; Laura Buccellato, Director, Museo de Arte Moderno; Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas and Gachi Prieto Gallery. BOLIVIA Edgar Arandia Quiroga, Director, Museo Nacional de Arte; Fátima Olivárez, Curator, Museo Nacional de Arte; Sandra Boulanger, Director, Acción Cultural and Pedro Querejazu Leyton, Director, Fundación Tarea. BRAZIL Ivo Mesquita, Curator, Pinacoteca do São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna; Instituto 6 Tomie Ohtake; Galeria Leme; Centro Cultural Banco Do Brasil, Itaú Cultural; Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud; Galeria Virgilio; Galeria Berenice Arvani; Galeria Brito Cimino; Casa Triangulo; Galeria Nara Roesler; Galeria Vermelho; Galeria Pontes; Galeria Choque Cultural; Galeria Movimento; and Galeria Zipper. CHILE Emilio Lamarca Orrego, Ambassador and Director of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Milan Ivelic, Director, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes; Francisco Brugnoli, Director, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo; Arturo Navarro, Director, Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho; Tomás Andreu M., Director, Galería Animal; Patricia Ready K., Director, Galería Artemás; Galería Alameda and Ernesto Ottone Ramírez, Director, Matucana 100. COSTA RICA Fundación Teorética; Virginia Pérez-Ratton; Clara Astiasarán; Juan Ignacio Salom, Director, Galería Kiosko and Fiorella Rasenterra, Director, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Ligia Reid, Cultural Attachée, Embassy of the Dominican Republic in Washington DC. EL SALVADOR Roberto Galicia, Director, Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE); Valia Garzón and Ronald Morán and their group of artists and friends. GUYANA Artists Akima McPherson, Elizabeth Deane-Hughes, Bernadette Persaud, and Guyana’s national treasure, sculptor Philip Moore, who generously introduced us to the local art scene and the National Art Gallery of Guyana-Castellani House. HONDURAS Iovanna Ravello, Centro Cultural de España and Adán Vallecillo. JAMAICA Petrona Morrison, Dean, School of Visual Arts and Edna Manley College; Veerle Poupeye, Director, National Gallery of Jamaica. MEXICO Alejandra de la Paz who, as Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC, has been “game” for the entire project. NICARAGUA Juanita Bermúdez, Director, Galería Códice, and Patricia Belli. PARAGUAY Ticio Escobar, Minister of Cultural Affairs; Osvaldo Salerno, Director, and Lia Colombino, Centro de Artes Visuales, Museo del Barro. SURINAME Artist Kit-Ling Tjon Pian Gi, in her role as the General Secretary for the Suriname Artists Association; and Monique W. Nouhchaia Sookdewsing, Managing Director, Readytex Art Gallery. URUGUAY Fundación de Arte Contemporáneo, the Centro Cultural de España and artist Jacqueline Lacasa. WASHINGTON DC Richard Dana, Director, Millennium Arts Center; Don Russell, Director, Provisions Library; the Phillips Collection; the Smithsonian Latino Center; Peggy Liss, Historian and generous friend. World Bank colleagues in Country Offices Our deep gratitude goes to the Country Directors and Country Managers who supported this project all along, in particular we single out the colleagues at the Buenos Aires Office: former Country Director Pedro Alba and current Director Penelope J. Brook, as well as their formidable teams, among their members Elizabeth De Lombardo, who took to this project from the start, and the incredible Luis Pereyra, without whose generosity Argentina’s artworks would have been much fewer; Joy Duff-Alleyne and her team in the Guyana Office who made our work so much easier; the Jamaica Office and the very dedicated Althea Spencer; the Mexican Office and its visionary Country Director Gloria Grandolini as well as the passionate Fernanda Zavaleta, who propelled About Change into the world of civil war with the exhibition Voices; the 7 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean Contributors Uruguay Office and its generous art-practitioner, former Country Manager David Yuravlivker and the wonderful Sylvia Albela Russo, who was always ready to step in when a need arose; the excellent civil society and media gurus María Teresa Norori Paniagua in Nicaragua and César Armando León Juarez in Guatemala; the generous Country Managers: Oscar Avalle (Bolivia) and Giorgio Valentini (formerly Guyana) and last but not least, Alexandre Abrantes, Special Envoy to Haiti, who shared with us not only his artistic contacts in Haiti, but from his native Brazil as well. World Bank Colleagues in Washington DC Our deep gratitude goes to the colleagues who suffered and rejoiced with us during the planning and implementation of About Change: in particular, our thanks go to Don M. Spatola, Senior Project Manager, and Ben Moss Schadrach, Project Manager, GSD Mail and Shipping Services; Cecilio Aponte, Strategic Account Manager, and Adam Gage, Operations Site Manager, both from Oce Business Services; and David Leonard, Manager, GSD Printing and Multimedia unit. A special thank you to Elizabeth Casquiero, Senior Manager, and Susanne Vallazza, Executive Assistant, from the International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group, who are willing to expand IFC’s outreach efforts to promote creativity and self-expression by supporting emerging artists from member countries. Our warmest thanks go to Alejandro Cedeño, Special Assistant to the Regional Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, The World Bank, whose intervention and sound advice came always at the right time and in the right way. Last but not least, our special gratitude goes to our managers, Carl Wessmann and Sabrina Capannola, who—together with Vivek Chaudhry, the “man with the money”— helped us navigate the stormy water of this exciting, challenging, and important project. 8 About Change was conceived by the World Bank Art Program and organized under the auspices of the Regional Vice Presidency for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank, in partnership with the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank and AMA | Art Museum of the Americas - Organization of the American States. In a series of art exhibitions, About Change has featured artists selected through a competitive process. Participation was open to emerging visual artists, or groups of artists, of any age, with preference given to artists born or currently working in one of the member countries of the World Bank Group in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Project Committee The Project Committee was in charge of the dissemination of the Call for Entries, as well as of the curatorial decisions related to the individual exhibitions. CHAIR Marina Galvani The World Bank Art Program, Manager and Curator Félix Ángel IADB Cultural Center, Director and Curator, Washington DC Clara Astiasarán Independent Curator, Costa Rica Matthew Burke The World Bank Art Program, Registrar Christopher Cozier Artist and Independent Curator, Trinidad and Tobago Evangelina Elizondo The World Bank Art Program, Artist/Assistant Curator Edgar Endress Artist and Independent Curator, Chile Tatiana Flores Independent Curator and Professor, Venezuela Valeria Gonzalez University of Buenos Aires, Independent Curator and Professor, Argentina Maria Leyva AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Organization of the American States, General Curator of Collections, Washington DC Fernanda Ramirez The World Bank Art Program, Consultant and Exhibition Coordinator The World Bank Art Program Project Team Marina Galvani Head and Curator Evangelina Elizondo Assistant Curator Matthew Burke Registrar Elena Grant Art Historical Research Fernanda Ramirez Exhibition Coordinator - South America Pamela Fraser Exhibition Coordinator - Caribbean Celia Bravo Customer Service Representative Roxana Bravo Denis Photography and Shipping María del Carmen Cossu Curator for Education Amber J. Van De Genachte Education and Outreach Coordinator Huda Abd Al Majeed Batterjee Education Program Assistant María de la Nieves Rubino Mira Education Program Assistant AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Organization of the American States Project Team Lydia Bendersky Director Andrés Navia General Manager Maria Leyva Former Curator of Collections Fabian Goncalves Exhibit Coordinator Adriana Ospina Education Coordinator Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center Project Team Félix Ángel Director and Curator Soledad Guerra Exhibitions Coordinator Anne Vena Inter-American Concert, Lecture and Film Series Coordinator Elba Agusti Cultural Development Program Coordinator Debra Corrie IDB Art Collection Coordinator and Registrar 9 Table of content Editorial Coordination Catalogue Evangelina Elizondo The World Bank Art Program, Artist/Assistant Curator Research and Catalogue Entries Félix Ángel, Inés Azar, Evangelina Elizondo, Valia Garzón Díaz, Valeria González, Elena Grant, Adriana Ospina, Fernanda Ramirez Editing and Translation Inés Azar Head Editor Ximena Hernandez Cata Editor Cristina Saccone Translator We are deeply grateful to Inés Azar, who with intelligence and dedication managed to create a symphony out of the multiplicity of voices of About Change. Design and Layout © Taller de comunicación gráfica Mexico Communication The World Bank Art Program HEADS Patricia Overend and Anne Dronnier Cathy Gagnet Alexandre Hery web Jorge Maldonado video Fernanda Ramirez facebook Renu Rawat web Communication The Vice Presidency for Latin America and the Caribbean HEAD Sergio Álvaro Jellinek Ana Elisa Luna Barros Patricia da Camara Rosa Photography The World Bank General Services Printing and Graphic Unit (GSDPG) Roxana Bravo Denis Framing and Art Installation The World Bank Frameshop Art Shipment and Moving The World Bank General Services Mail and Messenger Unit (GSDMM) About Change is based on an original idea by Marina Galvani 6 Acknowledgements 9 Contributors CLARA ASTIASARÁN Independent Guest Curator ESSAYS / ENSAYOS 14 Latin American and Caribbean Art in Times of Change América Latina y el Caribe: el Arte en Tiempos de Cambio PAMELA COX World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean/Vicepresidenta del Banco Mundial para América Latina y el Caribe 17 The World Bank Art Program Programa de Arte del Banco Mundial 47 Work in progress: Wrestling with the image Trabajo en curso: En lucha con la imagen CHRISTOPHER COZIER Artist and Independent Curator 59 The diverse dimensions of change Diversas dimensiones del cambio VALERIA GONZÁLEZ Independent Guest Curator CARL WESSMANN Acting Director, General Services/Director Interino, Departmento de Servicios Generales 20 About Change: the Birth of a Project El Cambio: El Nacimiento de un Proyecto MARINA GALVANI Art Curator, The World Bank Art Program /Curadora de Arte, Programa del Banco Mundial 29 The Inter-American Development Bank Art Collection La collección de arte del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo FÉLIX ÁNGEL Director/Curator 33 The Collection of the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States (OAS) La colección de arte del museo de arte de las Américas de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA) MARÍA LEYVA Curator of Collections, Art Museum of the Americas 10 39 Central America: The extensive island Centroamérica: La isla extensa 69 The history of photography through the lens of Latin America La historia de la fotografía vista a través de la lente de america latina VALERIA GONZÁLEZ Independent Guest Curator 83 Design as change El diseño como cambio RENATA BECERRIL Independent Guest Curator 97 What are you thinking right now? ¿Qué estás pensando? EDGAR ENDRESS Artist and Independent Guest Curator 107 Voices from the Region 350 Appendix INSIDE / OUTSIDE Street Art at the World Bank Selected Artists by Country of Origin / Residence LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ART IN TIMES OF CHANGE Pamela Cox World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean Latin America and the Caribbean is a region of great diversity. Its people speak Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch and some 400 indigenous languages. Its topography and ecosystems range from tropical islands to high sierras and altiplanos, rainforests, deserts, and sprawling plains. The art in About Change reflects this diversity, and has been selected from among more than 10,000 works submitted to best represent the various characteristics of this vast region. Contemporary artists from the region portray in different forms the ongoing economic and social change. In this respect, the selected artists of About Change bring to the spotlight the concerns and achievements of a unique time for Latin America and the Caribbean. The region has much cause for optimism, and several artworks reflect this exciting period. Latin America and the Caribbean have made notable strides in strengthening the legitimacy of public institutions. Many countries in the region not only weathered the recent global economic crisis with great resilience, but quickly rebounded to high growth rates. In the last decade, the region 14 AMÉRICA LATINA Y EL CARIBE: EL ARTE EN TIEMPOS DE CAMBIO Vicepresidenta del Banco Mundial para América Latina y el Caribe América Latina y el Caribe es una región con una gran diversidad. Su población habla español, portugués, inglés, francés, holandés y cerca de 400 idiomas indígenas. Su topografía y ecosistemas abarcan desde islas tropicales hasta sierras y altiplanos, selvas, desiertos, y vastas llanuras. El arte en El Cambio refleja esta diversidad, y ha sido seleccionado de entre más de 10.000 obras creadas para representar de la mejor manera posible las múltiples características de esta gran región. Artistas contemporáneos de la región describen de varias formas los cambios económicos y sociales en curso. En este sentido, los artistas seleccionados para El Cambio resaltan las preocupaciones y logros de un período único para América Latina y el Caribe. Hay muchas razones para el optimismo en la región, y son varias las obras que reflejan este emocionante período. América Latina y el Caribe avanzó de manera notable en el fortalecimiento de la legitimidad de sus instituciones públicas. Muchos países de la región no solo soportaron la reciente crisis económica mundial con gran resiliencia, sino que se recuperaron rápidamente hasta alcanzar una tasa de previous page / página anterior. Kibi wi koni / Preserve Our Knowledge, | MARCEL HENDRICK PINAS (detail / detalle) has also lifted more than 50 million people out of moderate poverty and has begun to make inroads against persistent inequality. On the other end of the spectrum, the region continues to grapple with the challenge of ensuring that opportunities reach all citizens independently of their race, gender or social background. Many artworks in the exhibition clearly refer to this critical challenge and portray the difficult circumstances many Latin Americans are facing. The World Bank is committed to helping Latin American and Caribbean countries achieve a socially inclusive path to sustained growth with respect to the diversity of the region. As part of this commitment, we have been supporting regional artists through About Change since 2008. The role that the artists of About Change agreed to take on—that of social commentator and conscience—helps highlight the critical role of citizens’ participation in decision making, including marginalized groups, and how broadening opportunities can help the region fulfill its promise of real change. crecimiento elevada. En la última década, la región también redujo la pobreza moderada en 50 millones de personas y ha comenzado a revertir la persistente desigualdad. En el extremo opuesto, permanece el desafío de asegurar que las oportunidades lleguen a todos los ciudadanos, independientemente de raza, género u origen social. Muchas de las obras exhibidas se refieren a este desafío clave y describen las difíciles circunstancias enfrentadas por muchos latinoamericanos. El Banco Mundial se comprometió a ayudar a los países de América Latina y el Caribe a alcanzar un crecimiento sostenido que sea socialmente inclusivo y que respete la diversidad de la región. Como parte de este compromiso, desde 2008 hemos respaldado a varios artistas regionales a través de El Cambio. El papel que los artistas de El Cambio acordaron asumir —el de comentarista y conciencia social— subraya el rol crítico de los ciudadanos en la toma de decisiones, incluyendo a los grupos marginalizados, y cómo la ampliación de oportunidades puede ayudar a la región a llevar a cabo un cambio real. 15 THE WORLD BANK ART PROGRAM PROGRAMA DE ARTE DEL BANCO MUNDIAL Carl Wessmann Acting Director, General Services The World Bank embraces an ambitious mission— to eradicate poverty in our client countries. This task requires the full commitment of our staff and a constant adjustment to the complexities of a global and ever-changing reality. In an era that places an increased focus on results and reforms, the World Bank has kept pace with them, relying more and more on knowledge sharing and much less on traditional development practices. Knowledge sharing requires a strong understanding and appreciation of the values and cultural framework of our partners, as well as the willingness and courage to listen to them. The World Bank Art Program, created within General Services in 1997, has responded to this need. Through acquisitions, exhibitions, and competitions, the Art Program reaches out to a vast reservoir of artists from our member countries, acting as a cultural ambassador of the Bank and seeking to further the Bank’s mission of fighting poverty. The Art Program has organized several cultural programs—exhibitions, public debates, web discussions, and workshops with artists—that have promoted dialogue with the Bank’s stakeholders on a broad range of international issues. These include human trafficking, child labor, migration, climate change, social inequality, diversity, and democracy. La salsera / The Salsa Dance Hall by ADRIANA LESTIDO (detail / detalle) Director Interino, Departamento de Servicios Generales El Banco Mundial se ha impuesto una ambiciosa misión: erradicar la pobreza en nuestros países miembros. Esta tarea exige el total compromiso de nuestro personal y un constante trabajo de ajuste a las complejidades de la siempre cambiante realidad global. En una era que se enfoca sobre todo en hacer reformas y obtener resultados, el Banco Mundial se mantiene al día y recurre cada vez más al intercambio de conocimientos y mucho menos a las prácticas tradicionales de desarrollo. El intercambio de conocimientos exige una profunda comprensión y apreciación de los valores y del marco cultural de nuestros socios; requiere también la voluntad y el coraje de escucharlos. El Programa de Arte del Banco Mundial, creado dentro del Departamento de Servicios Generales en 1997, es precisamente la respuesta a esta exigencia. Mediante sus adquisiciones, exposiciones y concursos, el Programa de Arte consigue llegar a un vasto número de artistas de nuestros países miembros y actúa como un embajador cultural del Banco, procurando dar mayor impulso a su misión de lucha contra la pobreza. El Programa de Arte ha organizado diversos programas culturales—exposiciones, debates públicos, discusiones en línea, talleres con artistas— que han estimulado un diálogo sostenido con los actores del Banco sobre un 17 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean Now the Art Program has launched About Change, its second multi-year, regionally-focused cultural program, following the success of Africa Now! in 2008-09. About Change celebrates the contemporary visual arts of Latin America and the Caribbean. With this initiative, the Art Program recognizes the important role that the region’s artists and designers play at the forefront of cultural innovation and expression. Artists and other cultural contributors in Latin America and the Caribbean have established a solid reputation for themselves around the world. Moreover, the economic activity associated with art and culture strengthens the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises and constitutes one of the region’s most dynamic markets. About Change offers a platform for Latin American and Caribbean artists and artisans, civil society groups, government officials, thinkers, and international organizations to reflect jointly on the concept of change. The concept welcomes many interpretations and encourages artists to comment on a wide number of topics, including current challenges in the region. The World Bank is proud to provide this forum for art from Latin America and the Caribbean, with the Art Program as our cultural ambassador. These artists convey—in a few brush strokes or the angle of a camera lens—their vision of the world. They demonstrate that we all dream the same dream: that of a world without poverty. 18 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe amplio espectro de cuestiones internacionales: por ejemplo, el tráfico de personas, la explotación infantil, el cambo climático, la desigualdad social, la democracia. Actualmente el Programa de Arte ha lanzado El Cambio, su segundo proyecto cultural de varios años enfocado en una región, después del éxito de Africa Now! [¡África, ahora!] en 20082009. El Cambio rinde homenaje a las artes visuales de América Latina y el Caribe. Con esta iniciativa, el Programa de Arte reconoce el importante papel de los artistas y diseñadores que están en la vanguardia de la expresión e innovación cultural. Los artistas y los trabajadores de la cultura de América Latina y el Caribe han establecido su reputación en todo el mundo. Más aun, la actividad económica asociada con el arte y la cultura fortalece al sector de pequeñas y medianas empresas y constituye uno de los mercados más dinámicos de la región. El cambio ofrece una plataforma para que los artistas y artesanos de América Latina y el Caribe, los grupos de la sociedad civil, los funcionarios de gobierno, los pensadores y las organizaciones internacionales reflexionen de manera conjunta sobre el concepto de cambio. Ese concepto admite muchas interpretaciones y alienta a los artistas a expresar sus ideas sobre un gran número de tópicos, incluidos los desafíos actuales de la región. El Banco Mundial tiene el orgullo de proporcionar este foro para el arte de América Latina y el Caribe, con el Programa de Arte como nuestro embajador cultural. Con unas pocas pinceladas, o con el enfoque de una cámara fotográfica, los artistas que participan en esta muestra transmiten su visión del mundo y demuestran que todos tenemos un mismo sueño: el de un mundo sin pobreza. Untitled by BETTINA VAZ GUIMARAES 19 ABOUT CHANGE: THE BIRTH OF A PROJECT EL CAMBIO: EL NACIMIENTO DE UN PROYECTO Marina Galvani Art Curator, The World Bank Art Program From fine arts to fashion, from urban to rural culture, from music to design and film, Latin American and Caribbean artists and designers are at the forefront of artistic and cultural innovation and expression, tapping into the traditions that surround them as well as examining and influencing social and technological change through their work. In order to support this cultural work, the World Bank Art Program, under the auspices of the Bank’s Vice Presidency for Latin American and the Caribbean Region, has partnered since 2009 with the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank and AMA|the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of the American States to create About Change/El Cambio/Le Changement/A Mudança, a regional cultural program dedicated to the artists from Bank member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean region.1 About Change is cultural diplomacy at its best. It was conceived as a visual platform using art as a means to enrich the dialogue among the World Bank,2 the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, and the international community about the opportunities, challenges, values, hopes, and aspirations of the region. About Change tells the viewer as much about the region as the Bank annual report, but in 20 Imperial by HOLLY BYNOE (detail / detalle) Curadora de Arte, Programa de Arte del Banco Mundial De las bellas artes a la moda, de la cultura urbana a la rural, de la música al diseño y al cine, los artistas y diseñadores de América Latina y el Caribe están en la vanguardia de la expresión artística y cultural. Enraizados en las tradiciones que los rodean, estos artistas examinan en sus obras los cambios tecnológicos de nuestro tiempo y sus consecuencias sociales. En apoyo de ese trabajo cultural, desde 2009 el Programa de Arte del Banco Mundial, bajo el auspicio de la Vicepresidencia para América Latina y el Caribe, ha unido fuerzas con el Centro Cultural del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo y AMA | Museo de Arte de las Américas de la Organización de Estados Americanos para crear El Cambio/About Change/Le Changement/A Mudança, un programa cultural regional dedicado a los artistas de los países miembros del Banco en América Latina y el Caribe.1 El Cambio se concibió como una plataforma visual en la que el arte sirve para enriquecer el diálogo que sostienen el Banco Mundial,2 los pueblos de América Latina y el Caribe y la comunidad internacional sobre las oportunidades, los desafíos, los valores y las esperanzas y aspiraciones de la región. El Cambio dice tanto sobre la región como lo hace el informe anual del Banco, pero en una clave diferente. Los gráficos y las tablas, tanto como las obras pictóricas, hablan de las prioridades regionales 21 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 1 / figura 1 Hilando Fino / Fine Threading CATALINA MENA URMENYI figure 3 / figura 3 Cathedral SCHEREZADE GARCÍA figure 4 / figura 4 Colt ARTEMIO NARRO EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe figure 2 / figura 2 Autopoiesis / Self-creation ADÁN VALLECILOS With this goal in mind, About Change has worked to make sure that the message from the people in the region conveyed by these artworks is kept intact and is faithfully transmitted. Thus, the works selected to be shown in About Change reflect both the freedom and transparency generated by an exhibition that took the risk of issuing an open call for entries and the sensitive hand of the curatorial team, which chiseled, out of 10,000 entries, an exhibition program with an intricate net of interwoven stories to be told. In addition to profound national and local differences, these artworks also comment on the gap between reality and the stereotypes that the “outside” world often projects on Latin America and the Caribbean. About Change is an opportunity for an international audience to reflect upon this region in more current terms and for the artists to challenge an often-stultified image of their own countries (figures 5, 6). a different key. Graphs and charts, as well as paintings, talk about regional priorities and the impact of international emergencies, such as the food price crisis (figure 1), child labor (figure 2), migration (figure 3), climate change, violence (figure 4), and social inequality. About Change: Promoting Dialogue and Mutual Understanding An important part of the World Bank Art Program’s mandate of contributing to the cultural diplomacy of the Bank, is to help artists expand their role as sensitive social barometers in order to promote dialogue between our institution and its stakeholders. 22 y del impacto de emergencias internacionales como la crisis del precio de los alimentos (figura 1), la explotación infantil (figura 2), las migraciones (figura 3), el cambio climático, la violencia (figura 4) y la desigualdad social. El cambio: promoción del diálogo y la comprensión mutua Una parte importante del mandato del Programa de Arte del Banco Mundial de contribuir con la diplomacia cultural del Banco, es asistir a los artistas a que expandan su papel de sensibles barómetros sociales con el fin de promover un diálogo entre nuestra institución y sus partes interesadas. About Change: Art With a Conscience Nourished by the profound differences among their diverse cultural and ethnic heritages, the artworks presented in About Change reflect clearly their unique cultural references, their history and traditions. At the same time they resonate with shared transnational themes such as the search for identity (figure 7), global warming (figure 8), migration, and injustice in all its forms. Thus, while the Bank’s social development specialists highlight, in their reports, the threatening effects of violence in Central America on the well-being of citizens and on the investment climate in the region, Rossana Lacayo’s photographs, for instance, point very clearly to the human and environmental devastation caused by povertyinduced violence in Nicaragua (figure 9), joining a large group of works in which the artists issue an appeal to react against violence in society. Para ese fin, El Cambio se ha esforzado en transmitir fielmente y mantener intacto el mensaje de la gente de la región transmitido por estas obras de arte. Por eso, las obras seleccionadas para exhibir en El Cambio reflejan tanto la libertad y transparencia de una exposición que asumió el riesgo de hacer un llamado a concurso abierto como la hábil mano del equipo de curadores que, sobre la base de un total de 10.000 entradas, cinceló un programa de exposición con un intricado tejido de historias para contar. Además de reflejar profundas diferencias nacionales y locales, estas obras proponen también un comentario sobre la brecha que existe entre la realidad y los estereotipos que el mundo “exterior” proyecta a menudo en América Latina y el Caribe. El Cambio ofrece a un público internacional la oportunidad de reflexionar sobre esta región en términos actuales, y a los artistas, la posibilidad de cuestionar una imagen, a menudo anquilosada, de sus países (figuras 5, 6). El cambio: un arte con consciencia Las obras presentadas en El Cambio se nutren de las profundas diferencias que existen entre sus 23 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 5 / figura 5 El Enigma del Río / The Enigma of the River AGUSTÍN PATIÑO figure 6 / figura 6 It’s a wonderful world JOAQUÍN RODRIGUEZ DEL PASO In a postmodern re-appropriation and fusion of iconographical languages, artists reflect on the end of the “fairy tale” and the decline of the “world of yesterday,” while emphasizing a present ridden by social tensions, clashes of first and second worlds, economic crisis, and overwhelming materialism (figures 10, 11, 12). It is visibly clear that these artists are not only working in constant dialogue with their peers and the reality of their countries but are also wellacquainted with the reverberating, sometimes cacophonic, global debates on international issues. Although a ferociously ironic critique of the status quo is omnipresent in the exhibition pieces, About Change does not convey a nihilistic message. Interwoven with stern appeals to end social injustice and halt the degradation of our natural 24 figure 8 / figura 8 El bosque / The Forest ANDREA JUAN EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe figure 7 / figura 7 Imperial HOLLY BYNOE diversas herencias étnicas y culturales y, por eso mismo, reflejan claramente su singular referencia cultural, su historia y sus particulares tradiciones. Al mismo tiempo, estas obras dan voz a temas transnacionales que todas comparten, como la búsqueda de la identidad (figura 7), el calentamiento global (figura 8), las migraciones y la injusticia en todas sus formas. Así, mientras los especialistas de desarrollo social del Banco subrayan en sus informes el efecto amenazador de la violencia en el bienestar de los ciudadanos y en el clima de inversión en América Central, las fotografías de Rossana Lacayo, por ejemplo, muestran claramente la devastación humana y ambiental causada en Nicaragua por la violencia que engendra la pobreza (figura 9), uniéndose a un vasto grupo de obras en las que los artistas world, these works offer moments of jocularity, and also of utopian hope. Not unlike social workers and visionaries, the artists of About Change call on viewers and societies to engage in hard selfreflection. They also alert us to the need for profound changes (figure 13). A millenarian message comes out of this unmistakably “21st century” exhibition: change must come, and its time is now. hacen un llamado a la acción contra la violencia en la sociedad. En una reapropiación y fusión postmodernista de los lenguajes iconográficos, los artistas reflexionan sobre la desaparición del “cuento de hadas” y la declinación del “mundo de ayer,” al mismo tiempo que ponen de relieve un tiempo presente dominado por las tensiones sociales, los choques entre el primer mundo y el segundo, las crisis económicas y un materialismo abrumador (figuras 10, 11, 12). Es evidente que estos artistas no solo trabajan en constante diálogo con sus pares y con la realidad de sus países sino que también están familiarizados con los resonantes, a veces cacofónicos, debates globales sobre cuestiones internacionales. Aunque casi todas las obras de la exposición comparten una crítica ferozmente irónica del status 25 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 9 / figura 9 La Chureca / The Garbage Dump ROSSANA LACAYO figure 10 / figura 10 A princesa e a ervilha / The Princess and the Pea BRUNO VILELA figure 11 / figura 11 Galina GABY MESSINA figure 13 / figura 13 Art must live reality TANIA CANDIANI EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe figure 12 / figura 12 Na companhia dos objetos / In the Company of Objects FLAVIA JUNQUEIRA quo, El Cambio no transmite un mensaje nihilista. Entretejidos con austeros llamados a poner fin a la injusticia social y a la degradación del mundo natural, estas obras ofrecen momentos de humor festivo y también de utópica esperanza. No muy diferentes de los trabajadores sociales o los visionarios, los artistas de El Cambio proponen que los espectadores y la sociedad hagan un minucioso y severo autoexamen. Estos artistas también nos alertan con respecto a la necesidad urgente de un profundo cambio (figura 13). De esta exposición, que pertenece inconfundiblemente al siglo XXI, surge un mensaje milenario: el cambio debe llegar, y debe llegar ahora. World Bank Group member countries in the region are (in alphabetic order) Antigua and Barbuda; Argentina; Barbados; Bahamas; Belize; Bolivia; Brazil; Chile; Colombia; Costa Rica; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; El Salvador; Grenada; Guatemala; Guyana; Haiti; Honduras; Jamaica; Mexico; Nicaragua; Panama; Paraguay; Peru; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and The Grenadines; Suriname; Trinidad and Tobago; Uruguay, and Venezuela. 2 The “Bank” is not a bank in the usual sense; it is made up of two unique development institutions owned by 187 member countries: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). Each institution plays a different but collaborative role in advancing the vision of inclusive and sustainable globalization. The IBRD aims to reduce poverty in middle-income and creditworthy poor countries, while IDA focuses on the poorest countries in the world. Their work is complemented by that of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). 1 26 Los países miembros del Banco Mundial en la región son (en orden alfabético) Antigua y Barbuda; Argentina; Barbados; las Bahamas; Belize; Bolivia; Brasil; Chile; Colombia; Costa Rica; Dominica; República Dominicana; Ecuador; El Salvador; la isla de Granada; Guatemala; Guyana; Haití; Honduras; Jamaica; México; Nicaragua; Panamá; Paraguay; Perú; Saint Kitts y Nevis; Santa Lucía; San Vicente y las Granadinas; Suriname; Trinidad y Tobago; Uruguay, y Venezuela. 2 El “Banco” no es un banco en el sentido acostumbrado: está formado por dos instituciones de desarrollo singulares que son propiedad de sus 187 países miembros: el Banco Internacional de Reconstrucción y Fomento (IBRD) y la Asociación Internacional de Fomento (AIF). Cada institución desempeña una función distinta pero colabora con la otra para promover la visión de una globalización incluyente y sostenible. El BIRF se propone reducir la pobreza en los países de ingresos medios y en los países pobres con capacidad crediticia, mientras que la AIF se dedica a los países más pobres del mundo. Tres organizaciones complementan la labor de estas dos instituciones: La Corporación Financiera Internacional (IFC por su sigla en inglés), el Organismo Multilateral de Garantía de Inversiones (MIGA) y el Centro Internacional de Arreglos de Diferencias Relativas a Inversiones (ICSID). 1 27 THE INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK ART COLLECTION LA COLECCIÓN DE ARTE DEL BANCO INTERAMERICANO DE DESARROLLO Félix Ángel Director/Curator, Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Although collecting art has never been a priority for the IDB, for over half a century the Bank has been acquiring art pieces from artists who are born, live, and work in its member countries. The main reason for the acquisition of these artworks was, and still is, to enhance the work environment and create a good atmosphere at IDB Headquarters in Washington, DC, and in its Country Offices. As a consequence, the artworks gathered throughout the years have served to illustrate the incredible creativity of the Bank’s member countries mostly to the hundreds of daily visitors who enter the IDB buildings in Washington. During the first decades of the Bank’s existence, the artworks were the responsibility of the Administrative Department. In 1992, the management of the collection at Headquarters was transferred to the newly created Cultural Center, and since then professional guidelines have been established to regulate what may be considered an institutional collection worthy of the prestige and importance the IDB has achieved as the oldest regional multilateral Bank in the world, and as the main source of financing and technical assistance for Latin American and Caribbean countries. The guidelines established for the IDB Art Collection conform to standard regulations that 28 Rodrigo by NICHOLAS SHI (detail / detalle) Director y Curador, Centro Cultural del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) Aunque coleccionar arte nunca fue una de sus prioridades, a lo largo de más de medio siglo el BID ha adquirido obras de artistas que nacieron, viven y trabajan en sus países miembros. La principal razón para adquirir estas obras de arte fue, y todavía es, enriquecer el ambiente de trabajo y la atmósfera general de la sede del BID en la ciudad de Washington y de sus oficinas de país. En consecuencia, las obras de arte reunidas a lo largo de los años han servido para dar a conocer la increíble fuerza creativa de los países miembros especialmente a los cientos de personas que entran en los edificios del Banco en Washington. Durante las primeras décadas de existencia del Banco, las obras de arte eran la responsabilidad del Departamento de Administración. En 1992, la gestión de la colección de la sede se transfirió al recién creado Centro Cultural, y desde entonces se han establecido normas y lineamientos profesionales para regular el funcionamiento de lo que puede considerarse como una colección institucional digna del prestigio e importancia que el BID ha adquirido como el más antiguo Banco regional multilateral y como fuente principal de financiamiento y asistencia para los países de América Latina y El Caribe. Los lineamientos establecidos para la Colección de Arte del BID se ajustan a normas ya existentes 29 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean exist in the field of institutional and corporate art collections. While the use of the Bank’s collection is very different from that of a museum collection, its guidelines nonetheless include, among other things, the appointment of a Curator, the hiring of staff to oversee the management and conservation of the artworks, and the creation of an Acquisitions Committee of experts who are not associated with the Bank (to avoid possible conflicts of interest) and whose main responsibility is to evaluate the pertinence of possible purchases and gifts. Since 1992, the collection has been inventoried, catalogued, and registered in a digital database; a procedure has been established to manage internal and external loans; and new guidelines have been incorporated into the Bank’s Administrative Manual, including those preventing IDB employees who are not IDB Cultural Center personnel from directly handling the collection’s artworks themselves. Thus, the IDB Art Collection is a highly eclectic sum of many interests that has been professionally managed for the last eighteen years. This curatorial guidance has helped the Bank not only to protect many valuable pieces with significant historical, artistic, and monetary value, but also to incorporate new ones while keeping up with internal and external demands. The IDB Art Collection is a living collection, displayed almost in its entirety throughout the three IDB buildings on New York Avenue in Washington, DC, with literally no restrictions except those indicated in the guidelines. The Collection offers a number of challenges that are impossible to ignore and that in many ways contribute to define its orientation and managing style. The Bank has a particular social and economic agenda and a diverse membership; it experiences frequent transfers and rotations of personnel; the artworks in the collection are exposed to traffic across the three IDB buildings; unpredictable circumstances may occur in a place with nearly 30 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe en el área de colecciones de arte institucionales y corporativas. El uso de la colección del Banco es muy diferente del de una colección de museo, pero sus normas incluyen igualmente, entre otras cosas, el nombramiento de un Curador,, el contrato de personal que tenga a su cargo la administración y conservación de las obras de arte, y la creación de un Comité de Adquisiciones integrado por expertos que no estén asociados con el Banco (para evitar posibles conflictos de interés) y que tienen como principal responsabilidad evaluar la pertinencia de posibles compras y donaciones. Desde 1992, se ha hecho el inventario de la colección y se la ha catalogado y registrado en una base de datos digital; se han establecido procedimientos para administrar préstamos internos y externos; y se han incorporado nuevas normas en el Manual Administrativo del Banco, incluidas las que impiden que empleados del BID que no son parte del Centro Cultural manipulen directamente las obras de arte. La Colección de Arte del BID es una ecléctica suma de muchos intereses que ha sido administrada profesionalmente durante los últimos dieciocho años. Esa guía profesional le ha servido al Banco no sólo para proteger muchas obras con un significativo valor histórico, artístico y monetario, sino también para incorporar nuevas obras, respondiendo siempre a las exigencias internas y externas. La Colección de Arte del BID es una colección viva, expuesta casi en su totalidad en los tres edificios de la sede en la ciudad de Washington, sin más restricciones que las indicadas en los lineamientos para su administración. La Colección presenta varios desafíos que no se pueden ignorar y que contribuyen a definir su orientación y el estilo de su gestión. El Banco tiene una particular agenda social y económica y un diverso grupo de miembros; las transferencias y rotaciones de personal son frecuentes dentro de 1400 employees constantly on the move. For all these reasons, some principles have been established that govern the conceptual and physical aspects of the collection: in the last few years, for instance, thematic preference has been given to social and economic messages in content or symbolism. Specific conservation principles for the handling of individual artworks have also been established: among others, UF3 Plexiglas is used to protect works on paper displayed in most areas of heavy circulation. As Curator of the IDB since the position was established in 1992, I have been privileged to oversee and witness the growth of the Inter American Development Bank’s Art Collection, and to accompany it on tour to many places such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; San José, Costa Rica; Riverside and San Bernardino in California, as well as the states of Maryland, Arkansas, and Florida, and more recently, the city of Medellin, Colombia. There is still much to do, of course, but no matter how difficult the task has been, the reward is to see a collection that has gradually been recognized in the United States and elsewhere for its scope and quality. The collection is an extraordinary resource that the IDB has utilized to advance its agenda and presence in places where it has not been represented by other projects. This is most rewarding because the collection is a recognition the IDB gives to all those artists who are part and parcel of the vast majority of people for whom the Bank is trying to create a better future. la institución; las obras de arte están expuestas a tráfico constante en los tres edificios de la Sede; circunstancias impredecibles pueden presentarse en un lugar con cerca de 1400 empleados en constante movimiento. Por todas estas razones, se han establecido algunos principios que gobiernan los aspectos físicos y conceptuales de la colección: en los últimos años, por ejemplo, se ha dado preferencia temática a obras que tienen contenido social y económico, a nivel literal o simbólico. Se han establecido además principios específicos de conservación para el manejo de obras de arte individuales: por ejemplo, se usa Plexiglás UF-3 para proteger trabajos en papel expuestos en las áreas de mayor circulación. En mi cargo de Curador desde que se creó el Centro Cultural en 1992, he tenido el privilegio de supervisar la Colección de Arte del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo; la he visto crecer, y la he acompañado en giras a muchos lugares: Río de Janeiro en Brasil; San José en Costa Rica; Riverside y San Bernardino en California; los estados de Maryland, Arkansas y Florida, y más recientemente la ciudad de Medellín, en Colombia. Por cierto, queda aún mucho por hacer, pero no importa lo difícil que haya sido la tarea, la recompensa es ver una colección que con el tiempo ha sido reconocida, dentro y fuera de los Estados Unidos, por su alcance y calidad. La colección es un extraordinario recurso que ha servido para promover los programas y establecer la presencia del BID en lugares donde no está representado por ningún otro proyecto. Esta es la mayor recompensa, porque la colección es la expresión de reconocimiento, por parte del BID, de todos los artistas que son parte esencial de esa vasta mayoría para la que el Banco está tratando de crear un futuro mejor. 31 THE COLLECTION OF THE ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES (OAS) LA COLECCIÓN DE ARTE DEL MUSEO DE ARTE DE LAS AMÉRICAS DE LA ORGANIZACIÓN DE ESTADOS AMERICANOS (OEA) María Leyva Curator of Collections, AMA | Art Museum of the Americas Artists employ diverse aesthetic strategies to examine and shed light on the complexities of the societies we live in. An art collection both reflects and anticipates important moments in art while transmitting histories and ways of thinking in a synthesized and immediate way. Constructive Composition (1943) by Joaquín Torres-García embodies the artist’s influential doctrine of Constructive Universalism, a cornerstone of Latin American modernism. Alejandro Obregón’s The Dead Student (1956), awarded a national prize at the 1957 Guggenheim International Exhibition, speaks to the period in Colombian history known as “La Violencia” [The Violence]. With eloquence and power, the painting addresses a specific political context yet is universal in its meaning (figure 1). Tony Capellán’s Caribbean Sea (1996) installation, with its accumulation of barbed-wire flip-flops (figure 2), addresses the harsh economic realities of Diaspora and migration. Over the years, the OAS has collected works that stand on their own as outstanding examples of individual artistic expression and at the same time inform viewers about differences and commonalities in the socio-cultural histories of the region. Within an international organization, an art collection has the potential to serve as a focal point for international exchange, to extend the reach 32 Curadora de Colecciones, Museo de Arte de las Américas Los artistas emplean diversas estrategias estéticas para examinar e iluminar la complejidad de las sociedades en las que vivimos. Una colección de arte refleja y también anticipa momentos importantes en el arte, mientras transmite historias y modos de pensar en forma sintética e inmediata. La Composición constructiva (1943) de Joaquín Torres García encarna su influyente doctrina del universalismo constructivo, que es una piedra angular del modernismo latinoamericano. El Estudiante muerto (1956) de Alejandro Obregón, que recibió un premio nacional en la Exposición Internacional Guggenheim de 1957, da testimonio del período de la historia de Colombia conocido como La Violencia (figura 1). Con fuerza y elocuencia, el cuadro aborda un contexto político particular pero su significado es universal. La instalación Mar Caribe (1966) de Tony Capellán, con sus chancletas con alambre de púas (figura 2), dan cuenta de la dura realidad económica de la diáspora y la migración. A lo largo de los años, la OEA coleccionó obras que se sostienen por sí mismas como ejemplos destacados de expresión artística individual y, al mismo tiempo, instruyen al espectador con respecto a rasgos compartidos y diferencias en la historia sociocultural de la región. Dentro de una organización internacional, una colección de arte Composición constructiva / Constructive Composition by JOAQUÍN TORRES GARCÍA (detail / detalle) 33 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean of the institution to a broader and more diverse audience, and to reinforce an integrated perspective that promotes the centrality of art in society and the fundamental importance of creative endeavors to development. Although it is true that too often cultural programs are marginalized and allocated a minimum of resources, the potential for cultural diplomacy that these programs offer is real and largely untapped. As an initiative of the World Bank that reaches out to emerging artists in a broad geographic region and offers a forum for today’s issues and concerns, About Change is a strategic way to tap into that potential through partnership. The Organization of American States, the world’s oldest regional organization, has a long tradition of engagement in the cultural world dating back to 1917. By the time of the creation of the Office of Intellectual Cooperation in 1929, this commitment encompassed programs and projects devoted to music, art, literature, and the protection of cultural patrimony. It was, however, with the creation of the Visual Arts Unit in 1946 that a systematic program devoted to visual arts culture was carried out. Thirty 34 figure 1 / figura 1 The Dead Student ALEJANDRO OBREGON figure 2 / figura 2 Caribbean Sea TONY CAPELLAN puede servir de foco para el intercambio internacional, puede extender el alcance de la institución a un público más amplio y diverso y dar mayor fuerza a una perspectiva integrada que promueva la centralidad del arte en la sociedad y la importancia del trabajo creativo en los procesos de desarrollo. Es cierto que muy a menudo los programas culturales quedan marginados y reciben un mínimo de recursos, pero las posibilidades de diplomacia cultural que estos programas ofrecen son reales y están en gran medida aun sin explotar. Como iniciativa del Banco Mundial que trata de llegar a artistas emergentes en una amplia región geográfica y ofrece un foro para la discusión de cuestiones e inquietudes actuales, El Cambio es un modo estratégico de aprovechar esas posibilidades mediante un proyecto compartido. La Organización de Estados Americanos es la organización regional más antigua del mundo y tiene una larga tradición de compromiso con el mundo de la cultura que data de 1917. En el momento en que se creó la Oficina de Cooperación Intelectual, en 1929, ese compromiso abarcaba ya programas y proyectos dedicados a la música, el arte, la literatura y la protección del patrimonio cultural. Fue, sin embargo, sólo con la creación de la Unidad de Artes Visuales en 1946 que se comenzó a llevar a cabo un programa sistemático dedicado a la cultura de las artes visuales. Treinta años después, en 1976, ese programa se convirtió en el Museo de Arte de las Américas, tal como lo conocemos hoy. La actividad principal de la Unidad de Artes Visuales fue el programa de exposiciones temporales que trajeron a Washingtonlas obras de artistas emergentes de los países miembros de la OEA. Desde mediados de los años cuarenta hasta los ochenta, el programa de exposiciones de la OEA fue dirigido por el crítico cubano José Gómez-Sicre, cuyo papel seminal fue el de presentar talentosos artistas de América Latina y el Caribe al público de years later, in 1976, that program became the Art Museum of the Americas, as we know it today. The core of the Visual Arts Unit was its temporary exhibit program that brought the work of emerging artists from OAS member countries to Washington, DC. From the mid-1940s to the early 1980s, the OAS exhibition program was directed by Cuban-born art critic José Gómez-Sicre, who played a seminal role in introducing a United States audience to talented artists of Latin America and the Caribbean. In the early years of the program, an exhibit at OAS was, for many artists, a first opportunity to show outside of their own country and, in many cases, a first step toward international recognition. As a direct result of the Visual Arts Unit exhibit program, a collection began to emerge. The institutional mandate was to form and preserve a collection designed to reflect the contemporary art produced in the OAS member countries and serve as a tangible cultural resource for future generations. The first work officially recorded for the collection, a painting by Cándido Portinari (figure 3), was donated by Gómez-Sicre in 1949. Portinari, EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe los Estados Unidos. En los primeros años del programa, una exposición en la OEA fue, para muchos artistas, la primera oportunidad de tener una muestra fuera de sus países y, en muchos casos, un primer paso para llegar a ser reconocidos internacionalmente. Como resultado directo del programa de la Unidad de Artes Visuales, comenzó a reunirse una colección de obras. El mandato institucional era formar una colección destinada a reflejar el arte contemporáneo que se producía en los países miembros de la OEA y a servir de recurso cultural tangible para futuras generaciones. La primera obra oficialmente registrada como parte de la colección fue un cuadro de Cándido Portinari (figura 3), donado por Gómez-Sicre en 1949. Portinari, que había colaborado en proyectos arquitectónicos con el renombrado arquitecto Oscar Niemeyer, expuso sus obras en la OEA en 1947. Otras donaciones importantes durante los primeros años del programa incluyen un cuadro de Roberto Matta (figura 4), pionero en el desarrollo de la pintura abstracta moderna. El cuadro fue donado a la OEA por el Washington Workshop Center for the Arts [Taller del Centro de Washington para 35 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean who collaborated on architectural projects with renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, exhibited at the OAS in 1947. Other important gifts in the early years of the program include a painting by Roberto Matta (figure 4), a pioneer in the development of modern abstract painting. It was given to the OAS by the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts, a school and community center associated with the Washington Color School. In 1963 Franciso Matarrazo Sobrinho, who at the time was President of the São Paulo Biennial, arranged for a donation of several works by Brazilian artists included in the VII São Paulo. In 1969 IBM made a significant contribution of paintings from its corporate Latin American art collection, which included works by master artists such as Mario Carreño, Amelia Peláez, Emilio Pettoruti, and Héctor Poleo. Since its beginnings, the evolution of the collection has been strongly tied to the direction of the OAS exhibition program, which in turn responded to specific visual arts developments in member countries at particular moments in time. A great number of the works in the collection were acquired directly from the artists at the time of an exhibit at the OAS, when they were at an early stage of their career. The museum has a long tradition and a solid foundation to build on and a platform from which to experiment with new and innovative ways to respond and reach out to emerging artists who are traditionally in the vanguard with respect to society’s issues and concerns. The OAS Art Museum of the Americas is grateful to the World Bank and especially to the Director of the World Bank Art Program, Marina Galvani, for her leadership and vision in initiating the About Change project. The museum looks forward to continuing partnerships in initiatives like About Change that demonstrate the dynamism and creativity of the current generation of Latin American and Caribbean artists, and that continually challenge our 36 figure 3 / figura 3 Return From The Fair CANDIDO PORTINARI las Artes], que era una escuela de arte y centro comunitario asociado con la Washington Color School [Escuela de Color de Washington]. En 1963 Francisco Matarrazo Sobrinho, que era entonces Presidente de la Bienal de San Pablo, se ocupó de que se donaran a la OEA varias obras de artistas brasileños que habían expuesto en la Séptima Bienal. En 1969 IBM hizo una significativa donación de pinturas provenientes de su colección corporativa de arte latinoamericano, que incluía obras de maestros como Mario Carreño, Amelia Peláez, Emilio Pettoruti y Héctor Poleo. Desde el comienzo, la evolución de la colección ha estado íntimamente ligada a la dirección del programa de exposiciones de la OEA, que respondía a su vez a desarrollos específicos en las artes visuales de los países miembros en períodos de tiempo particulares. Un buen número de las obras que constituyen la colección se les compraron directamente a los artistas cuando exponían en la OEA, por lo general, en un momento temprano de su carrera. El museo figure 4 / figura 4 Hermala II ROBERTO MATTA expectations and preconceptions and reinvigorate our collecting strategies. EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe tiene una larga tradición, una base sólida sobre la cual construir y una plataforma desde la cual puede experimentar con nuevas e innovadoras maneras de acercarse y responder a los artistas emergentes que a menudo están en la vanguardia con respecto a los problemas e inquietudes de la sociedad. El Museo de Arte de las Américas de la OEA agradece al Banco Mundial y especialmente a Marina Galvani, la Directora del Programa de Arte del Banco Mundial, por la iniciativa y la visión con las que puso en marcha el proyecto El Cambio. El museo espera que continúe el trabajo compartido en iniciativas como El Cambio, que muestran el dinamismo y la capacidad creativa de la generación actual de artistas de América Latina y el Caribe y que son un reto permanente a nuestras expectativas e ideas preconcebidas y un modo de dar nuevo vigor a las estrategias de expansión de nuestras colecciones. 37 CENTRAL AMERICA: THE EXTENSIVE ISLAND CENTROAMÉRICA: LA ISLA EXTENSA Independent Guest Curator Clara Astiasarán 38 Curadora independiente invitada To Virginia Pérez Ratton, In Memoriam A Virginia Pérez Ratton, In Memoriam According to Cuban curator and critic Gerardo Mosquera, one of the traits that define the island countries in the Caribbean is precisely the condition of being an “island.” He uses that condition and the corresponding concept of “isolation” in order to characterize the artistic production of the Caribbean islands. This same notion of isolation is also pertinent to the analysis of Central America. The region is an island. So much so that it is no longer included in the concept of “Mesoamerica,” which frees Mexico—a real country—from the condition of marginality and otherness, which is our lot. The “doubtful strait” between North and South America is a knot tying up two regions that never manage to have a fluid relation.1 We are an extensive island, one with borders that are harder and more complex than the sea. Because we are a kind of “knot,” we are always defined in relative terms, in reference to other coordinates, located as more or less central or peripheral, underneath or above other regions. Our reputation precedes us, our “bad” reputation: massacres of indigenous peoples, wars, revolutions, maras [gangs], drug trafficking, Según el curador y crítico cubano Gerardo Mosquera, uno de los rasgos que definen a los países del Caribe insular es precisamente la condición de ser “islas”. Mosquera usa esa condición y el correspondiente concepto de “aislamiento” para caracterizar la producción artística de las islas del Caribe. Esa condición de aislamiento es igualmente pertinente en el análisis de Centroamérica. La región es una isla. Tanto, que ya no la incluye el concepto de “lo mesoamericano”, que libera a México —un país de verdad— de la condición de marginalidad y otredad de la que somos parte. El “estrecho dudoso” entre Norteamérica y Sudamérica es un lazo que ata dos zonas que nunca logran relacionarse de forma fluida.1 Somos una isla extensa, una isla con fronteras que son más duras y complejas que el mar. Porque somos una especie de “nudo”, se nos define siempre en términos relativos con respecto a otras coordenadas, ubicados como más o menos centrales o periféricos, debajo o arriba de otras regiones. Nuestra fama nos precede, nuestra “mala” fama: masacres de pueblos indígenas, guerras, revoluciones, maras, narcotráfico, marimbas, pobreza, Se busca/Wanted by DANNY ZAVALETA 39 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean marimbas, poverty, backwardness right and left; or quite the opposite: tropical paradise, volcanoes, beaches, diverse flora and fauna, exoticisms, also right and left. In the postwar period, things did not change. But in the decade of the ‘90s, Central America occupied a different place in geopolitics, or rather, more in politics than in geography. International aid and cooperation turned attention towards the region, which needed “to recover” or to maintain what was left of her. Costa Rica, from its quasi-natural privilege, became a catalyst in the execution of this aid. It is not by chance that, in the discourse of art, Costa Rica is the country that has been keeping the region together. Her branding as a natural paradise with no army and her slogan Pura Vida [Life Itself] bestowed on her image the responsibility to restore us as a region. In 1994, the creation of the Contemporary Museum of Art and Design (MADC) in San José started a new era for redefining the artistic and cultural practices of a region in decay. In 1996 the MADC organized the exhibition Mesótica II. Centroamérica: re-generación [Mesotica II. Central America: re-generation], which, with its wide international circulation, was the first step in entering a Latin American and North American map, if not an international one. In 1998, the I Bienal Centroamericana de Pintura [First Central American Biennial of Painting] took place in Guatemala; in 2002 its name changed to Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano [Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial]. Since the first Biennial, a number of regional projects have consolidated some kind of democratization both of visual resources and of the way Central America is looked at. Although the Biennial has had a model of rotation with uneven national calls for submissions, it has managed to remain as the avant-garde visual arts event in the region for over a decade. 40 tercermundismo a diestra y siniestra. O todo lo contrario: paraíso tropical, volcanes, playas, flora y fauna diversas, exotismos, también a diestra y siniestra. Con la posguerra, las cosas no cambiaron. Pero en la década de los noventa, Centroamérica ocupó otro lugar en la geopolítica mundial, o quizá más en la política que en la geografía. La cooperación y ayuda internacionales volvieron la mirada hacia la región que necesitaba “restaurar” o mantener lo que quedaba de ella. Costa Rica, desde su privilegio cuasi natural, se convirtió en catalizador de la puesta en marcha de esa ayuda. No es casual que, en el discurso del arte, el país que ha mantenido aunada a la región sea Costa Rica. Su fama como paraíso natural sin ejército y su lema Pura Vida han confiado a su imagen la responsabilidad de restablecernos como región. Desde 1994, con la creación del Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) en San José, se inauguró una época de replanteamiento de las prácticas artísticas y culturales de una zona en deterioro. En 1996 el MADC organizó la muestra Mesótica II. Centro-américa: re-generación, que contó con una amplia circulación fuera de Centroamérica y fue el primer paso para entrar en un mapa latinoamericano y norteamericano, si no internacional. En 1998 tuvo lugar en Guatemala la I Bienal Centroamericana de Pintura, denominada desde 2002 Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano. A partir de la primera Bienal, numerosos proyectos regionales han consolidado una suerte de democratización de los recursos visuales y de la mirada dirigida a Centroamérica. Aunque ha tenido un modelo de rotación en el que se alternan desiguales convocatorias nacionales, la Bienal se mantiene ya por más de una década como el acontecimiento de vanguardia de las artes visuales en la región. En el año 2000, Virginia Pérez Ratton, directora del MADC desde su creación hasta esa fecha, fundó en San José la organización independiente In 2000, Virginia Pérez Ratton, director of the MADC from its creation until that year, founded the independent organization TEOR/éTica [theoryethics-aesthetics] in San José, dedicated to research, publication, and practice in the field of contemporary art in Central America. That same year, TEOR/éTica organized the symposium Temas Centrales [Central Themes], with the participation of numerous artists and researchers who raised the important issue of whether our art is more regional than the region itself. In 2002, the MADC organized the regional exhibition Art Istmo [Isthmus Art]; it also launched, that same year, the first call for Inquieta Imagen [Restless Image], the Central American competition that, in its five successive editions, has given a radical impulse to video creation. In 2004, several workshops and events preceded the announcement of the creation in Managua of La Espora, an advanced school for the arts, based on regional training and resident artist programs. Another regional model started in Belize that same year with Landings, a traveling exhibition that has already been held in more than ten countries in the region. To the artistic events taking place periodically in the region there was added, in 2006, the critical perspective of ¿Qué Centroamérica? Una región a debate [Which Central America? A Region in Debate], a symposium held at the MADC. At the end of that same year, Estrecho Dudoso [Doubtful Strait], an international visual arts event organized by TEOR/éTica, took place in San José, with six exhibitions organized in several sites. In 2008 the Women in the Arts association (MUA) of Tegucigalpa started Moviendo el mapa [Moving the Map], a project that serves as a platform for encounters and artistic interventions. These have been the fundamental events that have placed us in the international panorama of the visual arts. Marginality, violence, new urban structures, geopolitics, and historic-cultural TEOR/éTica, dedicada a la investigación, publicación y praxis del arte contemporáneo en Centroamérica. Ese mismo año, TEOR/éTica realizó el simposio Temas Centrales, con la participación de numerosos artistas e investigadores que plantearon la importante cuestión de si nuestro arte es más regional que nuestra región misma. En 2002 el MADC organizó la muestra regional Art Istmo y ese mismo año lanzó la primera convocatoria del concurso centroamericano Inquieta Imagen que, en sus cinco ediciones sucesivas, ha dado un impulso radical a la videocreación. En 2004 varios talleres y actos culturales precedieron al anuncio de la creación en Managua de la escuela superior de arte La Espora, basada en programas regionales de formación y residencias artísticas. Otro modelo regional se inició en Belice ese mismo año con Landings [Aterrizajes], una muestra itinerante que se ha presentado ya en más de diez países de la región. A los acontecimientos regionales que se repiten periódicamente, se sumó en 2006 la perspectiva crítica del simposio ¿Qué Centroamérica?: una región a debate, realizado en el MADC. A fines de ese mismo año tuvo lugar el programa internacional Estrecho Dudoso, organizado por TEOR/éTica en San José, con seis exposiciones articuladas en varias sedes. En 2008 la asociación de Mujeres en las Artes (MUA) de Tegucigalpa comenzó el proyecto Moviendo el mapa como una plataforma de encuentros e intervenciones artísticas. Estos han sido los hechos fundamentales que nos han ubicado en el panorama internacional de las artes visuales. En el interior de las prácticas artísticas, la marginalidad, la violencia, las nuevas estructuras urbanas, la geopolítica y los exotismos histórico-culturales siguen siendo el caldo de cultivo en una región que se mira insistentemente a sí misma. Es tal vez en esta mirada autorreflexiva en la que radica el provincianismo del que aún somos 41 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean exoticisms continue to be the breeding ground for our artistic practices in a region that insistently looks upon itself. It is perhaps in this self-reflexive gaze that lies the provincialism of which we are still “victims.” We go from malinchismo—a fascination with all that is foreign—to revenge. Now we are in the center of nowhere. Virginia Pérez Ratton—the curator and critic who did invaluable work for the Isthmus—was our guide in the transformation that took place in the field of the arts in the region around 2000. Her recent death has left us culturally and geographically orphaned once again, especially because the more vital cultural processes in the region have never been able to sustain themselves but have survived under the leadership of a few. Nonetheless, in its self-referential zeal, the region has managed to democratize its artistic practices, extending them towards communities far away from the centers of power or the capitals. Such is the case of Guatemala, where much of the best visual production comes from indigenous communities, or El Salvador, where the best art comes from communities that are definitely marginal. New spaces have been activated by projects like Ultravioleta [Ultraviolet] in Guatemala and galleries like La Mancha de Tomate [The Tomato Stain] in Honduras, Diablo Rosso [Red Devil] in Panama, and Des Pacio [“Des Pace”] in Costa Rica, which open new alternatives in the panorama of art for cultural and economic consumption. We see a glimpse of hope. Our image as a region has responded more to a demographic strategy than to bonds of any other kind, because the six countries of Central America cannot be made to coalesce under the same symbolic coordinates. We are markedly different from each other. But at the same time, few regions in the world enjoy relations as fluid as those that take place in the field of art in Central America. Shuffling between South America— 42 “víctimas”. Pasamos del malinchismo a la revancha. Ahora somos el ombligo de la nada. Virginia Pérez Ratton, curadora y crítica con un trabajo invaluable para el Istmo, fue la guía de la transformación que se inició en el campo de las artes de la región alrededor del año 2000. Su muerte reciente nos devuelve a la orfandad como espacio cultural y geográfico, particularmente porque los procesos culturales más vitales de la región nunca han podido sostenerse por sí mismos, sino que sobrevivieron bajo el liderazgo de unos pocos. Sin embargo, en su afán autorreferencial, la región ha logrado democratizar la práctica artística extendiéndola hacia comunidades alejadas de los centros de poder o de las capitales. Tal es el caso de Guatemala, donde mucha de la mejor producción visual proviene de comunidades indígenas, o de El Salvador, donde el mejor arte proviene de comunidades francamente marginales. La activación de nuevos espacios como el proyecto Ultravioleta en Guatemala y las galerías La Mancha de Tomate en Honduras, Diablo Rosso en Panamá y Des Pacio en Costa Rica ofrecen al consumo cultural y económico nuevas alternativas en el panorama del arte. Estamos viendo atisbos de esperanza. Nuestra imagen como región ha respondido más a una estrategia de carácter demográfico que a lazos de otro orden, porque no se puede aunar a los seis países de Centroamérica bajo una misma coordenada simbólica. Somos marcadamente diferentes unos de otros. Pero al mismo tiempo, pocas regiones en el mundo cuentan con una relación tan fluida como la centroamericana en el campo artístico. El trasiego entre Sudamérica —que comienza en Colombia— y Norteamérica —que termina en la frontera con México— es constante para el artista centroamericano. Las dos potencias culturales que encierran la región han sido excluyentes con respecto a nuestra “isla,” que ha respondido del mismo modo. Es curioso que poco o nada del arte which ends in Colombia—and North America—which begins at the border with Mexico—is a constant for Central American artists. The two cultural powers that enclose the region have had an exclusionary attitude towards our “island,” which has responded in kind. It is remarkable that little or nothing is known or visible of Central American art in the two countries at its borders. But in what looks like a reversal of colonialism, it is Spain that has insistently turned attention to us in projects that legitimize our region, like the issue that the international magazine Atlántica devoted to the “Istmo Dudoso” [Doubtful Strait] in 2001 or the 31st edition of the Pontevedra Biennial, with the Utrópicos [Utopian Tropics] project. Europe’s vision of Central America has been more integral and regenerative than that of the United States, which—except for Panama’s fiscal heaven and Costa Rica’s tropical paradise—has stigmatized indigenous Central America as a hub of violence. Looking at Central America as a whole carries the risk of homogenizing its diversity, but it has also the virtue of creating a much richer panorama in the visual arts. While in Panama, because of its obvious character as a place of passage, works are produced more in thematic consonance with the demands of the contemporary world, in Costa Rica art production is shaped rather by the omnipresence of an education system with a countless number of schools dedicated to the visual arts, photography and architecture. In Guatemala, two worlds live side by side: on the one hand, the art production rooted in the traditions of a country with twenty-two active indigenous ethnic groups, and on the other hand, the dramatic violence of the postwar period. In Honduras and El Salvador, extreme poverty and the migration flow to the United States created a new social group: the maras. Today this new marginal group, inspired by the gangs of the States, is a recurrent subject, at iconographic de Centroamérica se conozca, o se haga visible, en los dos países que le sirven de frontera. Sin embargo, como en una reversión del colonialismo, ha sido España la que insistentemente ha vuelto a mirarnos en proyectos de legitimación como el número que dedicó la revista internacional Atlántica al “Istmo Dudoso” en el 2001 o la edición XXXI de la Bienal de Pontevedra, con el proyecto Utrópicos. En las últimas décadas, la visión de Europa con respecto a Centroamérica ha sido más integral y regeneradora que la de Estados Unidos que, con excepción del paraíso fiscal panameño y del paraíso tropical costarricense, ha estigmatizado a la Centroamérica indígena como centro productor de violencia. Por eso, mirar a Centroamérica como un todo tiene el peligro de homogeneizar su diversidad, pero tiene también la virtud de crear un panorama mucho más rico en términos visuales. Mientras en Panamá, por su obvio carácter de lugar de paso, se producen obras más de acuerdo temáticamente con las exigencias del mundo contemporáneo, en Costa Rica la producción responde más a la omnipresencia de un sistema educativo con un sinnúmero de escuelas dedicadas a las artes visuales, la fotografía y la arquitectura. En Guatemala conviven dos universos: por un lado, la producción que emana de la tradición de un país con 22 etnias indígenas activas, y por otro lado, la dramática situación de violencia que dejó la posguerra. En Honduras y en El Salvador la condición de extrema pobreza y la migración a Estados Unidos crearon un nuevo grupo social: las maras. Este grupo marginal, heredado de las pandillas estadounidenses, es hoy un tema recurrente a nivel iconográfico y conceptual en la vida cotidiana y en la praxis visual de estos países; en Nicaragua, entre tanto, lo que alimenta la producción artística siguen siendo los embates de la Revolución Sandinista de los ochenta, los conflictos 43 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe and conceptual levels, in daily life and in the visual practices of these countries. In Nicaragua, in turn, art production continues to be nourished by the vicissitudes of the Sandinista Revolution from the ’80s, conflicts with neighboring Costa Rica, and a constant revision of “successive colonialisms.” Our “island” is indeed a complex amalgam. Volcanoes are but one metaphor for the many forms of collapsing that occur in Central America. And yet, in such a complex period as the second half of the 20th century, art took over the reins: it made the region more visible and more democratic in its self-knowledge. Art has made our already extensive island extend, this time, beyond the seas. con el vecino costarricense y una constante revisión de “los sucesivos colonialismos”. Es una amalgama compleja la de esta “isla”. Los volcanes son sólo una metáfora de las tantas formas de colapso que se dan en Centroamérica. Y sin embargo, en un período tan complejo como la segunda mitad del siglo XX, el arte tomó de algún modo las riendas, hizo a la región más visible y democratizó su conocimiento de sí misma. El arte hizo que nuestra isla, que ya era geográficamente extensa, se extendiera, esta vez, allende los mares. “The Doubtful Strait” is the tile of a book by Nicaraguan poet and revolutionary Ernesto Cardenal, where he uses the expression to question the colonialist perspective that defined the cartography of Central America since Columbus’ discovery. 1 1 44 “El estrecho dudoso” es el título de un libro del poeta y revolucionario nicaragüense Ernesto Cardenal, donde esa designación sirve para cuestionar la perspectiva colonialista que definió la cartografía centroamericana en los documentos del descubrimiento. Home Sweet Home by RONALD MORAN 45 WORK IN PROGRESS: WRESTLING WITH THE IMAGE TRABAJO EN CURSO: EN LUCHA CON LA IMAGEN Christopher Cozier 46 Artist and Independent Curator Artista y curador independiente 1. Where is this Caribbean? Being an artist within, of, or from the Caribbean requires dexterity and wit. The definition often feels illogical or ill-fated, perhaps because it cannot fully describe the expanse of ocean and the archipelago of islands, nation-states, colonial territories, departments, and unions with their diverse populations, languages, geography, cultures, and histories. When one is on a metropolitan subway train or in an airport looking at an advertisement with hammocks, palm trees, and blue skies with available bodies and smiling faces—or looking at the abject silhouettes cramped in sloops on a CNN report or moving in the background of historical photographs—these become troubling and anxious questions. In discussions of contemporary art there has been a major shift since the mid ’80s in the aftermath of the dialogues created by events such as the Biennials of Havana and Santo Domingo. Havana, it can be said, did not take Caribbean art into the international scene but instead brought art from the United States and Europe into the global conversation. Over the course of the ’90s not only did Cuban artists become more visible but artists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America also became more aware of each other’s work through these 1. ¿Dónde está este Caribe? Ser artista de, dentro de, o desde El Caribe exige destreza e ingenio. La definición resulta a menudo ilógica o desafortunada, quizá porque no consigue describir enteramente la extensión del océano y del archipiélago de islas, naciones, territorios coloniales, departamentos y uniones con su diversidad de poblaciones, lenguas, geografías e historias. Cuando uno está en el tren de un subterráneo metropolitano o en un aeropuerto mirando una propaganda con hamacas, árboles de palma y cielo azul con despliegue de cuerpos y de caras sonrientes, o cuando uno ve las siluetas abyectas que se apeñuscan en un pequeño barco de vela en un reportaje de CNN o se mueven en el fondo de fotografías históricas, estas cuestiones se vuelven inquietantes y angustiosas. A partir de la década de los ochenta se produjo un cambio importante en las discusiones sobre el arte contemporáneo como secuela de los diálogos creados por acontecimientos como las Bienales de La Habana y Santo Domingo. Se puede decir que La Habana no puso al arte del Caribe en la escena internacional pero que, en cambio, incorporó arte de los Estados Unidos y de Europa en la conversación global. Durante la década de los noventa, no sólo se volvieron más visibles los artistas de Cuba, sino que también los artistas de África, Asia y América I'm not afraid to fight a perfect stranger by JOHN COX (detail / detalle) 47 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean platforms. The Caribbean was at the center of these dialogues and exchanges. Santo Domingo also heightened awareness and dialogues between artists living and working in the Caribbean and Latin America. Towards the 90’s, however, as access to the Internet spread across the region, the control of media in Havana did not allow easy or full access to the range of new initiatives and exchanges of ideas and information that were rapidly developing. The Internet created new dialogues and platforms among the islands, the countries, the Diaspora, and the places from where Caribbean people were transplanted. In this current moment, relationships and dialogues are being altered and re-created. Traditional boundaries—geographical, political, economic, and linguistic—have become much less obstructive in this newer virtual/visual field of exchange. In looking at the selection of works in About Change, one is not so much concerned about whether the works can speak for one country or language group but more so with how the works share and speak with those not included in this current survey. In some way, this incompleteness is a perpetual given in engaging a place/space like the Caribbean. The Caribbean region was traditionally narrated as Spanish, English, French and Dutch, with their respective Creole forms, but many other languages also shape the Caribbean experience: indigenous languages from the northern Amazonian region in the Guyanas, those of the various Maroon and Garifuna ethnicities derived from Africa and who reach into South and Central America, as well as Bhojpuri, Cantonese and Creoles like Papiamento. The Caribbean continues to expand and shift. In this manifold space, experiences produced through the visual can create meetingpoints, breaking through a multiplicity of barriers. 48 Latina adquirieron mayor conocimiento mutuo de sus obras por intermedio de esas plataformas. El Caribe estuvo en el centro de estos diálogos e intercambios. Santo Domingo también aumentó el conocimiento y los diálogos entre artistas que viven y trabajan en el Caribe y en América Latina. Sin embargo, a fines de los noventa, mientras el acceso al Internet se expandía por toda la región, el control de los medios de comunicación en La Habana no permitió fácil o total acceso a la gama de nuevas iniciativas e intercambios de ideas e información que se estaban desarrollando con gran rapidez. El Internet creó nuevas plataformas y posibilidades de diálogo entre las islas, los países, la Diáspora y los lugares desde donde fueron transplantadas las gentes del Caribe. En este momento las relaciones y los diálogos están alterándose y recreándose. Los límites tradicionales — geográficos, políticos, económicos, lingüísticos — han dejado de ser un obstáculo en este nuevo campo de intercambio virtual/visual. Al mirar los trabajos seleccionados para El Cambio, lo que debe importar no es tanto si esas obras hablan en nombre de un país o de un grupo lingüístico sino más bien de qué modo comparten y dialogan con las obras que se han excluido de la muestra. De cierto modo, el ser incompleto es una condición perenne cuando se trata con un lugar/espacio, como el del Caribe. Durante mucho tiempo, la región del Caribe fue narrada en español, inglés, francés y holandés, con sus respectivas formas tradicionales y criollas. Pero muchas otras lenguas dan forma a la experiencia caribeña: las lenguas indígenas del norte de la región amazónica en las Guayanas, las de los diversos grupos étnicos de cimarrones venidos del África y las de los garifunas que llegan hasta Centroamérica, y también el bhojpuri, el cantonés y las lenguas criollas como el papiamento. El Caribe sigue cambiando y expandiéndose. En ese espacio The Caribbean is a site of investigation for its artists. It is a constantly expanding space shaped by wherever they may travel, reside, or imagine. It is articulated by individual acts of visual inquiry seeking to transgress the usual and traditional cultural, political, or geographic parameters. The works of art on display here are often in contest with a much longer history of distorted representations that continue to be internally and externally manufactured. As part of the wider About Change project, Wrestling with the Image investigates contemporary Caribbean visual thinking and its trajectories: our experiences or ways of understanding and moving through the world. Some of these artists were born in one island and live and practice in another. Some are born in the Caribbean Diaspora and continue to investigate how that shapes their way of thinking. For them, the Caribbean is also a site of memory, where they process family histories or the vast archives of former colonial powers. They may live in places like Japan, Austria, or Germany, not traditionally located in diasporic mappings. Much of their work is inspired by one location, produced in another, and presented in yet another; it is a reflection of the way Caribbean people have always been on the move. La Vaughn Belle, who was born in Tobago and now lives in St. Croix, shot and developed her video work in Havana. Her Porcelain Diaries suggests empathy with and curiosity about a vernacular living-room space, where decorative figurines and keepsakes tell soap opera-like microcosmic yet epic stories of love, mixed race desire, and emigration in Cuba—but perhaps also anywhere in the region. The animated objects are also an inventory of consumer trade routes. We see Matryoshka nesting dolls, porcelain ballerinas and kittens, Buddhas and local touristic folk characterizations, planes and boats on the move. Abigail Hadeed’s photographs of elderly people with their UNIA múltiple, las experiencias producidas por medios visuales pueden crear puntos de encuentro traspasando una multitud de barreras. El Caribe es un espacio de investigación para sus artistas. Es un espacio en constante expansión que adquiere forma donde sea que estos artistas viajen, vivan o imaginen; está articulado por actos individuales de indagación visual que buscan transgredir los acostumbrados y tradicionales parámetros culturales, políticos y geográficos. Los trabajos que se exhiben aquí compiten con una historia mucho más larga de representaciones distorsionadas que se siguen manufacturando, dentro y fuera de la región. Como parte del proyecto más amplio de El Cambio, la muestra En lucha con la imagen investiga el pensamiento visual contemporáneo del Caribe y sus trayectorias: nuestras experiencias o nuestras formas de comprender y de movernos en el mundo. Algunos de estos artistas nacieron en una isla y viven y hacen su trabajo en otra. Algunos nacieron en la diáspora caribeña y siguen investigando cómo esa experiencia da forma a su modo de pensar. Para ellos, el Caribe es también un sitio de memoria, donde procesan historias de familia o los vastos archivos de los antiguos poderes coloniales. Estos artistas pueden vivir en países como Japón, o Austria, o Alemania, que no están tradicionalmente incluidos en los mapas de la diáspora. Muchas de sus obras están inspiradas por un lugar, se producen en otro lugar, y se presentan aun en otro lugar. Esto es un reflejo del modo en el que las gentes del Caribe han estado en constante movimiento. La Vaughn Belle, que nació en Tobago y vive ahora en St. Croix, filmó y proceso su vídeo Porcelain Diaries [Diarios de porcelana] en La Habana. El vídeo muestra con empatía y curiosidad el espacio de una sala de estar habanera, donde hay estatuitas decorativas y objetos de recuerdo que narran historias —como las de las telenovelas— de amor, deseo mestizo y emigración en Cuba, o quizá también en cualquier otro lugar de la región. Esos animados objetos son 49 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean (Universal Negro Improvement Association) and Black Star Line certificates were shot in Costa Rica. These images of Afro-Caribbean populations on the Central American coast represent the movement of people and ideas in the region, knitting together communities often unknown to each other. Sheena Rose’s videos are about Cape Town. Marlon Griffith’s images of school girls with “powder on their chest” in “bling” patterns were shot by Gerard Gaskin, a Trinidadian photographer living in New York, while he was visiting Port of Spain. Many of these works are collaborative enterprises between artists, derived from shared observations and interests. Oneika Russell’s animated videos talk about travel and are made in Japan. Pauline Marcelle, from Dominica, lives in Austria, but her work was done in Africa. 2. Wrestling with the Image I got the idea for the phrase Wrestling with the Image while looking at a series of images by John Cox, with titles such as “I am not afraid to fight a perfect stranger.” In the series, we see the artist rendering himself in training, at the starting block, as a runner, as a boxer, or sometimes as a wrestler. He presents himself, in various combative postures and sequences, as a contender, but with an image of himself. This entanglement or engagement of the other self, a shadow or mirror image, is an ongoing story. Will these selves ever merge and find cohesion? Or will one of them be cast asunder in the search for “true” self-consciousness 50 Entourage, from the Family series by EBONY PATTERSON también un inventario de las rutas comerciales de productos de consumo. Vemos muñecas rusas, bailarinas y gatitos de porcelana, Budas y otros personajes del folklore local, pequeños aviones y barcos en movimiento. Abigail Hadeed tomó en Costa Rica sus fotografías de gente de edad con sus certificados de la Asociación Universal de Desarrollo Negro (UNIA) y de la línea de barcos Estrella Negra. Estas imágenes de la población afro-caribeña de la costa de América Central dan cuenta del movimiento de gentes y de ideas que tiene lugar en la región, entretejiendo comunidades que a menudo se desconocen. Los vídeos de Sheena Rose tratan sobre Cape Town. Las imágenes de Marlon Griffith en las que aparecen colegialas con patrones de “bling” dibujados con polvo en el pecho fueron tomadas por el fotógrafo de Trinidad Gerard Gaskin, que reside en Nueva York, durante una visita a Port of Spain. Muchas de estas obras son trabajos de colaboración entre artistas, derivados de observaciones e intereses compartidos. Los vídeos animados de Oneika Russell hablan de viajes y están hechos en Japón. Paulin Marcelle, nacida en la Mancomunidad de Dominica, vive en Austria, pero ha hecho su trabajo en África. 2. En lucha con la imagen La idea de la frase En lucha con la imagen se me ocurrió mientras miraba una serie de imágenes de John Cox con títulos como “No tengo miedo de luchar con un perfecto desconocido”. En la serie, vemos al artista mientras se entrena, en el punto de partida, como corredor, como boxeador o a veces como luchador. Cox se presenta en varias posturas y secuencias de combate, como contendiente, pero contra una imagen de sí mismo. Este encuentro o combate con su otro yo, su sombra o imagen especular, es una historia en curso. ¿Convergerán alguna vez estos “yos” y encontrarán cohesión? ¿O quedará alguno descartado en la búsqueda de una “verdadera” conciencia de sí? Los artistas del Caribe están EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe and awareness? Caribbean artists are always in competition with a long history of expedient labeling of their world and their very selves—externally and also internally. In Nikolai Noel’s Toussaint et George, iconic portraits of two American revolutionary liberators and “founding fathers” face off and mirror each other, highlighting the unanswered questions of our varied histories and dreams. If we shifted to traditional art world imagery, they could be replaced by portraits of Wifredo Lam and Pablo Picasso. There is something intriguing about the miniature scale of these images’ visual commentaries, which function like discrete interpersonal notes placed in the public domain. These works recall Noel’s earlier minuscule public works, with images not much larger than postage stamps, placed on gates, walls, and lampposts in Port of Spain. Ebony Patterson’s Entourage is a constructed studio group portrait of friends and family dressed and made up to look like stylish dancehall characters. This is real transnational culture, initially driven by a social underclass, which has become a viral local reaction to ideas of high and low culture within the class warfare of urban Kingston. The engagement of this language implies the “carnivalesque”—not as folk spectacle co-opted by nationalist regimes, but as social contestation in urban space, satirical and virile. The artist is also investigating the ironic face bleaching and androgynous fashions of Dancehall’s “bling” culture and its romance with the stylizations of the urban “gangster” and the “dandy.” In Marlon James’s Mark and Giselle the two figures look back at us from within the frame, but not as generic nameless silhouettes. They are also fellow artists and friends living in Kingston, and coconspirators in this declared moment. Their clothes and expression defy our expectations, along with the empty background. They could be young people siempre compitiendo con una larga historia de convenientes etiquetas que se les aplica a ellos y a su mundo desde dentro y desde fuera. En Toussaint et George de Nikolai Noel, los retratos icónicos de dos libertadores revolucionarios y “padres fundadores” americanos se enfrentan y se reflejan uno al otro, poniendo de relieve las preguntas no respondidas sobre nuestras variadas historias y nuestros sueños. Si pasáramos a las imágenes tradicionales del mundo del arte, podríamos reemplazarlos con las figuras de Wilfredo Lam y Pablo Picasso. Hay algo enigmático en la escala minúscula de los comentarios visuales de estas imágenes, que funcionan como notas personales ubicadas en el dominio público. Estas obras recuerdan los minúsculos trabajos públicos tempranos de Noel, con sus imágenes que no eran más grandes que un sello de correos, ubicadas en portales, muros y faroles de Port of Spain. Entourage [Séquito] de Ebony Patterson es un retrato de estudio de un grupo de amigos y parientes vestidos y arreglados para que parezcan elegantes personajes de salón de baile. Esta es una verdadera cultura transnacional —impulsada inicialmente por una baja capa social— que se ha convertido en una reacción local viral frente a ideas de alta y baja cultura dentro de la lucha de clases del núcleo urbano de Kingston. La adopción de este lenguaje implica “lo carnavalesco”, no como espectáculo folklórico apropiado por los regímenes nacionalistas, sino como contestación social, satírica y viril, en un espacio urbano. El artista investiga también el irónico blanqueo y depilación de la cara y las modas andróginas de la cultura “bling” de los salones de baile y su romance con las estilizaciones del “gángster” urbano y del “dandi”. En Mark and Giselle de Marlon James, las dos figuras nos miran a nosotros desde su marco, pero no como siluetas sin nombre. Los dos son artistas también, y amigos que viven en Kingston, y co-conspiradores en este momento determinado. 51 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean anywhere— Toronto, Port of Spain, Johannesburg. Perhaps only a sense of time, of the “now,” is conveyed when we encounter these images. In a place like the Caribbean, in the aftermath of a long history of topographical and anthropological representations, we cannot take the agency of portraiture for granted. The subject position—or the role of the subject—within the frame or field of pictorial representation is highly contested. Standard historical narratives of the Caribbean recount or register developmental shifts from persons who are privately owned property, indentured workers, and colonial subjects to citizens—of a republic, for example. But in the pictorial domain, we are still anthropological, cultural, national, ethnic, or electoral commodities and signifiers. We remain labeled but nameless images. The moment of encounter and of exchange is what is at stake. The question is whether the purpose of taking the image shifts to real portraiture and not simply image -capture, in the worst sense of the term, leaving us as subjected signs of ourselves, in a kind of cultural doppelgänger-ing that disturbingly reminds us of our traditional role, placed within a visual territory not exclusively of our own making or coyly performed. 3. Space vs. Place In viewing these works, we are asked to understand the Caribbean as a space rather than a place: a space that is shaped by wherever Caribbean people find themselves, whether in the Americas at large, Europe, Africa, or Asia. It is a conversation about movement in the Atlantic world, a dialogue about dispersal rather than just displacement. Charles Campbell’s Bagasse Cycle is a graphic codification of the things we know on a daily basis about our work and our experiences, but transformed into patterns and signs. His investigation of over-familiar Dutch slave ship designs transforming 52 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe La expresión que tienen y la ropa que llevan son un reto a nuestras expectativas, junto con el fondo vacío. Podrían ser dos jóvenes de cualquier lugar: Toronto, Port of Spain, Johannesburg. Quizá lo único que se nos comunica cuando encontramos estas imágenes es una sensación de tiempo, del “ahora”. En un lugar como el Caribe, en el período que sigue a una larga historia de representaciones topográficas y antropológicas, no podemos dar por sentada la agencia del retrato. La posición del sujeto, o su papel, dentro del marco o el campo de la representación pictórica es algo altamente controvertido. En el Caribe, las típicas narraciones históricas regionales cuentan o registran el desarrollo de un cambio de personas que eran propiedad privada, trabajadores contratados sin salario y sujetos coloniales a personas que son ciudadanos, de una república, por ejemplo. Pero en el dominio de lo pictórico, todavía somos artículos de consumo y significantes antropológicos, culturales, nacionales, étnicos o electorales. Seguimos siendo imágenes con clasificación pero sin nombre. El momento en que tienen lugar el encuentro y el intercambio es lo que cuenta. Y la cuestión es si el propósito de la toma ha cambiado y es ahora verdadera- mente un retrato, o si se trata, en cambio, de una simple captura de imagen —en el peor sentido del término— en la cual quedamos como sumisos signos de nosotros mismos, en una especie de desdoblamiento cultural que, de manera perturbadora, nos recuerda nuestro papel tradicional, ubicado dentro de un territorio visual del que no somos enteramente autores, o ejecutado a regañadientes. 3. Espacio versus lugar Cuando consideramos estas obras, se nos pide que entendamos el Caribe como un espacio más bien que un lugar: un espacio formado por donde sea que las gentes del Caribe se encuentren, en las Américas, en Europa, en África o en Asia. Se trata de una conversación sobre el movimiento en el mundo del into DNA or atom-like forms, which are, in turn, transforming into flocks of migrating birds, conveys the story of the “migrations”, as he sometimes calls them. In these migrations, our experiences are taken back—made into aesthetic forms, seeking out the dissonance between what the forms mean and how they feel like when manipulated or reclaimed. Blue Curry uses elements associated with the tropical and tourism to bring our attention to the status of the Caribbean island as a contemporary industrial site. His work mischievously engages these signs to conceptually alter our awareness of the history and the current social space. In a recent installation in Liverpool, he placed gallons of suntan lotion into a perpetually oscillating cement mixer. Many of Curry’s “untitled” works reveal their intent through his listing of the materials, which read like alternative titles. It is a deeply ironic commentary on formalist language. His video Discovery of the Palm Tree Phone Mast—one of his few works with a title—makes fun of the language of “discovery” in its scrutiny of a cellular tower designed to look like a palm tree, so as to not spoil the view of tourists. The work refers to the ongoing development of the tropical as an artificial construction with roots in the 19th-century post-sugar era. For artists like Roshini Kempadoo and Jocelyn Gardner, the archive becomes an archeological site for reconstructing memory to rethink historical or received knowledge and mythologies. The idea of "living history"—history in the perpetual present tense—is conveyed through re-arranging and re-configuring. Through re-telling or reenactment, traditional images are enlisted as contemporary signs. This is not a form of escapism, but a manipulation or distortion allowing us to participate in co-producing a "re-seeing." These artists display a defiance towards being pinned down to a single location and the expectations ascribed to being “here” or “there.” Atlántico, un diálogo sobre la dispersión más que el desplazamiento. Bagasse Cycle [Ciclo del bagazo de caña] de Charles Campbell es una codificación gráfica del conocimiento cotidiano que tenemos con respecto a nuestro trabajo y nuestras experiencias, pero transformado en patrones y signos. La investigación de Campbell sobre el archiconocido diseño del barco de esclavos holandés que se transforma en ADN o en formas como la del átomo, que se transforman a su vez en bandadas de pájaros migratorios, transmite la historia de las “migraciones”, como Campbell las llama a veces. En estas migraciones, se recuperan nuestras experiencias, transmutadas en formas estéticas, buscando la disonancia entre lo que las formas significan y el modo en que se hacen sentir cuando se las manipula o se las reivindica. Blue Curry usa elementos asociados con lo tropical y el turismo para dirigir nuestra atención a la situación de las islas del Caribe como sitios industriales contemporáneos. Su obra dialoga traviesamente con estos signos para alterar conceptualmente nuestra conciencia de la historia y del espacio social actual. En una instalación reciente en Liverpool, Curry puso galones de bronceador en un mezclador de cemento en constante oscilación. El propósito de muchas de sus obras “sin título” se revela en el listado de sus materiales, que se leen como títulos alternativos. Se trata de un comentario profundamente irónico sobre el lenguaje formalista. Su vídeo Discovery of the Palm Tree Phone Mast [Descubrimiento del árbol de palma que es un mástil de transmisión celular] —uno de sus pocos trabajos con título— se burla del lenguaje del “descubrimiento” en su examen de una torre de transmisión celular diseñada de modo que parezca un árbol de palma para que no arruine lo que ven de los turistas. El trabajo se refiere al desarrollo actual de lo tropical como una construcción artificial con raíces en el período del siglo XIX que siguió a la era del azúcar. 53 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean Nannny nanny boo boo 1 TONYA WILES Defying these territorial boundaries brings up questions of license and approval; indeed, images of passports, certificates, and associated coats of arms and official insignias move through the works of many of the artists, underscoring the way bodies and land are constantly commodified and licensed. Much of Caribbean reality has to do with stamps and certificates and “papers,” and the visual vocabulary of these images is another way in which these works are in dialogue with each other, from Hew Locke’s appropriation of obsolete bonds and certificates and the passport stamps on Jean Ulrick Désert’s color-by-number diagrams to the royal insignia that becomes a mark of identity in Holly Bynoe’s Imperial, or the figures of the natives flanking the coat of arms in Nikolai Noel’s image Natives on the Side. Tonya Wiles sticks her tongue out at us through a hole in a china bowl “certified” by the British crown. This record of her Para artistas como Roshinki Kempadoo y Joscelyn Gardener, los archivos se han vuelto un sitio arqueológico en el que se puede reconstruir la memoria para volver a pensar el conocimiento histórico y las mitologías que hemos recibido, y para narrar nuevas historias. La idea de una historia viva—una historia en un perpetuo tiempo presente—no se comunica volviendo a contar o a actuar los mismos hechos, sino estableciendo nuevos marcadores más relacionados con signos contemporáneos en un proceso de reconstrucción visual gobernado por el imaginario. Esta no es una forma de escapismo sino una distorsión que se propone hacernos “re-ver”. Estos artistas exhiben una actitud desafiante frente a los intentos de fijarlos en un solo lugar y las expectativas que se le asigna al hecho de estar “aquí” o “allí”. El desafiar estos límites territoriales plantea cuestiones de permiso y aprobación; ciertamente, las imágenes de pasaportes y certificados, y de sus correspondientes escudos e insignias oficiales, se mueven a través de las obras de muchos de estos artistas, subrayando el modo en el que los cuerpos y la tierra constantemente se convierten en objetos de patente y consumo. Mucha de la realidad del Caribe tiene que ver con sellos y certificados y “papeles”, y el vocabulario visual de estas imágenes es otro modo que tienen estas obras de dialogar entre sí, desde la apropiación de anticuados bonos y certificados por parte de Hew Lock y los sellos de pasaporte en los diagramas de color por número de Jean Ulrick Désert hasta la insignia real que se convierte en seña de identidad en Imperial de Holly Bynoe o las figuras de los nativos que flanquean el escudo de armas en la imagen Natives on the Side [Nativos al costado] de Nikolai Noel. Tonya Wiles nos saca la lengua a través de un orificio en un bol de porcelana “certificado” por la corona inglesa. Este registro de un acto performativo y juguetón en el que Wiles transforma en máscara una pieza de vajilla de la era colonial es una provocación 54 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe playful, performative act of transforming colonialera crockery into a mask is a provocation of traditional readings of “whiteness” or “blackness” in the Caribbean space. Around her wrist we see a colored string, placing the gesture within contemporary life in the islands. 4. A Critical Space In the recent Caribbean past, the relation between home and away or aboard and “abroad” was always one of tension or competition around discussions of authenticity and access. Over the last ten or fifteen years, the Internet, cheaper travel, and digital media have given easy access to new ways of working and of collaboratively creating critical dialogues that defy traditional boundaries (national, cultural, and even linguistic). Perhaps the Caribbean may be redefined by these exchanges across this new “critical space.” Online media allow individual artists in various locations to share ideas and images and to think more expansively. New relations or new conditions are being produced for how Caribbean people can relate not just to each other, but also to wider audiences. For some, the Internet is a site of memory and historical investigation. For others, it is an actual site of daily experience. For all, it is becoming a dialogue about visual vocabularies, sensibilities, and even a particular social awareness. The digital world so far has no overly determined or owned history in the field of representation, so these artists are not burdened by the baggage of, for example, the history of painting or the status of the black body. It is open season. And access to digital equipment allows a new generation of artists to create images and to disseminate them in ways that break down traditional hierarchies of skills and specialized knowledge as means to define value—for example, in video and photography. a las lecturas tradicionales de “blancura” y “negritud” en el espacio del Caribe. Alrededor de la muñeca de la artista vemos una cuerda de color que ubica el gesto en la vida contemporánea de las islas. 4. Un espacio crítico En el pasado reciente del Caribe, la relación entre estar dentro de casa o fuera, o entre estar a bordo o en el exterior, resultó siempre en una tensión o competencia con respecto a cuestiones de autenticidad y acceso. En los últimos diez o quince años, el Internet, los viajes a bajo precio y los medios de comunicación digital han dado fácil acceso a nuevos modos de trabajar y de crear en colaboración diálogos críticos que desafían los límites tradicionales (nacionales, culturales y aun lingüísticos). Los intercambios a través de este nuevo “espacio crítico” podrán quizá redefinir el Caribe. Los medios en línea permiten que artistas individuales en diferentes localidades compartan ideas e imágenes y piensen de manera más expansiva. Se están produciendo nuevas relaciones o nuevas condiciones con respecto a cómo la gente del Caribe puede no sólo relacionarse entre sí, sino también con un público más vasto. Para algunos, el Internet es un sitio de memoria y de investigación histórica. Para otros, es un sitio real de experiencia cotidiana. Para todos, el Internet se está transformando en un espacio para el diálogo sobre vocabularios visuales y sensibilidades, y hasta sobre una particular conciencia social. El mundo digital no tiene hasta ahora una historia demasiado determinada o apropiada por ningún grupo. Por eso, estos artistas no están abrumados por el bagaje de la historia de la pintura, por ejemplo, o del cuerpo negro. Es temporada abierta, y el acceso a equipos digitales permite que una nueva generación de artistas cree imágenes y las disemine de modos que hacen inútiles las jerarquías tradicionales de destrezas y conocimiento especializado como categorías que definen el valor, por ejemplo, de un vídeo o de una fotografía. 55 EL CAMBIOen América Latina y el Caribe ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean Rodell Warner’s Worker photographs tackle the idea of the laborer in a long history of social documentation. But these individuals’ work attire takes on the feeling of costumes, and their place within the landscape takes on the look of 19th-century topographical images of people and places— images of slaves and peasants. The artificiality of the light creates a slightly absurd quality, rendering both the subject and the place unfamiliar. The powdered neck and bosom—a longtime confusing sign in the class warfare of the Caribbean—is embraced and asserted in Marlon Griffith’s Powdered Girls, his take on street-level glamour and pride. Griffith creates templates for the application of powder from the logos of highfashion houses—a whole new reading of “bling” and self. The talcum powder often refers to freshness, as in just having bathed, being cool in the hot sun and not sweaty. Did it originate from the powdered hair and bosoms of the Europeans who once colonized these islands? In some way, Marcel Pinas’s five thousand bottles wrapped in pangi leaves or the multi-colored strips of cloth making up Dhiradj Ramsamoedj’s Caribbean Soldier speak of the complex and varied journeys and indicators that configure the Caribbean experience, from the Amazonian interior of Suriname to the various islands and places around the world where we continue to travel and settle. A sense of place of origin may shape these artists’ interests, but they are not satisfied to represent a fixed site or territory. They are not waiting to be the subject of discovery, but are daring themselves to transgress boundaries and find new experiences. For them, the region remains an ongoing work in progress. 56 Las fotografías de Rodell Warner tituladas Worker (Trabajador) abordan la idea del jornalero en una larga historia de documentación social. Pero las ropas de trabajo de estos individuos dan la sensación de ser disfraces, y su lugar dentro del paisaje tiene el aspecto de las imágenes topográficas de gentes y lugares del siglo XIX, imágenes de esclavos y campesinos. La artificialidad de la luz crea una cualidad ligeramente absurda que desfamiliariza tanto al sujeto como al lugar. El cuello y el pecho cubiertos de polvo de talco son un viejo signo confuso en la lucha de clases del Caribe que Marlon Griffith adopta y afirma en Powdered Girls [Chicas empolvadas], su visión del encanto sexual y el orgullo que se encuentra en las calles. Griffith crea patrones para aplicar el talco tomado de los logotipos de las casas de alta costura, lo que constituye una lectura completamente nueva del yo y del “bling”. El talco se relaciona a menudo con la frescura, como cuando alguien acaba de bañarse, con estar fresco y sin sudor bajo el calor del sol. ¿Tuvo esto su origen en el cabello y el pecho empolvados de los europeos que colonizaron alguna vez estas islas? En cierto sentido, las cinco mil botellas envueltas en hojas de pangue de Marcel Pinas o las tiras multicolores de ropa que componen Caribbean Soldier [Soldado del Caribe] de Dhiradj Ramsamoedj hablan de los complejos y varios trayectos y señales que configuran la experiencia del Caribe, desde el interior Amazónico de Suriname hasta las diversas islas y los lugares de todo el mundo a los que continuamos viajando o en los que nos establecemos. Un cierto sentido de lugar de origen puede dar forma al interés de estos artistas, pero a ninguno le basta con representar un sitio o territorio fijos. Estos artistas no están esperando ser sujetos de un descubrimiento sino que se atreven a transgredir límites y encontrar experiencias nuevas. Para ellos, la región sigue siendo un permanente trabajo en curso. Caribbean Soldier by DHIRADJ RAMSAMOEDJ 57 THE DIVERSE DIMENSIONS OF CHANGE DIVERSAS DIMENSIONES DEL CAMBIO Valeria González Independent Guest Curator Curadora independiente invitada The common thread that runs through the heart of these works is the idea, or better, the utopia, of embracing change as hope, as a promise of life. Though we may not have enough evidence that we are building “a better world for all,” we refuse to accept misfortune as our destiny. Even in the remotest corners of the planet, every person aspires to be free and fulfilled; we all want to leave behind a worthy memory, an honorable legacy, a path we would not be ashamed for others to retrace. We seek to enrich the meaning of what it is to be human. El hilo conductor de estas obras en su sentido interno tiene que ver con la idea, o más bien la utopía, de asumir el cambio como esperanza, como promesa de vida; aunque no tengamos suficientes evidencias de estar construyendo “un mundo mejor para todos”, nos oponemos a aceptar la fatalidad como destino. En cualquier rincón del planeta todo ser humano aspira a ser libre y pleno, desea dejar una memoria digna, un legado honroso, una huella que no avergüence a nadie volver a hollar. Se propone, en suma, ensanchar el sentido de lo que es ser humano. JORGE OQUELI. Artist, Ecuador JORGE OQUELI. Artista, Ecuador In the formation of Western modernity, the meaning of the word change has been dominated by the notion of progress. The technological advances of the industrial revolution brought with them promises of greater happiness and social well-being. In the same spirit, artists in the avant-garde movement sought to push boundaries by creating new languages and conceived of art as a tool for transforming everyday life. From the realist painting of Courbet and Daumier, in the mid-nineteenth century, through Surrealism and the Constructivist movements that preceded World War II, to Conceptualism and its critical thinking in the En la formación de la Modernidad occidental, el significado de la palabra cambio estuvo dominado por el ideal del progreso. Los adelantos tecnológicos de la revolución industrial trajeron consigo promesas de creciente felicidad y bienestar social. Dentro de ese contexto, los artistas de vanguardia buscaron traspasar límites creando nuevos lenguajes y concibieron el arte como una herramienta para la transformación de la vida cotidiana. Desde la pintura realista de Courbet y Daumier, a mediados del siglo XIX, pasando por el Surrealismo y los movimientos constructivos anteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, hasta el pensamiento crítico del arte conceptual de Guilty / Menor 14-18 #1 by MARCELO GROSMAN (detail / detalle) 59 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean ’60s and ’70s, artists identified themselves with the Utopian dimension inherent in the concept of change. Although in the ’80s the art establishment declared that the aspirations of the avant-garde movements had run their course and condemned as retrograde any attempt to draw a connection between art and social reality, the fact is that a great many artists throughout the world have not yet renounced these ideals. In the case of the artworks included in About Change, we can also note that many artists from Latin America and the Caribbean feel compelled to call attention to or denounce, in their works, such situations as poverty, unemployment, injustice, and precarious living conditions. They also make repeated allusions to social violence and abuse of power. These works tend to reach out on two levels: on the one hand, they seek to raise awareness in the spectator; on the other, they invoke social change as something necessary or, at least, as a legitimate hope. And of course, as Ecuadorian artist Jorge Oqueli has said so well, in this case change is viewed positively, as something desirable. figure 1 / figura 1 After shock (For Haiti) RAS MOSERA figure 2 / figura 2 Carcelero (Jailer) ADÁN VALLECILLO los años 60 y 70, los artistas se identificaron con la dimensión utópica que la idea de cambio lleva consigo. A pesar de que, desde la década de 1980, el sistema del arte declaró agotadas las pretensiones de las vanguardias y calificó de retrógrada la búsqueda de asociación entre el arte y la realidad social, lo cierto es que una gran cantidad de artistas a lo largo del mundo no han renunciado a estos ideales. En el caso de las obras que se presentan en El Cambio, podemos observar también que un número considerable de artistas provenientes de América Latina y del Caribe sienten la urgencia de denunciar o llamar la atención en sus obras a situaciones como la pobreza, el desempleo, la injusticia o las condiciones precarias de vida. También aluden repetidamente a la violencia social y a los abusos de poder. Esas obras suelen apelar a una doble dimensión: por un lado buscan despertar la conciencia del espectador; por otro lado, invocan el cambio social como una necesidad o una legítima esperanza. Por supuesto, como bien nota el artista ecuatoriano Jorge Oqueli, el cambio se ve, en este caso, en sentido positivo, como algo deseable. La preservación ecológica y antropológica: el cambio como negatividad Este trabajo busca hacer visibles a estas mujeres indígenas y criollas que dejan la pasividad de sus hogares para luchar y oponerse a los atropellos de las grandes empresas agrícolas que arrasan con selvas y bosques para implantar el monocultivo de la soja transgénica que las expulsa y que modifica sustancialmente sus condiciones de vida y el equilibrio ecológico de las tierras en las que viven. JULIO PANTOJA. Artista, Argentina 60 figure 3 / figura 3 Llegó la muerte / Death Has Come BAYROL JIMÉNEZ ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean Ecological and Anthropological Preservation: Change as a Negative This work seeks to make visible the Indigenous and Creole women who leave behind their passive domestic lives to struggle against the abuses of the giant agribusinesses that raze jungles and forests in order to plant vast tracts of genetically modified soy, which in turn expel them and irrevocably change the conditions in which they live and the ecological balance of the land they inhabit. JULIO PANTOJA. Artist, Argentina Contemporary culture has also given rise to negative views of change. In the context of climate and ecological research, for example, ‘change’ has become a menacing word. The ideal of progress is no longer univocal: the hazards that threaten the 62 La cultura contemporánea ha generado también visiones negativas del cambio. Desde la perspectiva de los estudios ecológicos y climáticos, por ejemplo, la palabra cambio se ha vuelto amenazante. El ideal del progreso ha dejado de ser unívoco: los peligros que acechan a la sustentabilidad de los recursos naturales y a la preservación de la biodiversidad han demostrado que es necesario volver a examinar este concepto con mayor responsabilidad. Este asunto ha preocupado también a los artistas de América Latina y el Caribe. Algunos de ellos recurren a la documentación directa de casos para llamar la atención sobre la necesidad de poner en práctica políticas de preservación. Otros toman el camino de la metáfora, proponiendo en sus obras y en sus acciones reapropiaciones simbólicas del territorio y de sus riquezas naturales. El mito europeo del ‘buen salvaje’ penetró la mirada dirigida hacia el exótico mundo de las Américas e figure 4 / figura 4 A New Beginning MICHAEL PARCHMENT sustainability of natural resources and the preservation of biodiversity have demonstrated the need to re-examine the concept of progress with greater responsibility. This issue has also been a concern for artists in Latin America and the Caribbean. To call attention to the need for carrying out conservation policies, some of them have turned to the direct documentation of cases. Others have taken the route of metaphor, proposing symbolic re-appropriations of their land and its natural resources in their work and their performances. The European myth of the ‘noble savage’ permeated the gaze toward the exotic world of the Americas, endowing it with idyllic, paradise-like worlds of abundance and original innocence. This perspective persisted into the twentieth century, emphasizing surreal imagination and magic realism as constants in Latin American art. Today many artists maintain that, rather than dismissing this view, it is necessary to appropriate it once again. Indeed, a number of the creators in this selection nurture themselves from the imaginaries of paradisiacal abundance, whether to lend them ironic overtones or to affirm that, beneath the mythical embodiment, there is still a legitimate dream waiting to be given voice. At times paradise takes the form of a supermarket, as if the artists were suggesting that consumerism is the contemporary form of the bygone golden dream of plenitude and prosperity. This topic is related to another negative view of change. Unlike the ecological argument, here the negative does not present itself in the guise of a threat but rather as banality. The logic of obsolescence that governs fashion and consumption has emptied ‘change’ of its humanistic significance, leaving it with a mere instrumental meaning. Finally, some artists emphasize the intimate connection that exists between the preservation of earth’s resources and the cultural values EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe instauró en él escenas de paraísos idílicos, mundos de abundancia y de inocencia original. Esa perspectiva persistió en el siglo XX, destacando la imaginación surreal y el realismo mágico como constantes del arte latinoamericano. En la actualidad, muchos artistas sostienen que, más que descartar esa mirada, es necesario volver a apropiársela. En efecto, muchos creadores presentes en esta selección abrevan en los imaginarios de la abundancia paradisíaca: ya para proyectar sobre ellos un sobretono irónico, ya para afirmar que, por debajo de la encarnadura mítica, subyace un sueño legítimo en espera de que le den voz. A veces el paraíso asume la forma de un supermercado, como si los artistas sugirieran que el consumismo es la forma contemporánea de este antiguo sueño dorado de plenitud y bonanza. Ese tópico está conectado con otra visión negativa del 63 figure 5 / figura 5 A Casa em Festa #1 / A Festive House #1 FLAVIA JUNQUEIRA ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean of certain communities. Fernando Castro, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, speaks of the need to “preserve the anthropological treasures” of Latin America and adds that, on a broader level, “keeping the plurality of cultural traditions of our planet may well be the giant dike that holds back the destructive effects of globalization.” EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe cambio. A diferencia del planteo ecologista, aquí la negatividad no está revestida de amenaza sino de banalidad. La lógica de la obsolescencia que gobierna la moda y el consumo ha vaciado al concepto de cambio de su sentido humanista, dejándole un significado meramente instrumental. Por último, algunos artistas destacan la íntima relación que existe entre la conservación de los recursos de la tierra y los valores culturales de ciertas comunidades. En este sentido, Fernando Castro, de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, habla de la necesidad de “preservar la riqueza antropológica” de América Latina y agrega que, en sentido general, “el mantenimiento de la pluralidad de las tradiciones culturales de nuestro planeta” puede operar “como el gran dique frente a los aspectos destructivos de la globalización”. Cambio de mirada: hacia una identidad propia I find it my duty as an artist, to engage the public in aspects of Haiti, such as faith, religion, and culture, areas which have caused controversy due to bad stigma, lack of knowledge, and incorrect perception. Through my body of work, I hope to uplift a nation, rich in beliefs of both ancestral taboo and modern day norm. Como artista, encuentro que es mi deber hacer que el público entre en contacto con aspectos de Haití, como la fe, la religión y la cultura, áreas que han provocado controversia porque han sido estigmatizadas, o se las conoce mal, o se las percibe de manera incorrecta. Espero que el conjunto de mi obra sirva para elevar el espíritu de una nación rica en creencias basadas tanto en tabúes ancestrales como en normas de hoy. LAVAR MUNROE. Artist, Bahamas LAVAR MUNROE. Artista, Bahamas Multiculturalism has brought us to a new juncture. Current generations are now more aware than ever of the mix of nationality, race, and culture surrounding them, and are seeking new ways of making sense of these complicated issues. El multiculturalismo nos ha llevado a una nueva coyuntura. Las generaciones presentes tienen ahora más consciencia que nunca de la mezcla de nacionalidades, razas y culturas que las rodean y, por eso, buscan nuevos modos de comprender estas complicadas cuestiones. Change in Perspective: Towards an Identity of One’s Own GERALD HANSON. Artist, Jamaica GERALD HANSON. Artista, Jamaica 64 In the last two decades especially, theorists, historians, curators, and those responsible for making things happen in Latin America and the Caribbean have insisted on the need to articulate a perspective of their own in relation to the cultural and artistic processes of the region. In this respect, the search should not be limited to policies for including the peripheries within the history of “universal” art; it should also stimulate the ability to think what specific practices and values have been developing within the region’s own history. What brings the problem most sharply into focus is the inadequacy of the concept of art itself. The meaning of art as we know it today was forged in Europe over the centuries along with the rise of a new social class—the bourgeoisie—which first began to appear in small urban conglomerates in the north of Italy and in Flanders and ended up giving shape to the modern democratic states. In that process, art was defined as an autonomous activity. Freed of any utilitarian dependence (ritualistic, religious, political, moral, or any other), the artistic system generated its own circuits of distribution and consumption. And consequently, the work of art became a specific kind of commodity, and as such it was required to meet the need for permanent progress and renewal that characterizes the logic of any modern market. On the basis of this conception of art, a “universal” history was created that included innumerable aesthetic productions whose contextual origin had nothing to do with that history’s own parameters, from cave paintings to the Gothic cathedrals, from Muslim mosques to the wood carvings of so-called “primitive” peoples. Within Latin America, it is the very logic of artisanry and popular art that first brings up the need to resist a universal concept of art. As Ticio Escobar points out, in popular art, the aesthetic component is not autonomous; it is subsumed in a Particularmente en las últimas dos décadas, los teóricos, historiadores, curadores y gestores de América Latina y del Caribe han insistido en la necesidad de elaborar una mirada propia frente a los procesos culturales y artísticos de la región. En este sentido, el esfuerzo no debería agotarse en las políticas de inclusión de las periferias dentro de la historia del arte “universal”, sino que debería estimuar la capacidad de pensar qué prácticas y valores específicos se han ido gestando en el interior de la propia historia. Lo que evidencia el problema de manera más ostensible es la inadecuación del concepto mismo de arte. El concepto de arte, tal como lo conocemos hoy, fue forjado en Europa, a lo largo de siglos, con el ascenso de una nueva clase social, la burguesía, que comenzó en pequeños conglomerados urbanos en el norte de Italia y en Flandes y acabó dando forma a las repúblicas democráticas modernas. En ese proceso, el arte se definió como una actividad autónoma. Liberado de toda dependencia utilitaria (ritual, religiosa, política, moral, o de otra índole), el sistema artístico generó sus propios circuitos de distribución y consumo. Y en consecuencia, la obra de arte se convirtió en una mercancía específica y, como tal, debió asumir la necesidad de progreso y renovación permanente que caracteriza a la lógica de todo mercado moderno. Sobre la base de este concepto de arte se creó una historia universal que incluyó en su seno innumerables producciones estéticas cuyo origen contextual nada tenía que ver con los propios parámetros de esa historia: desde las pinturas rupestres hasta las iglesias góticas, desde las mezquitas musulmanas hasta las tallas de los pueblos “primitivos”. Dentro del territorio latinoamericano, es la lógica de la artesanía y del arte popular la que plantea la primera necesidad de resistencia frente a un concepto universal de arte. Como sostiene Ticio Escobar, en el arte popular lo estético no es autónomo sino que está subsumido en una compleja 65 figure 6 / figura 6 No Puedo / I can’t ROBERTO UNTERLADSTAETTER ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean complex fabric of functions, uses, and collective social values. On the other hand, the logic of novelty contradicts the dynamics of popular art production, where what is most valued is the preservation and transmission of its concrete procedures. The notion of an individual author doesn’t apply here either, nor does the aura that surrounds the figure of a modern artist’s great talent, originality, or genius. Finally, artisanry as a cultural phenomenon has its own interdependent processes of development, distribution, and consumption that in no way relate to the hypertrophied exchange value that characterizes a work of art as a luxury good. From the broad perspective of the present project, built around the concept of change, it is essential to bear in mind Néstor García Canclini’s observation that popular art, as the characteristic production of subaltern groups, gives an account of the disintegration of indigenous cultures and their re-elaboration when they are combined with modern urban forms. For what matters here is not to put forward a policy for the archaeological or isolationist preservation of these manifestations, but to value, in their dialogues and contemporary hybridizations, their real vitality, their yearning for survival, and their constant effort to rise above the conditions of marginalization. Indeed, the discussion of values required as we consider popular art extends to include the revision of many other hierarchies that distinguish between “high” and “low” culture. In this sense, urban underground expressions such as graffiti and street art are a contemporary source of inspiration. A recurring characteristic of art in Latin America and the Caribbean is the tendency to mix heterogeneous cultural codes. Renouncing any essentialist definition of identity, artists reveal, in complex palimpsests, the multitude of layers that make up history, fusing traditional and contemporary, rural and urban, local and imported, preservation and 66 trama de funciones, usos y valores sociales colectivos. Por otra parte, la lógica de la novedad es contraria a su dinámica de producción, en la que se valoran particularmente la conservación y la transmisión empírica de procedimientos. Tampoco resulta aplicable la noción de autor individual, ni el aura que reviste la figura del talento, la originalidad o el genio del artista moderno. Por último, la artesanía como fenómeno cultural se constituye en procesos propios e interdependientes de elaboración, distribución y consumo en los que resulta ajena la hipertrofia del valor de cambio que caracteriza a la obra de arte en tanto bien de lujo. Dentro de la perspectiva general del presente proyecto, articulado sobre el concepto de cambio, resulta fundamental recordar la observación de Néstor García Canclini de que el arte popular, en tanto producción característica de grupos subalternos, da cuenta de la desintegración de las culturas indígenas y de su reelaboración cuando se las combina con formas urbanas y modernas. Porque aquí no se trata de postular una política de preservación arqueológica o aislacionista de tales manifestaciones sino de valorar, en sus diálogos e hibridaciones contemporáneas, su vitalidad real, su deseo de supervivencia y su constante esfuerzo por superar las condiciones de marginación. En efecto, la discusión de valores que exige la consideración del arte popular se extiende hasta incluir la revisión de muchas otras jerarquías que distinguen entre “alta” y “baja” cultura. Una fuente contemporánea de inspiración, en este sentido, son las expresiones urbanas underground como el graffiti y el arte callejero. Una característica recurrente del arte en las regiones de América Latina y el Caribe es la tendencia al mestizaje de códigos culturales heterogéneos. Renunciando a toda definición esencialista de la identidad, los artistas revelan, en complejos palimpsestos, la multitud de capas que conforman la historia, fusionando lo tradicional y appropriation, memory and desire. In a territory so vast that it embraces pre-Columbian heritage, contributions of immigrants from many places, scars left by conquest, various processes of modernization, and countless ethnic and cultural mixes, “it is only through transformation that identity becomes possible and, therefore, it is only through its own dissolution, contradictory as it may seem, that identity can be forged” (David Pérez). EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe lo contemporáneo, lo rural y lo urbano, lo local y lo importado, la preservación y la apropiación, la memoria y el deseo. En un territorio tan vasto, donde se aúnan las herencias precolombinas, los diversos componentes inmigratorios, las marcas de la conquista, los diferentes procesos de modernización y un sinnúmero de mestizajes étnicos y culturales, “sólo es en la transformación donde la identidad se hace posible y, por lo tanto, sólo es en su propia disolución donde la identidad puede, aunque sea contradictoriamente, fraguarse” (David Pérez). 67 THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY THROUGH THE LENS OF LATIN AMERICA LA HISTORIA DE LA FOTOGRAFÍA VISTA A TRAVÉS DE LA LENTE DE AMÉRICA LATINA Valeria González Independent Guest Curator The consideration of photography as an artistic medium has gone through three fundamental stages. Until World War I, the predominance of painting prevented the aesthetic valuation of the particular features of photography. The discovery of the specific properties of photography as a medium only took place during the interwar period, in a revolutionary process that broke with the legacy of the 19th century. Finally, from the decade of the ’60s onward, evolutionary theories of art and purists’ conceptions of languages began to be questioned. Thus emerged the conditions for the complex, heterogeneous character of photography production today. Each of these stages, in turn, showed a preference for certain genres and styles. The mechanical genesis of photographic images was the foundation of photography’s value as a reliable document and of its quick adoption as a superior substitute for hand drawing in archival materials and scientific research. But in the 19th century mind-set, it was precisely the mechanical genesis of its images that prevented photography from being promoted into the fine arts. An artistic image could not simply be taken; it had to be made. Photographers devoted themselves, then, to imitating painting. Thus arose pictorial photography, which immersed its landscapes and feminine figures in blurred atmospheres Stefan by MARLON JAMES Curadora independiente invitada La consideración de la fotografía como medio artístico atravesó tres etapas fundamentales. Hasta la primera Guerra Mundial, el predominio de la pintura impidió la valoración estética de sus rasgos propios. El descubrimiento de las virtudes específicas del medio fotográfico tuvo lugar recién en el período de entreguerras, en un proceso revolucionario que rompió con la herencia del siglo XIX. Por último, a partir de la década de 1960, comenzaron a cuestionarse las teorías evolucionistas del arte y las concepciones puristas de los lenguajes. Surgieron así las condiciones para la compleja heterogeneidad que caracteriza la producción fotográfica contemporánea. Cada una de estas etapas mostró, a su vez, una preferencia por determinados géneros y estilos. La génesis mecánica de la imagen fotográfica fue el fundamento de su valoración como documento fidedigno y de que se la adoptara como sustituto del dibujo manual en los archivos y las investigaciones científicas. Pero en la mentalidad del siglo XIX, era precisamente la génesis mecánica de sus imágenes la que impedía la promoción de la fotografía dentro de las Bellas Artes. Una imagen artística no podía ser simplemente capturada, debía ser hecha. Los fotógrafos se dedicaron entonces a imitar los resultados de la pintura. Surgió así la fotografía pictorialista, que envolvía sus paisajes y figuras femeninas en 69 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean obtained mainly by chemical treatment in the laboratory. The portrait was, however, the genre in highest demand in the 19th century. Photo studios would reproduce the poses and artificial settings that academic portrait painting had already codified. This situation changed at the end of World War I. Then emerged the idea that, instead of imitating painting, photography should exploit the expressive possibilities of its own language. Through the ’20s and ’30s, all aspects of photo shooting were the subjects of research: focusing, framing, point of view, gradation of light, and the intuitive composition or snapshot. While in the United States Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand talked of abandoning pictorial, soft-focus photography in favor of pure, straight photography, in Germany Moholy Nagy proposed photography and cinema as protagonists of a “new vision” for a new society. Before the Second World War, photojournalism had its period of splendor, with figures like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eric Salomon, and Walker Evans. These photographers showed that, rather than objectively reproducing reality, each photo shot was the embodiment of a unique gaze. The last important change took place in the ’60s, brought about mainly through the critical perspective of conceptual art. That movement asserted that art is not the result of “knowing how,” of applying a specific technical knowledge, but a form of sensuous thinking that can make use of any language or medium. Artists abandoned the exclusive character of “pure” photography and often used their cameras to record artistic performances, interventions in a given space, or staged settings. Besides the fact that photography was being combined with other media and procedures, images were no longer produced by the direct capture of reality but were constructed by the artist. This displacement, in which the referent is no longer reality but an image, seems logical if we 70 atmósferas brumosas obtenidas principalmente mediante el tratamiento químico en el laboratorio. No obstante, la mayor demanda de fotografías durante el siglo XIX estuvo concentrada en el retrato. En los estudios fotográficos se reproducían las poses y ambientaciones artificiales ya codificadas en el retrato pictórico académico. Esta situación cambió al finalizar la Primera Guerra Mundial. En ese contexto surgió la idea de que la fotografía, en vez de imitar a la pintura, debía explotar las posibilidades expresivas de su propio lenguaje. Entre los años 20 y 30 se investigaron las múltiples variantes de la toma fotográfica: enfoques, encuadres, puntos de vista, gradaciones lumínicas, y la composición intuitiva o “de cazador” que caracteriza a la instantánea. Mientras en Estados Unidos Alfred Stieglitz y Paul Strand hablaban de la superacion de la fotografia pictórialista —con enfoque suave— a favor de una fotografia pura o directa, en Alemania Moholy Nagy proponía a la fotografía y el cine como protagonistas de una “nueva visión” para una nueva sociedad. Antes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, de la mano de figuras como Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eric Salomon y Walker Evans, el fotorreportaje vivió un período de esplendor. Estos fotógrafos demostraron que la toma fotográfica, más que reproducir objetivamente un fragmento de realidad dada, implicaba la plasmación de una mirada. El último cambio importante se produjo a partir de los años 60, motivado en gran parte por la perspectiva crítica del arte conceptual. Ese movimiento afirmaba que el arte no es el resultado de un savoir faire, de la aplicación de un conocimiento técnico específico, sino una forma de pensamiento sensible que puede echar mano de cualquier lenguaje o soporte. Los artistas abandonaron la exclusividad de la fotografía “pura” y a menudo la cámara se usó para registrar acciones artísticas, intervenciones en un determinado espacio, o puestas en escena. Además think that—unlike painting and sculpture—photography, film, and video far surpassed the specialized circles of art and went on to configure the visual environment of daily life. In this context, the question of what are the artistic properties of photography became superfluous; what mattered was thinking how artistic practices would be redefined in a world dominated by photographic images and the mass media. One of the characteristic modes of contemporary art is the creation of photographs “without a camera”: the author appropriates an already existing image and transforms and re-signifies it in his studio or on his computer. To be sure, the revisionist and transformative attitude of contemporary art should not be reduced to the traditional evolutionary view under a new guise. It is not a matter of “current” or “outdated” photographic styles, but of a synchronic and plural map, in which each proposal is subjected to being evaluated in terms of internal quality and consistency. In this sense, what a photo “must” be has not been stipulated in advance; it comes about in the construction of a meaning that the artist seeks to communicate. Why the reference to a universal history in this text devoted to Latin American photography? In 1839, a few months after the invention of the daguerreotype was officially announced in the Chamber of Deputies of France, the new photographic process arrived in the American continent. From that moment on, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego photographic activity established itself as a bridge of fluid relations with Europe. It would be an impossible task to describe the multiplicity of variants encompassed by photography in Latin America and the Caribbean today, even if we limited ourselves to the works that are part of About Change. The reference to those three major historical periods is meant to provide some criteria to distinguish, from within our vast array, three groups de que la fotografía se combinaba con otros medios y procedimientos, la imagen ya no provenía de una captura de lo real sino que era construida por el artista. Este desplazamiento, en el cual el referente ya no es la realidad sino una imagen, resulta lógico si pensamos que —a diferencia de la pintura y la escultura— la fotografía, el cine y el vídeo rebasaron ampliamente los circuitos especializados del arte y pasaron a configurar el medio ambiente visual de nuestra vida cotidiana. En este contexto, la pregunta acerca de cuáles son las virtudes artísticas de la fotografía se volvió superflua: lo importante era pensar de qué modo se redefinirían las prácticas artísticas en un mundo dominado por la imagen fotográfica y los medios masivos de comunicación. Uno de los modos característicos del arte contemporáneo consiste en crear fotografías “sin cámara”: el autor se apropia de una imagen existente y la transforma y resignifica en su taller o en su computadora. Por último, la actitud revisionista o transformadora del arte contemporáneo no debería ser reducida a un nuevo disfraz del tradicional criterio evolucionista. No se trata de estilos fotográficos “actuales” o “superados”, sino de un mapa sincrónico y plural en el que cada propuesta está sujeta a que se la evalúe en términos de calidad y coherencia internas. En este sentido lo que una fotografía “debe” ser ya no aparece estipulado de antemano, sino que es función de la construcción de un significado que el artista busca comunicar. ¿Por qué aludir a la historia universal en el presente texto, cuyo objeto es la fotografía latinoamericana? En 1839, a pocos meses de que la Cámara de Diputados de Francia anunciara oficialmente el invento del daguerrotipo, este nuevo proceso fotográfico arribó al continente americano. A partir de entonces, desde Alaska hasta Tierra del Fuego, la actividad fotográfica se mantuvo como un puente de relaciones fluidas con Europa. Describir la multiplicidad de variantes que muestra hoy la fotografía en 71 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean of works. Thus the first group is centered on critical readings of the portrait tradition. The second group shows the importance of documentary photojournalism in Latin America. The last group includes artists who are not, strictly speaking, photographers but use photography to record artistic performances or appropriate already existing images to elaborate new meanings. This grouping I propose is meant to show that Latin American photography has always been fully aware of its inscription in a wider process, rooted in time and international in scope, and that it has exerted its right not only to be part of that process but also to engage it in a critical dialogue. Portraits The meanings of secular portraiture were naturalized with the democratization of photography in the 20th century, Some contemporary artists go back to the genre’s original traits and roles in order to examine their supposed neutrality. This first group, which consists of four Argentine photographers, pays tribute to the rich conceptual tradition that has nurtured their country’s art since the ’60s. During the 19th century, only wealthy families had access to the privilege of individuality that portraiture enshrines. Members of subaltern classes did not enter the photographic image as persons. They only embodied the generic “types” that fill ethnographic vignettes, or were individualized, in frontal and profile views, only for scientific observation or police identification records. Two works inscribe themselves on this discriminatory margin: Julio Pantoja’s Las madres del monte [The Mothers of the Forest] and Marcelo Grosman’s Guilty! The mothers of the forest are Indigenous and Creole women who are fighting to preserve their lands and communities against the advancing deforestation carried out by agricultural corporations. As the artist gathers in this work the voices of these women and the premises of their fight against being marginalized, he also 72 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe América Latina y el Caribe resulta una asignación imposible, aun si nos limitáramos sólo a las obras que participan en la exposición About Change. Al hacer mención de estas tres grandes etapas históricas, el objetivo es extraer un criterio para seleccionar, de nuestro vasto conjunto, tres grupos de obras. Así, el primer grupo se centra en lecturas críticas en torno a la tradición del retrato. El segundo muestra la pertinencia del reportaje documental en el territorio latinoamericano. En el último grupo, artistas que no son, estrictamente hablando, fotógrafos hacen uso de la fotografía para registrar acciones artísticas, o bien se apropian de imágenes existentes para elaborar nuevos significados. La organización propuesta pretende mostrar que la fotografía latinoamericana ha tenido siempre plena conciencia de su inscripción en un amplio proceso, enraizado en el tiempo y de alcance internacional, y que no sólo ha ejercido su derecho a formar parte de ese proceso, sino también a entablar con él un diálogo crítico. Retratos Los significados del género secular del retrato se naturalizaron con la democratización de la fotografía en el siglo XX. Algunos artistas contemporáneos vuelven entonces sobre sus roles y rasgos originarios para revisar su supuesta neutralidad. El primer grupo está compuesto por cuatro fotógrafos argentinos y rinde homenaje a la rica tradición conceptual que, desde los años 60, nutrió al arte de ese país. Durante el siglo XIX sólo las familias adineradas podían acceder al privilegio de la individualidad que el retrato consagra. Los miembros de clases subalternas no ingresaban a la imagen fotográfica en calidad de personas. Encarnaban los “tipos” genéricos que poblaban las estampas costumbristas o etnográficas. O se los individualizaba, de frente y perfil, para la observación científica o la identificación policial. En este límite discriminatorio se inscriben dos trabajos: Las madres del monte de Julio portrays them against a white cloth in the background that clearly alludes to the device used in the studios of 19th century photographers, to which Indigenous people and the poor had no access. In this way, a political reparation in the present is intertwined with a symbolic one rooted in the depths of history. At the other end, Marcelo Grosman retraces another one of the oldest social functions of photography: its role as an auxiliary tool for scientific knowledge and the institutions of social control. Grosman appropriates images of faces from criminal archives and superimposes several of them digitally (figure 1), transforming the supposedly unequivocal information from the sources into phantasmal, even monstrous, effigies. These images induce fright and lay bare the ambiguous relation between representation and repression. In his series Paisajes [Landscapes], Eduardo Gil brings about a disquieting fusion between the bourgeois portrait, which enshrines the individual, and the standardized image of identity documents. He not only dispossesses his subjects of all particularizing features (clothing, jewels, makeup), but he also photographs them with their eyes closed (figure 2), leaving them unable to return the gaze of the spectator who observes them. Gil has spoken of the effort to “rid himself of his craft, letting photography’s indexical logic manifest itself, silent and intense.” Reduced to its purest objectivism, photography is rendered unable to express anything. People have become “landscapes,” that is, purely epidermic cartographies that say nothing about themselves. In turn, Florencia Blanco has devoted herself to rescuing a genre of popular portrait that was common in rural areas of Argentina in the middle of the 20th century: the so-called “oil photo paintings.” As an homage to lost loved ones, their families would commission a craftsman to use his brushes to apply color and poise to some photograph they had kept. Echoing this forgotten ritual, Florencia Pantoja y Guilty! [¡Culpable!] de Marcelo Grosman. Las madres del monte son mujeres indígenas y criollas que luchan por la conservación de sus tierras y sus comunidades frente al avance de los desmontes que llevan a cabo las corporaciones agrícolas. Así como el artista recoge en la obra sus voces y las consignas de su lucha contra la marginación, también las retrata delante de un fondo blanco que alude claramente al recurso utilizado en los estudios de los fotógrafos decimonónicos, a los que los indígenas y los pobres no podían acceder. De este modo, una reparación política actual se entrelaza en la obra con una reparación simbólica que abreva en lo profundo de la historia. En el otro extremo, Marcelo Grosman vuelve sobre otra de las funciones sociales más antiguas de la fotografía: su papel como herramienta auxiliar de los saberes científicos y las instituciones de control social. Grosman se apropia de imágenes de rostros tomadas de archivos criminológicos y las superpone digitalmente (figura 1), transformando la información, supuestamente inequívoca, de las fuentes en efigies fantasmáticas, incluso monstruosas. Las imágenes provocan espanto y ponen al desnudo la ambigua relación entre representación y represión. En su serie Paisajes, Eduardo Gil realiza una inquietante fusión entre el retrato burgués, que consagra al individuo, y la efigie estandarizada de la cédula de identidad. No sólo despoja a sus modelos de toda seña particular (vestimenta, joyas, maquillaje) sino que además los fotografía con los ojos cerrados, haciéndolos incapaces de devolver la mirada del espectador que los observa (figura 2). Gil ha hablado del esfuerzo por “despojarse del oficio, dejando que la lógica indicial de la fotografía se manifieste, intensa y silenciosa”. Reducida a su más puro objetivismo, la fotografía resulta incapaz de expresar nada. Las personas se han convertido en “paisajes”, es decir, en puras cartografías epidérmicas que no nos dicen nada acerca de sí mismas. 73 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 1 / figura 1 Guilty! Menor 14-18 #1 MARCELO GROSMAN Blanco shoots again these oil-photo pieces, placing them at the center of new scenes. Florencia Blanco, por su parte, se abocó a rescatar un género de retrato popular que tuvo difusión en las áreas rurales de Argentina a mediados del siglo XX, las llamadas fotos al óleo. A modo de homenaje, familias que habían perdido a un ser querido, encargaban a un artesano que con sus pinceles de dotara de colorido y prestancia a alguna fotografía que habían conservado. Haciendo eco de este rito olvidado, Florencia Blanco vuelve a fotografiar estas piezas, colocándolas en el centro de nuevos escenarios. Documents Social photojournalism is, without doubt, the most characteristic expression of Latin American photography. This fact has both positive and negative consequences. In the context of a certain demand from the international art system, the documental model has, on occasion, contributed to confining our photography into a false stereotype. In 1993, Erika Billeter curated an extensive historical exhibition entitled Canto a la realidad [Song to Reality]. In the prologue to the exhibition catalogue, Billeter stated: Photography in Latin America…is totally oriented towards the realities of existence and completely disconnected from any pretention to artistic experimentation; but its grandeur resides precisely in this limitation. 74 Documentos El fotorreportaje social constituye, sin duda, la expresión más característica de la fotografía latinoamericana. Dos evaluaciones, una negativa y otra positiva, se desprenden de este hecho. En el contexto de una cierta demanda del sistema internacional del arte, el modelo documental contribuyó, en ocasiones, a encuadrar a nuestra fotografía en un estereotipo falaz. En 1993, Erika Billeter organizó una extensa muestra histórica, titulada Canto a la figure 2 / figura 2 Paisajes 1 / Landscapes 1 EDUARDO GIL The exhibition was harshly criticized for its lack of rigor and its Eurocentric ideology, but Billeter’s statement deserves to be remembered, if only as a warning. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the persistence and vitality of documentary photography in Latin America responds directly to an unbreakable tradition of commitment by photographers to the social reality their countries happen to exist in. The selection of photographs presented in EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe realidad. En el prólogo del catálogo que acompañaba a la exposición, Billeter afirmaba: La fotografía de América latina… está totalmente orientada a la realidad de la existencia y desconectada por completo de cualquier veleidad que tienda a la experimentación artística, pero su grandeza se basa precisamente en esta limitación. 75 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean About Change reliably shows that situation. Rossana Lacayo, from Nicaragua, has recorded the families that survive in Managua’s La Chureca, the largest garbage dump in Latin America. Franziska Agrawal, from Peru, has documented popular neighborhoods fighting between the desert and oblivion at the edge of the megalopolis of Lima. The Ecuadorian artist Maria Teresa Ponce has photographed demonstrations against the devastation brought about by oil companies as well as actions for the ecological preservation of the Yasuni forest. The Dominican Alex Morel shows vestiges of the terrible earthquake that recently laid waste to Haiti (figure 3). The Trinidadian Rodell Warner has photographed workers at the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP). Adriana Lestido has focused on the bonds between mother and child in different prisons in Argentina. The Equadorian Jorge Oqueli has made portraits of street children and of adolescents from marginal families. While the Uruguayan Daniel Machado Hernández draws a social memory from the decline of a family and a house, Walterio Iraheta Ayala turns his ironic gaze on the extravagance of certain houses in El Salvador (figure 4), occasioned by the remittances sent from relatives living abroad. Each artist takes a different stance regarding the ability of documentary photography to affect reality, and for that reason, the way in which each 76 figure 3 / figura 3 Portrait of Drouvillard #1 / Retrato de Drouvillard #1 ALEX MOREL La exposición fue duramente criticada por su falta de rigor y su ideología eurocéntrica, pero la afirmación de Billeter merece ser recordada, siquiera a modo de advertencia. Por otro lado, resulta innegable que la persistencia y vitalidad de la fotografía documental en América Latina responde de modo directo a una inquebrantable tradición de compromiso de los fotógrafos con la realidad social que a sus países les toca vivir. En este sentido, la selección de fotografías presente en El Cambio muestra de manera fidedigna esta situación. La nicaragüense Rossana Lacayo registró a las familias de Managua que sobreviven en el basurero de La Chureca, el más grande de Centroamérica. La peruana Franziska Agrawal documentó los barrios populares que luchan entre el desierto y el olvido en las fronteras de la megalópolis limeña. La artista ecuatoriana Maria Teresa Ponce fotografió las protestas contra la devastación producida por las compañías petroleras y las acciones por la preservación ecológica de la selva de Yasuni. El dominicano Alex Morel mostró los vestigios del terrible terremoto que azotó recientemente a Haití (figura 3). El trinitense Rodell Warner basó su trabajo en los empleados del Programa de Protección y Mejoramiento del Medio Ambiente con Base en la Comunidad (CEPEP). Adriana Lestido se concentró en los vínculos entre madres e hijos en diferentes cárceles de la Argentina. El ecuatoriano Jorge Oqueli retrató a niños de la calle y a adolescentes de familias marginales. A partir del ocaso de una familia y de una casa, el uruguayo Daniel Machado Hernández cifró una memoria social, mientras Walterio Iraheta posó su mirada irónica sobre las extravagancias de ciertas viviendas salvadoreñas (figura 4), productos de las “remesas” enviadas por parientes que viven en el exterior. Cada artista tiene una posición diferente frente a la capacidad de la fotografía documental para incidir en la realidad y, por eso mismo, es diferente la figure 4 / figura 4 Faraway brother style 1 / Estilo del hermano lejano 1 WALTERIO IRAHETA EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe conceives the notion of change is also different. Rodell Warner affirms that CEPEP’s welfare program is not at the service of social transformation but of the status quo, inasmuch as it modifies official unemployment statistics but not the life of the less privileged classes. Alex Morel, in turn, testifies that Haiti’s catastrophe showed him two faces: a dramatic one of destruction and death, and another one with a new “hope that arises from the dust after the quake.” Morel adds that the catastrophe “will mark the beginning of a brighter era for the people of Haiti” According to Jorge Oqueli, “even in the remotest corners of the planet, every person aspires to be free and fulfilled.” He considers that the hope for change is a universal existential right. concepción de cada uno de ellos frente a la idea de cambio. Rodell Warner afirma que el programa asistencial del CEPEP no está al servicio de una transformación social sino del mantenimiento del status quo, en la medida en que modifica las estadísticas oficiales de desempleo pero no cambia la vida de las clases menos privilegiadas. Alex Morel, por su parte, testimonia que la catástrofe de Haití le mostró dos caras: una dramática, de destrucción y muertes, y otra de una nueva “esperanza que surge del polvo que quedó después del terremoto”. Morel agrega que la catástrofe “marcará el comienzo de una era más luminosa para el pueblo de Haití”. Jorge Oqueli afirma que “en cualquier rincón del planeta todo ser humano aspira a ser libre y pleno”. Para Oqueli, la esperanza de cambio es un derecho existencial universal. Rituals Although documentary photography constitutes —or is recognized as being—the most representative or important in Latin America, experimental photography proposals have not been absent in the history of our avant-gardes and currently show a great vitality and diversity. Among many possible options, we have chosen to highlight those in which the camera is used to record ritual actions. This kind of performance or staging, in which the languages of contemporary art engage in a dialogue with old, local traditions, has been particularly Rituales Aunque la fotografía documental constituya, o sea reconocida, como la más representativa o importante en América Latina, las propuestas fotográficas experimentales no han faltado en la historia de nuestras vanguardias y, de hecho, muestran en la actualidad una enorme vitalidad y diversidad. Entre muchas opciones posibles, hemos elegido destacar aquellas en las que se utiliza la cámara para registrar acciones rituales. Este tipo de acción, o puesta en escena, en la cual los lenguajes del arte contemporáneo dialogan con antiguas tradiciones locales, 77 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean important in Latin America, especially since the ’60s, when figures like the Brazilian Lygia Clark and the Cuban Ana Mendieta stood out. The Chilean duo of Isabel Aninat and Catalina Swinburn intends to rescue the ritual dimension that art has lost in contemporary society. At times, their allusion to religious and funeral rites has a political accent, as in Since 09.11 (figure 5), an installation in which the lack of indication of a year makes the reference ambiguous, pointing now both to the military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende and to the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. 78 figure 5 / figura 5 Since 09.11 / Desde 11.09 TERESA ANINAT SAHLI AND CATALINA SWINBURN KUFFERATH ha sido particularmente importante en América Latina, sobre todo a partir de los años 60, cuando descollaron figuras como la brasileña Lygia Clark y la cubana Ana Mendieta. El dúo formado en Chile por Isabel Aninat y Catalina Swinburn se propone rescatar la dimensión ritual que el arte ha perdido en la sociedad contemporánea. Su alusión a ritos religiosos y funerarios está a veces cargada de un acento político, como en la instalación Desde 11.09 (figura 5), en la cual la ausencia del año torna ambigua la referencia, que ahora apunta al golpe militar que derrocó al figure 6 / figura 6 Migración / Migration SANDRA DE BERDUCCY Different issues—ecological ones—inspire the actions that Andrea Juan, from Argentina, performs in the Antartic territory. The Bolivian Sandra De Berduccy and the Argentine Juan Doffo also intervene in enormous, desolate spaces, but what prevails in their works is not an ecological meaning but an existential one. For De Berduccy, the “repetitive, almost mantric” motion of Andean women weavers becomes a way to inhabit the salt desert and give it sense (figure 6). With the assistance of the residents of his native village, Juan Doffo inscribes with fire universal symbols in the solitary vastness of the pampas. The performances by the Bolivian Galo Coca are inspired by popular beliefs and festivities in which—he affirms—the individual self is constructed through its harmonious bond to “the whole,” to its community of belonging and its natural surroundings. In contrast, the festivities represented by the Brazilian Flavia Junqueira are sad. In consumer societies, individual identity has lost its sense of transcendence; the artist alludes to this loss, evoking a childhood trapped in overwhelming settings, uselessly filled with toys and presents. This loss of identity referents often affects migrants as well. For different reasons, from the need to survive to the ambition to progress professionally, many inhabitants of Latin America have left their countries of origin. To this migration alludes—in EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe presidente socialista Salvador Allende y, al mismo tiempo, al ataque terrorista a las Torres Gemelas. Otro tipo de problemática, la ecológica, inspira las acciones que la argentina Andrea Juan lleva a cabo en el territorio antártico. Sandra De Berduccy y Juan Doffo también intervienen enormes espacios desolados, pero en ellos no prima un significado ecológico sino existencial. Para la boliviana De Berduccy el gesto “repetitivo, casi mántrico” de las tejedoras andinas se vuelve un modo de habitar el desierto de sal y dotarlo de sentido (figura 6). Juan Doffo, ayudado por los habitantes de su pueblo natal, inscribe con fuego símbolos universales en la inmensidad solitaria de la llanura pampeana. Las acciones de Galo Coca, boliviano también, se inspiran en las creencias y en las fiestas populares, en las cuales —afirma— la construcción del yo individual pasa por el vínculo armonioso con “el todo”, es decir, con la comunidad de pertenencia y con su entorno natural. Tristes son, en cambio, las fiestas escenificadas por Flavia Junqueira. En las sociedades de consumo, la identidad individual ha perdido su sentido de trascendencia. La artista brasileña alude a esta pérdida evocando una infancia atrapada en escenarios agobiantes, repletos en vano de juguetes y regalos. Esta pérdida de referentes identitarios afecta a menudo también a los migrantes. Por motivos diversos, desde la necesidad de supervivencia hasta la 79 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 8 / figura 8 Untitled EDGAR CALEL figure 7 / figura 7 Wien_Umzug LINA VARGAS DE LA HOZ a playful spirit—the Colombian Lina Vargas De La Hoz, when she makes a “pret a porter” home out of her clothing (figure 7). Very different is the longing evoked by Edgar Calel in his series of little bags filled with postcards and sand (figure 8). Often, the sense of exile produced by a cultural clash happens in the same place where we live. Calel belongs to a community of artists and craftsmen in the Guatemalan region of Comalapa who are distinctive for the way they have received contemporary influences without ceasing to belong to the tradition of popular art. It is significant for me to close this chapter with a piece in which photography lacks all value except that of the meaning being transmitted. Calel’s work is far from showing technical skill, but it is also far from the anti-aesthetic speculation of conceptual art. In an art system where it has become customary to let the strategy of method take care of meaning and where art has become a sophisticated artisanry, the vital grounding of popular manufactures may serve as a powerful warning. 80 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ambición de progreso profesional, muchos habitantes de América Latina han abandonado sus países de origen. A ello alude, con espíritu lúdico, la acción metafórica de la colombiana Lina Vargas de la Hoz, que hace de su indumentaria una suerte de hogar “pret a porter” (figura 7). Muy diversa es la añoranza evocada por Edgar Calel en su serie de bolsitas con postales y arena (figura 8). A menudo, la sensación de destierro que provoca el choque de culturas sucede en el mismo sitio en el que uno habita. Calel pertenece a una comunidad de artistas y artesanos de la región de Comalapa, en Guatemala, singular por la manera en que han recibido influencias contemporáneas sin perder su pertenencia a la tradición del arte popular. Me resulta significativo cerrar este capitulo con una pieza donde la fotografía carece de todo valor que no sea el del sentido transmitido. La obra de Calel está lejos de ostentar pericia técnica, pero está lejos también de la especulación antiestética del arte conceptual. En un sistema artístico donde se ha vuelto habitual confiar el significado a la estrategia de un método, y donde el arte se ha vuelto entonces una sofisticada artesanía, el fundamento vital de las manufacturas populares puede servir de poderosa alerta. 81 DESIGN AS CHANGE EL DISEÑO COMO CAMBIO Renata Becerril Independent Guest Curator Design is change. It has always promoted evolution, pushing humankind towards new realities and boundaries. Through design, matter changes form, takes function, and acquires value. Design has become the ultimate technological and cultural tool of man. From buildings to bicycles, books, or banknotes, now more than ever our daily surroundings are designed. Design is everywhere; it is key to understanding changes in our world. Every designed object or image embodies a multifaceted portrait of a particular reality1. A particularly challenging and dynamic reality is that of Latin America and the Caribbean. In this region, design maintains and promotes a strong connection to craftsmanship, cultural heritage, and natural resources. Fundamental to this distinctive aspect of design is the fact that the discipline grew from a very close connection to history and culture. In preColumbian times, most countries of Latin America that benefited from dynamic local economies and richness in natural resources built a powerful material and visual culture upon dedicating their economic surplus to the development of advanced scientific knowledge and of magnificent architecture, sculpture, painting, and crafts. Craftsmanship is deeply embedded within Latin American and Caribbean cultures; ancestral crafts have endured, from techniques Curadora independiente invitada El diseño es cambio. Ha impulsado siempre la evolución, empujando a la humanidad hacia nuevas realidades y fronteras. Por medio del diseño, la materia cambia de forma, asume funciones y adquiere valor. El diseño se ha convertido en la suprema herramienta tecnológica y cultural del hombre. De los edificios a las bicicletas, los libros o las notas de banco, nuestro entorno cotidiano es, ahora más que nunca, un entorno diseñado. El diseño está en todas partes y es clave para entender los cambios que se producen en nuestro mundo. Cada imagen u objeto diseñado encarna el retrato multifacético de una realidad particular.1 Especialmente estimulante y dinámica es la realidad de América Latina y El Caribe. En esta región, el diseño mantiene y fomenta una fuerte conexión con la artesanía, la herencia cultural y los recursos naturales. Un hecho fundamental para este aspecto distintivo del diseño es que la disciplina misma creció a partir de una estrecha relación con la historia y la cultura. En tiempos precolombinos, la mayor parte de los países de América Latina que tenía economías locales dinámicas y riqueza de recursos naturales construyeron poderosas culturas materiales y visuales, dedicando su excedente económico al desarrollo del conocimiento científico más avanzado y de magníficas obras de arquitectura, escultura, pintura y figure 1 1956, Guache on cardboard | GRUPO FRENTE, Courtesy Projeto Hélio Oiticica (detail / detalle) 83 figure 2 / figura 2 Lamp B / Lámpara B MADE IN MIMBRE ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean still employed today like waist looms or palm weaving, to the use of natural resources like shellfish purple for dying. As a consequence, designers have benefited greatly both from craft legacy and from industrial processes. All over the world today, the balance between craft and industry is changing, and a revival of the handmade is taking place. One reason is the evident environmental damage caused by industrialization. Another is a reaction to the negative effects of globalization, which is making us critical of homogenized products and ideas. In the last decade, designers from every continent have shown a growing interest in the intellectual reassessment of their own craft traditions as a source of inspiration and as a more sustainable way of material production.2 Some have been experimenting with the use of craft techniques and motifs to “humanize” mass manufacturing.3 Since in Latin America craft and culture are inherent in each other, some architects, designers, and artists have been crucial figures in establishing tradition and national identity as an important point of departure and content for their disciplines. For designers this meant that not only artisans would engage with these cultural aspects. Already in the 1940s architect Luis Barragán in Mexico decisively manifested a national identity, through architecture and furniture design based on a reassessment of the vernacular within the context of modern architecture, as has also done architect Sergio Rodrigues in Brazil since the 1950s, with his characteristic use of traditional raw materials in his modern furniture.4 While Latin American designers have visualized and assessed the influence of craft and culture in their work, some crucial economic and political moments, combined with significant art movements, have notably, but in some instances indirectly, contributed to shaping what constitutes design in the region today. 84 artesanías. El trabajo artesanal está profundamente enraizado en las culturas de América Latina y El Caribe; muchas artesanías ancestrales perviven intactas hasta hoy, desde la del telar de cintura o el tejido de palma hasta el uso de recursos naturales como la púrpura de caracol para teñidos. Por eso mismo, los diseñadores han aprovechado en gran medida tanto el legado artesanal como los procesos industriales. Actualmente está cambiando en todo el mundo el equilibrio entre industria y artesanía y se está produciendo un resurgimiento de todo lo que es hecho a mano. Uno de los motivos del cambio es el evidente daño ambiental causado por la industrialización. Otro motivo es la reacción a los efectos negativos de la globalización, que nos impulsa a criticar las ideas y los productos homogeneizados. En la última década, diseñadores de todos los continentes han mostrado un interés creciente en reexaminar intelectualmente su propia tradición artesanal como fuente de inspiración y como forma más sostenible de producción material.2 Algunos están experimentando con el uso de técnicas y motivos artesanales para “humanizar” la fabricación en masa.3 Como en América Latina la artesanía y la cultura son parte intrínseca una de la otra, algunos arquitectos, artistas y diseñadores han sido figuras decisivas para establecer la tradición y la identidad nacional como importante punto de partida y contenido de sus disciplinas. Para los diseñadores eso quiso decir que no sólo los artesanos se ocuparían de estos aspectos culturares. Ya en de la década de los cuarenta, el arquitecto mexicano Luis Barragán expresó decididamente una identidad nacional mediante una arquitectura y un diseño de muebles que se basaban en la revaloración de lo vernáculo dentro del contexto de la arquitectura moderna, como lo ha hecho también el arquitecto Sergio Rodrigues en Brasil, desde los años cincuenta, con su característico uso de materias primas tradicionales en sus muebles de diseño moderno.4 The first decades of the 20th century in Latin America were both marked by civil wars and revolutions and dominated by the search for stability. In most countries, a reassessment of national identity took place during those decades. A clear depiction of this condition is that of the muralist movement in Mexico, led by Diego Rivera, in which a combination of vernacular and traditional imagery with socialist progressive political content was put at the service of the ideals of the Revolution. The movement had strong resonances in countries like Ecuador—with artist Oswaldo Guayasamín’s interest in Indigenism—and Brazil, with artist Cândido Portinari who depicted the social reality of his country. Designers today have continued to build up a refined national identity based in pre-Columbian iconography and popular techniques that are now employed in fashion, graphics, and industrial design.5 This flourishing nationalism saw its peak with the so-called export substitution programs which, from the ‘40s to the ‘50s, and up until the ‘70s in the case of Uruguay, promoted the consumption of locally produced goods, as the markets were relatively closed to imports from more developed countries. In search for what was to become the Modern Project, designers travelled to Europe looking for new paradigms. Thus the visit of Argentine Carlos Maldonado to the German HfG Ulm [Ulm School of Design] in 1948, which was decisive for the subsequent course of design and design education in the continent. Together with the Swiss school of graphic design, the rationalist ideals of the German HfG Ulm had a great impact in the creation during the ‘60s of most Latin American advanced schools of design.6 The Neo-Concrete Art Movement, with the Brazilian Hélio Oiticica as one of its major figures, was another key element in configuring the aesthetic language of the period throughout the region (figure 1). The legacy of these schools of EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe Mientras los diseñadores latinoamericanos han valorado y hecho visible en sus obras la influencia de la artesanía y la cultura, algunos importantes acontecimientos económicos y políticos, junto con significativos movimientos artísticos, han contribuido —de manera notable, aunque a veces indirecta— a dar forma a lo que es hoy el diseño en la región. Las primeras décadas del siglo XX en América Latina estuvieron marcadas por guerras civiles y revoluciones y, al mismo tiempo, dominadas por la búsqueda de estabilidad. En la mayor parte de los países se produjo, en esas décadas, una revaloración de la identidad nacional. Una clara representación de estas condiciones son las obras del movimiento muralista mexicano, encabezado por Diego Rivera, que combinó imágenes de origen autóctono y tradicional con contenidos políticos socialistas progresistas y puso esa combinación al servicio de los ideales de la Revolución. El movimiento tuvo fuertes resonancias en Ecuador, por ejemplo, donde Oswaldo Guayasamín estableció su propio estilo de pintura indigenista, y en Brasil, donde Cándido Portinari 85 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean thought can be traced today in designs that incorporate abstraction, simple geometric elements, and flat colors7. The booming spirit of modernization was given material form during the late '50s and the '60s thanks to the stable ground set in previous decades. This was the time of big projects in energy, transport, industry, and urban infrastructure like those of the city of Brasilia, which are among the most ambitious and important ones of the period. The growth of industrialization, however, has not kept up with contemporary market needs, and designers are constantly shifting from industry to craft, becoming what Gui Bonsiepe has called urban neo-artisans.8 In the ‘70s, modernization opened the way to a stable period in which design, its production, and commerce were given decisive governmental support. As a consequence, local manufacturing 86 figure 3 / figura 3 Voyage Letter Y / Voyage Letra Y NOHEMÍ DICURÚ pintó la realidad social de su país. Los diseñadores actuales continúan la tarea de refinar una identidad nacional sobre la base de la iconografía precolombina y de técnicas tradicionales que se emplean hoy en el diseño gráfico, industrial y de la moda.5 Ese nacionalismo floreciente alcanzó su punto más alto con los así llamados programas de sustitución de importaciones que en los años cuarenta y cincuenta, y hasta los setenta en Uruguay, promovieron el consumo de la producción local, mientras los mercados estaban relativamente cerrados a las importaciones provenientes de países más desarrollados. Los diseñadores de la región viajaron a Europa en busca de nuevos paradigmas que dieron lugar al Proyecto Moderno. La visita del argentino Carlos Maldonado a la Escuela de Diseño de Ulm (HfG Ulm) en 1948 fue decisiva para la subsiguiente trayectoria del diseño y de la formación de diseñadores en el continente. Junto con las escuela suiza de diseño gráfico, los ideales racionalistas de la escuela alemana de Ulm fueron esenciales en la creación de la mayor parte de las escuelas avanzadas de diseño de América Latina en la década de los sesenta.6 El movimiento de arte neoconcreto, en el que sobresalió el brasileño Hélio Oiticica, fue otro elemento clave en la configuración del lenguaje estético de ese período en toda la región (figura 1). El legado de estas escuelas y movimientos puede verse hoy en diseños que incorporan formas abstractas, elementos geométricos y colores planos.7 El pujante espíritu de modernización adquirió forma material hacia el final de los cincuenta y durante los años sesenta gracias al terreno firme que se había establecido en las décadas anteriores. Este fue el momento de los grandes proyectos de infraestructura industrial, urbana, de transporte y de energía, como los de la ciudad de Brasilia, que están entre los más importantes de ese período. Con todo, la industrialización no ha crecido en la misma medida que las necesidades del mercado EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe increased substantially throughout Latin America.9 A considerable number of local brands came into existence, which gave impetus to growth in the production of locally designed objects. In the meantime, graphic design flourished in response to new consumption patterns. Nonetheless, the decade of the ‘70s was also a critical moment after decades of economic stability and growth. The region, which had been so far predominantly rural, began rapidly moving towards urbanization. During the ‘80s most countries suffered from inflation and recession, directly derived from economic and political turmoil. All of the sustained growth that had made design flourish with the promise of progress, and that had prompted the establishment of design institutions and educational centers, was slowed down, leaving the region with an extraordinary potential but scarce resources to develop it. The reforms of the late ‘80s and ‘90s opened a new door for a more globally oriented design and marked a renaissance of design within new open market rules. New platforms arose for the promotion of design, such as design associations, galleries, and biennial exhibitions. But with globalization came also the danger of homogenization, and Latin American and Caribbean countries have been trying to conciliate the universal with the regional, the authentic and unique with the generic, as they also try to play an important role in the global scene both economically and culturally. Designers have been actively participating in international biennials, producing pieces commissioned by European manufacturers, and collaborating with international design collectives, all of which has secured them a strong presence in the international design scene.10 For designers working in Latin America and the Caribbean today, the dialogue between craftsmanship and industry, tradition and innovation, the contemporáneo, y los diseñadores deben pasar constantemente de la industria a la artesanía, transformándose en lo que Gui Bonsiepe ha llamado “nuevos artesanos urbanos”.8 En la década de los setenta la modernización dio comienzo a un período estable en el que el diseño, su producción y comercialización recibieron apoyo decisivo de los gobiernos. En consecuencia, la manufactura local aumentó significativamente en toda América Latina.9 Se creó un número considerable de marcas locales que impulsaron el aumento en la producción de objetos diseñados localmente. Entre tanto, el diseño gráfico floreció en respuesta a nuevos patrones de consumo. Al mismo tiempo, la década de los setenta fue también un momento crítico después de varias décadas de estabilidad y crecimiento económico. La región, que había sido predominantemente rural, comenzó a urbanizarse con rapidez. En la mayor parte de los países, la década de los ochenta fue un período de altas tasas de inflación y de recesión, provocadas directamente por trastornos políticos y económicos. Se detuvo entonces el crecimiento económico sostenido que había hecho florecer al diseño con la promesa de progreso y que había impulsado la creación de instituciones y centros de estudio de diseño. En consecuencia, la región, que tenía extraordinarias posibilidades, quedó sin recursos para desarrollarlas. Las reformas de finales de los ochenta y de la década de los noventa dieron paso a una forma de diseño más globalmente orientado y marcaron el renacimiento del diseño dentro de nuevas condiciones de mercado abierto. Surgieron entonces nuevas plataformas de promoción del diseño: asociaciones de diseño, galerías y exposiciones bienales. Pero con la globalización llegó también el peligro de que todo se homogeneizara, y los países de América Latina y el Caribe han tratado de conciliar lo universal con lo regional, lo auténtico y 87 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 4 / figura 4 Cesta MARÍA BONITA EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe connected design, socially responsible design, and exploratory design are the lenses through which the selected pieces are reflected upon. local and the global defines the core of their realities. This situates them in a unique position to become instrumental in our contemporary need to re-examine our material and visual cultures. As agents and facilitators of change, they have the ability to grasp momentous changes in our everyday life and to convert them into objects, images, and ideas that people can understand and use. About Change considers how designers in Latin America and the Caribbean translate the diversity of their realities in the form of objects, images, and clothing—that is, in industrial, graphic, and fashion design. It highlights current design examples of a proactive nature in aspects related to culture, society, and the discipline itself. Culturally 88 singular con lo genérico, en su esfuerzo por tener un papel económico y cultural importante dentro de la escena global. Los diseñadores de la región participan activamente en las bienales internacionales, crean objetos por encargo de fabricantes europeos y colaboran con cooperativas internacionales de diseño, todo lo cual les asegura una fuerte presencia en la escena internacional.10 Para los diseñadores que trabajan hoy en América Latina y el Caribe, el dialogo entre artesanía e industria, tradición e innovación, lo local y lo global define el núcleo de su realidad. Ese diálogo los ubica en una posición excepcional con respecto a la necesidad contemporánea de reexaminar nuestra cultural material y visual. Como agentes y facilitadores Culturally Connected Design Objects and images have the ability to convey meaning. When they are born out of a strong connection to a specific culture or aspects of it, they have the power to express local and universal identity at the same time. Latin American and Caribbean countries have a rich cultural heritage where a collective consciousness can identify itself through particular objects, images, or beliefs. The designs that comprise this group share a drive to reveal new possibilities in what constitutes their contextual culture. This may mean reinterpreting traditional forms or techniques—as with María Bonita Mexican collective and its Cesta collection of stools, tables, and lamps made of hand woven palm fiber (figure 4)— or incorporating a vernacular language either by using local materials or by making reference to the local culture—as seen in the work of Brazilian designer Mauricio Arruda in his José Collection, which transforms plastic crates into chests of drawers (figure 5). In all cases, these are culturally significant works in which the tensions between urban and rural, cosmopolitan and vernacular, formal and precarious—all present in every Latin American and Caribbean country—play an important role in the basic conceptions of design projects and foreground issues of identity and place. Socially Responsible Design Design can be more than form-giving. It can be a strategic impulse to translate needs and desires into a transformative solution. When design uses its means to address social, environmental, economic, and political issues, it is capable of generating long-term acquired value beyond consumerism or economic considerations. Design can play a del cambio, esos diseñadores tienen la capacidad de discernir cambios de gran importancia en la vida cotidiana y de transformarlos en objetos, imágenes e ideas que la gente puede comprender y también usar. El Cambio tiene en cuenta cómo los diseñadores de América Latina y el Caribe representan la diversidad de sus realidades en la forma de objetos, imágenes y ropas, es decir en diseño industrial, gráfico y de la moda. La exposición ilumina ejemplos de diseño actual con dinamismo y empuje en aspectos relacionados con la cultura, la sociedad y la disciplina misma. Las obras seleccionadas para esta muestra se examinarán bajo la lente de tres categorías: el diseño culturalmente conectado, el diseño responsable y el diseño de exploración. Diseño culturalmente conectado Los objetos y las imágenes tienen la capacidad de transmitir significado. Cuando nacen de una fuerte conexión con una cultura específica o con uno de sus aspectos, los objetos y las imágenes tienen el poder de expresar una identidad local y universal al mismo tiempo. Los países de América Latina y El Caribe tienen una rica herencia cultural en la que una consciencia colectiva puede identificarse a sí misma mediante objetos, imágenes o creencias particulares. Los diseños incluidos en este primer grupo comparten un vigoroso impulso de revelar nuevas posibilidades en lo que constituye su cultura contextual. Esto puede equivaler a reinterpretar formas o técnicas tradicionales, como en el caso de la cooperativa mexicana María Bonita y su colección Cesta de taburetes, mesas y lámparas hechas de tejido de fibra de palma (figura 4). Puede también equivaler a incorporar un lenguaje vernáculo mediante el uso de materiales locales o la referencia a la cultura local, como se ve en el trabajo del diseñador brasileño Mauricio Arruda y su Colección José, que trasforma cajones de plástico en cajoneras (figura 5). 89 figure 5 / figura 5 Jose Collection / Colección Jose MAURICIO ARRUDA figure 6 / figura 6 Alimentando el Futuro [Feeding the future] / Alimentando el Futuro MARLENE FRANCO collective role in encountering and mediating change, meeting responsibilities, raising awareness, giving back to society, and engaging positively in politics. Making design that matters, rather than making design better, is a common conviction of the designs featured in About Change. Projects like Alimentando el Futuro [Feeding the Future] from Panama’s graphic designer Marlene Franco use graphic and industrial design to stimulate audiences to take action in the fight against malnutrition (figure 6). Others involve local communities in projects addressing sustainability and environmental issues as well as social concerns: for instance, Peruvian fashion designer Lucía Cuba, whose Gamarra collection uses plastic bags from Gamarra’s giant shopping mall (figure 7). These projects dwell on the idea that global issues should be tackled bottom-up and that a local spark can trigger a powerful chain reaction with global implications. Exploratory Design Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They scan what is around us through a particular perspective; they can reconfigure our material and visual landscape in unexpected and unforeseen ways, discovering what is yet unknown. Adopting an exploratory stance, designers can trigger radical processes in order to ask new questions and challenge our views of the world. Thus, true EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe En todos los casas, estos son objetos culturalmente significativos, en los que las tensiones entre urbano y rural, cosmopolita y vernáculo, formal y precario —todas presentes en cada país de America Latina y El Caribe— tienen un papel importante en la concepción básica de proyectos de diseño y plantean cuestiones de espacio e identidad. Diseño socialmente responsable Diseñar puede ser algo más que dar forma. El diseño puede ser un impulso estratégico de hacer que las necesidades y los deseos se traduzcan en una solución transformadora. Cuando usa sus medios para abordar cuestiones sociales, ambientales, económicas o políticas, el diseño es capaz de general valor adquirido a largo plazo más allá del consumismo o las consideraciones puramente económicas. El diseño puede asumir el papel colectivo de enfrentar y mediar el cambio, cumplir con responsabilidades, avivar conciencias, hacer un aporte a la sociedad e intervenir positivamente en política. Hacer un diseño que tenga importancia, más que hacerlo mejor, es una convicción que comparten todos los diseños incluidos en El Cambio. Proyectos como Alimentando el futuro de la diseñadora panameña Marlene Franco usan el diseño gráfico e industrial para animar al público a que tome parte activa en la campaña contra la malnutrición (figura 6). Otros hacen participar a comunidades locales en proyectos que se ocupan de la sostenibilidad y de cuestiones del medio ambiente, 91 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 7 / figura 7 Gamarra LUCÍA CUBA figure 8 / figura 8 Mis Estrellas / My Stars HERNANDO BARRAGÁN EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe y también de preocupaciones sociales: por ejemplo, la diseñadora de moda peruana Lucía Cuba que, en su colección Gamarra, usa bolsas de plástico del centro comercial gigante de Gamarra (figura 7). Estos proyectos insisten en la idea de que las cuestiones globales deben abordarse primero localmente y que una chispa local puede provocar una poderosa reacción en cadena con implicaciones globales. innovation can take place. It can emerge from the multilayered qualities of design, be it form, function, concept, technology, or material. Explorations in terms of the function or form of an object can lead to new models of relations between individuals and the physical world that surrounds them, as in the case of Mis Estrellas [My Stars], an interactive wall by Colombian designer Hernando Barragán (figure 8). Conceptual inquiries into design, regardless of the presence or absence of a form, can push the discipline to new developments, devising scenarios and strategies. Technology helps us mediate the significant changes that are part of our reality: time, space, and the physical character of objects and of our very existence. Exploration in materials, forms, or techniques may trigger a positive paradigm shift, as in the case of the Nintai dress collection by Uruguayan fashion designers Mercedes Arocena and Lucía Benítez, which draws on ancient garments that were manufactured on looms and had 92 Diseño de exploración Los diseñadores están situados a mitad de camino entre las revoluciones y la vida de todos los días: examinan con una perspectiva particular todo lo que nos rodea y pueden reconfigurar nuestro paisaje material y visual de modos inesperados e imprevisibles, descubriendo lo que nos es todavía desconocido. Cuando adoptan una actitud exploratoria, los diseñadores pueden provocar procesos radicales que plantean nuevas preguntas y cuestionan nuestra visión del mundo. De este modo tiene lugar la verdadera innovación, que puede surgir de las calidades multidimensionales del diseño: forma, función, concepto, tecnología, materiales. La exploración en términos de la función o de la forma de un objeto puede conducir a nuevos modelos de relaciones entre los individuos y el mundo físico que los rodea, como en el caso de Mis Estrellas [Mis Estrellas], el muro interactivo del diseñador colombiano Hernando Barragán (figura 8). Las indagaciones conceptuales del diseño, independientemente de la presencia o ausencia de una forma, pueden producir nuevos desarrollos en la disciplina con la invención de escenarios y estrategias. La tecnología sirve de mediadora con respecto a los cambios significativos que son parte de nuestra realidad: en el tiempo, en el espacio, en el carácter físico de los objetos y de nuestra propia existencia. La exploración de materiales, formas o técnicas puede provocar un cambio positivo de paradigma, como en el caso de la colección Nintai de vestidos de las diseñadoras uruguayas Mercedes Arocena y Lucía to be geometrically cut and folded in order to produce a piece of clothing (figure 9). Design is and conveys change. Latin America and the Caribbean have proven to be a fertile laboratory for artists working in the graphic, fashion, and industrial fields of design. The diversity of proposals from emergent designers helps us better understand the changes, drives, and aspirations of multiple realities taking place today. Design rooted in culture, driven by social bonds, and keen on explorations and experimentations will not only continue to improve the quality of life of those living in Latin America and the Caribbean but will also contribute positively to making the world a better place. Benítez, inspirada en antiguas vestimentas hechas con tejidos de telar que debían cortarse y doblarse en formas geométricas para confeccionar una pieza de ropa (figura 9). El diseño es cambio, y comunica cambio. América Latina y el Caribe han probado ser un fértil laboratorio para los artistas que trabajan en los campos de diseño gráfico, industrial y de la moda. La diversidad de propuestas de diseñadores emergentes nos permite comprender mejor los cambios, los impulsos y las aspiraciones de múltiples realidades que tienen lugar hoy. Un diseño enraizado en la propia cultura, impulsado por lazos sociales y abierto a la exploración y experimentación no sólo continuará mejorando la calidad de vida de los que habitan en América Latina y El Caribe sino que contribuirá también positivamente a hacer del mundo un lugar mejor. 93 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean figure 9 / figura 9 Nintai MERCEDES AROCENA Y LUCÍA BENÍTEZ EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe The Dutch design collective Droog, since its formation in 1992, has taken design into a conceptual stance, where the one-off piece, tradition, and craft are central values of an object. 3 William Morris, precursor of the English Arts and Crafts movement, was one of the first designers to question the implication of the mass-manufactured products; he saw the industrial culture as soulless and destructive. 4 In architecture, the term that has been used to describe the mediation between the universal and the particularities of place is critical regionalism, a concept that the English architect and writer Kenneth Frampton discusses in “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983). 5 Examples of these national identity languages can be found in the work of emergent Chilean design studio Made in Mimbre, which uses local willow fiber with an ancient hand knitting technique for manufacturing lamps (figure 2). 6 The German HfG ULM was the model for the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial [Advanced School of Industrial Design] (ESDI), created in Brazil in 1963, and for the University of Chile’s Escuela de Diseño [School of Design], founded in 1966, as well as for similar schools in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. 7 A clear example is that of Venezuela, which since the ‘60s has shown a rich graphic culture based on this legacy; today emergent designers like Nohemí Dicurú (figure 3). 8 Gui Bonsiepe is a German interface designer, based in Latin America since 1968, who graduated from the HfG Ulm. The meaning and extension of “urban neo-artisan” are explained in Historia del diseño en América Latina y el Caribe [A History of Design in Latin America and the Caribbean], ed. Silvia Fernández and Gui Bonsiepe (São Paulo: Blücher, 2008). 9 In 1968 the Colombian government launched its Industrial Design Mission. The Chilean government created a special group for product development in 1970, the same year in which the Mexican government created the Mexican Institute of Exterior Commerce (IMCE). In 1973 Brazil created a program of incentives to design. 10 A good example of a highly visible, young Latin American designers’ initiative is the Touch design collective, which has shown in Design Miami Basel, and at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, among other places. 2 1 In A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Mexican philosopher Manuel de Landa argues that human history is not constructed only by discourses and ideologies. There is also the dynamic flow of the physical world, a kind of “material” history that can help us trace and understand human societies: “We live in a world populated by structures— a complex mixture of geological, biological, social, and linguistic constructions that are nothing but accumulations of materials shaped and hardened by history” (New York: Swerve Editions, 2000), p. 25. 94 En A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History [Mil años de historia no lineal], el filósofo mexicano Manuel de Landa sostiene que la historia humana no está hecha sólo de discursos e ideologías. Existe también el fluir dinámico del mundo físico, una especie de historia “material” que puede servirnos para seguir paso a paso y llegar a comprender la marcha de las sociedades humanas: “Vivimos en un mundo poblado por estructuras —una mezcla compleja de construcciones geológicas, biológicas, sociales y lingüísticas que no son 1 más que la acumulación de materiales a los que ha dado forma y ha endurecido la historia” (Nueva York: Swerve Editions, 2000) p. 25. 2 Desde su formación en 1992, la cooperativa holandesa de diseño Droog ha asumido una posición conceptual en la que la pieza única, la tradición y la artesanía son los valores centrales de un objeto. 3 William Morris, el precursor del movimiento de artes y oficios en Inglaterra, fue uno de los primeros diseñadores que cuestionó las implicaciones de tener productos de fabricación masiva. Morris veía la cultura industrial como algo carente de espíritu y destructivo. 4 En arquitectura, se ha usado el término regionalismo crítico parar describir la mediación entre lo universal y las particularidades de un lugar específico. El arquitecto y escritor inglés Kenneth Frampton analiza ese concepto en “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance [Hacia un regionalismo crítico: seis puntos para una arquitectura de la resistencia]”, en Hal Foster, ed., The AntiAesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture [La antiestética: ensayos sobre la cultura postmoderna] (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983). 5 Ejemplos de estos lenguajes de identidad nacional se pueden encontrar en el trabajo del nuevo estudio de diseño chileno Made in Mimbre, que usa mimbre local con una antigua técnica de tejido para crear lámparas (figura 2). 6 La HfG Ulm alemana sirvió de modelo para la Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial, creada en Brasil en 1963, para la Escuela de Diseño de la Universidad de Chile, fundada en 1966, y también para otras escuelas similares creadas en esa década en Argentina, Colombia y México. 7 Un ejemplo claro es el de Venezuela, donde existe desde los años sesenta una rica cultura gráfica basada en ese legado; actualmente, diseñadores emergentes como Nohemí Dicurú (figura 3). 8 Gui Bonsiepe es un diseñador alemán de interfaz egresado de la HfG Ulm que reside en América Latina desde 1968. El significado y extensión de “nuevo artesano urbano están explicados en Historia del diseño en América Latina y el Caribe, ed. Silvia Fernández y Gui Bonsiepe (San Pablo: Blücher, 2008). 9 En 1968 el gobierno de Colombia lanzó su Misión del Diseño Industrial. El gobierno de Chile creó un grupo especial para el desarrollo de productos en 1970, el mismo año en el que el gobierno mexicano creó el Instituto Mexicano de Comercio Exterior (IMCE). En 1973 Brasil creó un programa de incentivos para el diseño. 10 Buen ejemplo de una iniciativa altamente visible de diseñadores latinoamericanos jóvenes es la cooperativa latinoamericana de diseño Touch, que ha expuesto en Design Miami Basel y en la Feria Internacional del Mueble Contemporáneo de Nueva York, entre otros lugares. 95 WHAT ARE YOU THINKING RIGHT NOW? ¿QUÉ ESTÁS PENSANDO? Edgar Endress Artist and Independent Guest Curator The network system is choreographed to create parameters for navigators to be amiable, falsely private, mundane, and ritualistic. These parameters construct an editorial “I”, shaping you—the user— into a preformatted editor who feeds into the persona that you digitally create. The social network invites you to be literal and participative and to experience the network with a cinematic approach, suspending your disbelief and becoming an actor, a part of the social broadcast. Now you are not only an active voyeur but also a passive object of observation and an erratic media distributor. In this context, media arts are used as a means, as a form, and as a synthetic structure that influence the formats of duration in relation to attention span and of simplification of language in relation to economical, gimmicky reality-content and candid camera videos. Novelty, popularity, and laughter rule the conceptual process in both production and consumption. The network is the stage in which the aesthetics of the counterfeit persona is the main character—an evolutionary result of our technological panacea. This appropriated persona has no memory; it manifests amnesia provoked by devices that act as sensory extensions. The counterfeit persona is always in the present tense, in constant literary reconstruction and evolution, borrowing identities, recycling, Espacio cambiario by LEONARDO NÚÑEZ (detail / detalle) Artista y curador independiente invitado El sistema de redes está coreografiado para crear parámetros en los que los navegantes sean amigables, falsamente privados, rutinarios y rituales. Esto parámetros construyen un ”yo” editorial, transformándolo a usted, el usuario, en un editor preconfigurado para alimentar a la persona que usted crea por medios digitales. La red social lo invita a ser literal y participativo y a experimentar la red con un enfoque cinematográfico, suspendiendo su incredulidad y convirtiéndose en un actor, parte del aparato social de difusión. Y ahora, usted es no sólo un activo mirón sino también un objeto pasivo de observación y un imprevisible distribuidor de comunicación digital. En este contexto, las artes digitales se utilizan como un medio, como una forma y como una estructura sintética que afectan los formatos de duración en relación con la capacidad de atención, y los de simplificación del lenguaje en relación con los rentables vídeos que presentan una realidad “trucada” o filman con cámaras escondidas. La novedad, la popularidad y la risa gobiernan el proceso conceptual tanto en la producción como en el consumo. La red es el escenario en el que la estética de la persona falsificada es el protagonista, el resultado evolutivo de nuestra panacea tecnológica. Esta persona apropiada no tiene memoria: manifiesta simplemente una amnesia 97 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean and assembling the available media to create an architecture of the copy-and-paste, a simulacrum of a perennial being. About Change recognizes the role of the Internet, the social network, and the associated technological changes to propose an art and technology exhibition that explores these ideas. Life on earth is shaped by new information and communication technologies that are at the root of new sources of productivity, new organizational forms, and the construction of a global economy. Manuel Castells claims that we are passing from the industrial age, with its focus on energy, into the information age.1 Today, information is of central importance in determining economic productivity. Communications technologies allow for the annihilation of space, which complements our changing relation to time brought about through globalization. About Change examines the social panacea of democratic access to the Internet and the supposed democratization of new technologies, a globalized planet, and their resulting influence on the aesthetics and content of the new media arts in Latin America and the Caribbean region. The project explores the social and aesthetic impact of some uses of technology and the critical discourse generated by access to—and exclusion from—technology produced by different artists in the region. In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan described how the medium affects the society in which it plays a role, not only by the content that the medium delivers, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.2 In other words, the medium has a social effect. But besides that effect, in the modern world, the medium also reformats the notions of representation, to the extent that the medium now questions you. “What is on your mind?” is the question that welcomes you to Facebook, a question that provokes and initiates a flow of consciousness and awareness to introduce yourself in the daily social network broadcast. This network, the most notorious 98 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe provocada por dispositivos que actúan como una extensión de los sentidos. La persona falsificada existe siempre en el tiempo presente, en un constante proceso de reconstrucción y evolución literaria, tomando identidades prestadas, reciclando y reuniendo los medios digitales disponibles para crear una arquitectura del copiar y pegar, el simulacro de un ser perenne. El Cambio reconoce el papel del Internet, de las redes sociales y de los cambios tecnológicos que les están asociados al proponer una exposición de arte y tecnología que explora estas ideas. Nuestra vida en la tierra está configurada por nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación que son la base de nuevas fuentes de productividad, de nuevas formas de organización y de la construcción de una economía global. Manuel Castells sostiene que estamos pasando de la era industrial, centrada en la energía, a la era de la información.1 La información tiene hoy una importancia central para determinar la productividad económica. Las tecnologías de la información permiten aniquilar el espacio, complementando así nuestra cambiante relación con el tiempo producida por la globalización. El Cambio examina la panacea social del acceso democrático al Internet y de la supuesta democratización de las nuevas tecnologías, de un planeta globalizado y de su correspondiente influencia en la estética y el contenido de las nuevas artes digitales en América Latina y el Caribe. El proyecto explora el impacto social y estético de algunos usos de la tecnología y del discurso crítico que genera el acceso, o la falta de acceso, a la tecnología producida por diferentes artistas de la región. En Understanding Media [Comprender los medios de comunicación], Marshall McLuhan describe cómo un medio de comunicación afecta a la sociedad en la que juega un papel, no sólo por el contenido que transmite sino también por las características del medio mismo.2 En otras palabras, el medio tiene un efecto social. Pero, además de expression of the web, is constantly dictating our social experience, formatting and reformatting language, duration, the media to be used, and how they are to be used. The “status” defined by the answer to the question “What is on your mind?” instructs, formats, and ultimately gives aesthetic import to social relations. By doing so, the net “status” transforms the way we understand media and culture. This social network aesthetics manifests itself as succinct, personable, instant, ephemeral, and superficial, but massive. It is dominated by short sentences, highlights of mundane existence, and attempts to create a fictitious form of inter-participation and social commentary on the daily routine—a “space of flow,” as Castells calls it.3 In Castell’s “space of flow,” networks lead to the “destruction of human experience,” as power is separated from political representation, production from consumption, and social interaction from physical contact. The “statusphere” is created as another collective manifestation of psychogeography: a remapping of the earth’s terrain according to our desires, a map depicting the folding of the personal space by a being that has been globalized and made uniform. In that context, a social network aesthetics is structured as a platform for hosting and storage, fabricated from sentences of social existence and technological belonging: I am in the network, ergo I exist. But we exist with a larger question about agency, as we become components, mere conduits for a dominant architecture of uniformity. About Change explores various critical aspects of the impact of new technologies, social networks, and mobile media. Some of this work demonstrates recurrent themes: information technology and aestheticization, the dialectic between local problems and globalization, the relations between social and economic exchange, inclusion/exclusion. As an example of information technologies and different forms of aestheticization, Barcode Orchestra is a ese efecto, en el mundo moderno, el medio también reconfigura las nociones de representación, en la medida en que ahora es el medio el que lo interroga a usted. “¿Qué estás pensando?” es la pregunta que da la bienvenida a Facebook y que inicia un fluir de consciencia y autoconsciencia para que usted se presente a los otros miembros en la emisión diaria de la red social. Esta red, la más notoria expresión del Internet, está dictando constantemente nuestra experiencia social, configurando y reconfigurando el lenguaje, la duración del contacto, los medios a utilizar y el modo en que deben usarse. El “estatus” definido por la respuesta a la pregunta “¿Qué estás pensando?” es el que da instrucciones, configura y en última instancia da carácter estético a las relaciones sociales. Al hacer esto, el “estatus” en la red transforma el modo en el que entendemos los medios de comunicación y la cultura. Esta estética de la red social se manifiesta como algo conciso, agradable, instantáneo, efímero y superficial, pero masivo. Está dominada por frases breves, por la puesta en relieve de aspectos prosaicos de la existencia y por intentos de crear una forma ficticia de inter-participación y comentario social sobre la rutina cotidiana, lo que Castells llama “el espacio de los flujos”.3 En el espacio de los flujos de Castells, las redes llevan a la “destrucción de la experiencia humana”, ya que el poder queda separado de la representación política, la producción, separada del consumo, y la interacción social, separada del contacto físico. La “estatusfera” se crea como otra manifestación colectiva de la psicogeografía: un rehacer del mapa de la superficie de la tierra de acuerdo con nuestros deseos, un mapa que describe el espacio personal en el proceso de plegarse al dictado de un ser que se ha globalizado y se ha vuelto uniforme. En ese contexto, la estética de una red social se estructura como una plataforma para servicios de alojamiento y almacenamiento de datos, fabricada a 99 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean program that creates music by translating any barcode into a musical note. The piece Espacio Cambiario [Exchange Space] by Leandro Núñez produces the motion and behavior of robots from the constantly changing data generated by currency exchange rates. In a more abstract way, the video Overdose by José Estuardo explores this concept by creating an abstraction of layers of visual data. Javier Toscano explores the creation of a new language that turns disability—being hearing impaired—into norm in his Sci-fi-doc movie System Error (deafproof). In turn, in her video Silence Valentina Serrati examines silent communication through gestures. Several artists explore regional and local issues in opposition to globalization, among them Gabriela Golder and Julio González Sánchez, who focus on perennial local issues in Argentina and Bolivia respectively. Andrés Padilla Domene moves from the local to the global in his piece that examines child labor and exploitation in Mexico City as a form of addressing a global issue. The video Aia, by Valentina Serrati, is reminiscent of Erving Goffman’s ideas that social network systems collapse the boundary between our public and private selves, now amplified by postmodern society, where binary oppositions merge and their terms can no longer be clearly separated. Elena Wen uses the animation format to narrate minimal stories in which she observes her immediate surroundings, depicting her urban environment in order to reflect on the human condition. Several pieces examine money and economic exchange. Exploring value and access to financial institutions is the ongoing project of Fran Ilich titled Spacebank, which deals with creative banking, finance, markets, and economies, by setting up alternative commodity markets and public trust funds, and by investing both at established stock exchanges and with community farmers’ markets. The network and its associated globalization imply 100 partir de frases de existencia social y pertenencia tecnológica: soy parte de la red, por consiguiente existo. Existimos, pero con un gran signo de interrogación con respecto a nuestra agencia, porque nos estamos volviendo componentes, simples canales para una dominante arquitectura de la uniformidad. El Cambio explora varios aspectos críticos del impacto de las nuevas tecnologías, las redes sociales y lo medios móviles de comunicación. Algunas de estas obras presentan temas recurrentes: la tecnología de la información y la estetización, la dialéctica entre los problemas locales y la globalización, las relaciones entre intercambio social e intercambio económico, la inclusión y la exclusión. Como ejemplo de tecnologías de la información y diferentes formas de estetización, el programa Barcode Orchestra [Orquesta Código de Barras] crea música mediante la traducción de cada código en una nota musical. La obra Espacio cambiario de Leandro Núñez produce el movimiento y la conducta de los robots a partir de datos que cambian constantemente, generados por las tasas de cambio. De una manera más abstracta, el vídeo Overdose [Sobredosis] de José Estuardo explora ese concepto creando una abstracción de capas de datos visuales. Javier Toscano explora la creación de un nuevo lenguaje que convierte en norma la discapacidad —ser sordomudo— en su vídeo de ciencia ficción documental System Error (deaf-proof) [Error de sistema (a prueba de sordos)]. Por su parte, en el vídeo Silence [Silencio], Valentina Serrati examina la comunicación silenciosa que se vale de gestos. Varios artistas exploran cuestiones locales y regionales en oposición a la globalización, entre ellos Gabriela Golder y Julio González, que se enfocan en persistentes problemas locales en Argentina y Bolivia respectivamente. Andrés Padilla Domene relaciona lo local con lo global en una obra en la que examina el trabajo y la explotación infantil en la ciudad de México como forma de abordar un problema global. inclusion as well as exclusion. This global economy allows the overall system to link up everything that is valuable according to dominant norms and interests, while disconnecting everything that is not valuable, or becomes devalued. It is this simultaneous capacity to include and exclude people, territories, and activities, that characterizes the new global economy as constituted in the information age.4 In the context of the creation of symbolic economies, Gustavo Romano’s work Time Notes questions the social exchange embedded in money exchange, as well as the concept of value of time and its relation to currency. Graciela Taquini and Ricard Pons' video COMMON PLACE explores attitudes towards money in a playful and participatory way. These artists create a compilation of video performances out of actions as well as phrases, proverbs, and quotations about money exchanged by people all over the planet. Collectively these works demonstrate that social development today is determined by the ability to establish a synergistic interaction between technological innovation and human values (Castells, 1999). El vídeo Aia de Valentina Serrati recuerda las ideas de Erving Goffman sobre el sistema de redes sociales, en el que se derrumban las fronteras entre nuestro “yo” privado y nuestro “yo” público, amplificado por la sociedad postmoderna, en la que las oposiciones binarias se funden y sus términos no se pueden separar claramente. Ellen Wen narra en formato de animación historias mínimas en las que observa el mundo inmediato que la rodea, presentando su entorno urbano para reflexionar sobre la condición humana. Varias obras examinan el dinero y el intercambio económico. Explorar los valores y el acceso a las instituciones financieras es el proyecto en curso de Fran Ilich titulado Spacebank [Banco del espacio]. El proyecto se ocupa de la banca creativa, las finanzas, los mercados y las economías: establece mercados alternativos de productos de consumo y fondos fiduciarios públicos e invierte en mercados de valores bien establecidos y también en mercados comunitarios de agricultores. La red y la globalización asociada a ella implican inclusión y también exclusión. La economía global permite que el sistema general conecte todo lo que sea valioso de acuerdo con las normas y los intereses dominantes, mientras desconecta todo lo que no es valioso o ha perdido valor. Esta capacidad simultánea de incluir y excluir gente, territorios y actividades es lo que caracteriza a la nueva economía global tal como se constituye en la era de la información.4 Dentro del contexto de la creación de economías simbólicas, el trabajo de Gustavo Romano titulado Time Notes [Notas sobre el tiempo] cuestiona el intercambio social que es parte de las operaciones de cambio y también el concepto de valor del tiempo y su relación con la moneda. LUGAR COMÚN es un vídeo de Graciela Taquini y Ricardo Pons que explora actitudes frente al dinero de una manera juguetona y participativa. Estos artistas crean una compilación de actuaciones en video hechas de actos y también de frases, proverbios y 101 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean citas sobre el dinero que envía y recibe gente de todas partes del planeta. En su conjunto, estos trabajos muestran que, en la actualidad, el desarrollo social está determinado por la capacidad de establecer una interacción sinérgica entre innovación tecnológica y valores humanos (Castells, 1999). Cf. Manuel Castells, “Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society,” British Journal of Sociology (Vol. 1, Issue 1, January/March, 2000), pp. 5-24. See also Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd. Edition (Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2000). 2 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw Hill, 1964. 3 Quoted by J. C. Nyiri in his review of Castells’ The Information Age, in F. Webster and B. Dimitrou, eds, Manuel Castells, Vol. 3 (London: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 23. 4 See Manuel Castells, “Information Technology, Globalization, and Social Development,” Discussion Paper No. 114, Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1999. 1 1 Cf. Manuel Castells, “Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society,” British Journal of Sociology (Vol. 1, Número 1, enero/marzo, 2000), pp. 5-24. Ver también Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 2a. edición (Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2000). 2 Cf. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Nueva York: McGraw Hill, 1964. 3 Citado por J. C. Nyiri en su reseña sobre Castells’ The Information Age, en F. Webster y B. Dimitrou, eds., Manuel Castells, Vol. 3 (Londres: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 23. 4 Ver Manuel Castells, “Information Technology, Globalization, and Social Development,” Documento de discusión No. 114, Ginebra: Instituto de Investigación de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo Social, 1999. Libertad condicionada / Freedom Behind Bars by REGINA DE BATRES (detail / detalle) 102 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe WHY “CHANGE”? In keeping with its mandate of supporting the Bank’s cultural diplomacy efforts, the World Bank Art Program conceived the exhibition About Change as a visual platform using art as a conduit to facilitate the dialogue among the World Bank, the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the international community about the opportunities, the challenges, values and hopes of these regions. About Change provides the viewer as deep an outlook on the region as the Bank’s annual report. Graphics and paintings, both talk of regional priorities and the impact of international emergencies, such as education, civic responsibility, food price crisis, child labor, migration, climate change, violence, and social inequality. EXHIBITIONS SERIES Nine different exhibitions with artworks from 30 countries have been presented at the World Bank Group, at the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank and at the AMA | Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of the American States, from May 2009 through July 2012. Let's talk — Hablemos! May – June, 2009 Washington, D.C. Location The World Bank Group An interactive video exhibition served as a discussion platform to address a variety of concerns, from human trafficking affecting the region to stereotypical images of Latino women. Exhibit curated by Edgar Endress, (Artist and Independent Curator - Chile) and by the World Bank Art Program. René Díaz Gutierrez: Voices Colombia June – July, 2009 Bogotá and Cartagena September-October, 2009 Washington, DC February-September, 2010 Paris Locations The World Bank Offices A photographic exhibition dedicated to those who have suffered through decades of armed conflict in Colombia. Exhibit curated in Colombia by the Bank’s Office in Mexico; in Washington and Paris by the World Bank Art Program. 104 Cecilia Paredes: In the Eyes of a Woman— A Latin American photographer May 9 – July 30, 2010 Washington, DC Location The World Bank Group As a part of About Change as well as of the photo exhibition series In the Eyes of a Woman, this show presents the recent photographic work of Cecilia Paredes (Peru). This exhibition is the fifth in the In the Eyes of a Woman series, which is dedicated to women photographers who have as primary subject women and/or children. Twelve limited edition photographs showed the relationship and fusion of nature and the female form. Exhibit curated by the World Bank Art Program. Turns and Directions August 16 – November 19, 2010 Washington, DC Location Cultural Center of the Inter–American Development Bank An exhibition dedicated to the changes and the extraordinary activity in the arts of Central America’s Spanish–Speaking Nations, and Panama during and after the 1950s. Exhibit curated by the Cultural Center of the Inter–American Development Bank. Wrestling With the Image: Caribbean Interventions January 21 – March 10, 2011 Washington, DC Location AMA | Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Intervention is a juried exhibition of contemporary emerging artists from twelve Caribbean countries which features work by artists from The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Curated by Christopher Cozier (Curator and Artist – Trinidad and Tobago) and Tatiana Flores (Ph.D. – Art Historian and Independent Curator, Rutgers University – Venezuela and USA) – members of the About Change curatorial committee. What's on Your Mind? Narratives of the Counterfeit Persona Art & Technology Location: The World Bank Group January 27 – February 28, 2011 Washington, D.C. An exhibition that presents a fresh and exciting artistic discourse about personal and regional identity through a unique mix of thirty–two established and emerging artists with roots in Latin America and the Caribbean. Exhibit curated by Edgar Endress (Artist and Independent Curator – Chile) and by the World Bank Art Program. About Change — MAIN SHOW May 18 –July 30, 2012 Washington, DC Location The World Bank Group This exhibit showcases emerging and established artists from 30 member countries in the region. More than 300 artworks are shown in a dynamic presentation in constant flux, which provides an open dialogue with the World Bank’s and the international community. Exhibit curated by the World Bank Art Program. Contemporary Jamaican Artists - A Jamaican Presence in the About Change Exhibition May 18 –July 22, 2011 Washington, DC Location Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank This exhibit showcases twenty artworks including paintings, photography, video, and installation art by nine Jamaican artists to focus on the current vibrant art scene in the country. Exhibit curated by the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank. Contemporary Uruguayan Artists: An Uruguayan Presence in the About Change Exhibition March 5 – June 1, 2012 Washington, DC Location Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank This exhibit showcases twelve artists celebrating Uruguay with a selection of young, contemporary, and eclectic artworks. Exhibit curated by the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank. 105 EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe VOICES FROM THE REGION About Change is an unusual kind of art project. It is not about the artworks, and it is not about the artists. It is about giving voice to a region through its arts as part of the mission of a development bank. About Change challenges every stereotype, about the region and about the role that art can play in the international global economy. About Change gives international audiences an opportunity to look at Latin America and the Caribbean from a whole new perspective. With this in mind, the catalogue entries give minimal information on the artist and on the work and rather invite the viewer to reflect on the realties commented upon, described, or suggested. Similarly, the contributors to the catalogue entries mirror the variety of expertise and professions crossing path in the contemporary art field: trained in art gallery or academia, professional artists or art historians, they all contribute to the multiplicity of voices that About Change is inviting to the choir. The catalogue entries are listed in alphabetical order by the artist’s last name. For a complete list of artists by countries, please consult the appendix. Félix Ángel | F.A. Inés Azar | I.A. Evangelina Elizondo | E.E. Valia Garzón Díaz | V.G.D. Valeria González | V.G. Elena Grant | E.G. Jacqueline Lacasa | J.L. Adriana Ospina | A.O. Fernanda Ramirez | F.R Paracas by HERNAN PAZOS (The World Bank Permanent Collection, PN: 345879.2) (detail / detalle) 107 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe RODRIGO ADAMES Chile – Panama, Born 1972 [email protected] Rodrigo Adames was born in Chile, where he studied sociology and philosophy at the University of Arts and Social Sciences. He studied literature and linguistics at the National University of Costa Rica. Although Adames studied painting briefly at the University of Panama, he is primarily a self-taught painter. He currently lives and works in Panama, where in 2010 he won first prize at the VI Roberto Lewis National Visual Arts Competition. “When I started painting,” Adames points out, “the great cultural centers had decreed that painting was a dead form of art. That prophecy doesn’t seem to have hold all that well. As I explored the possibilities of the medium, I felt a certain unease about the careless way in which the 108 ¿De dónde son los bandoleros? / Where Are the Bandits From?, 2010 Oil on canvas 120 x 180 cm 47 1/4 x 70 7/8 in craft of painting was conceived. I felt the urge to pay more attention to craft and technique.” ¿De dónde son los bandoleros? [Where Are the Bandits From?] centers around the figure of the bandolero [bandit], one of those marginal, rebel characters that have proliferated in Latin America: guerrilla soldier or “freedom” fighter, revolutionary hero for some, criminal for others. The painting has deliberately Baroque traits and some details like a 17th century spark pistol or the head of a woman saint that are meant to reflect in some way the anachronism and religious overtones that have characterized revolts and anti-establishment movements in the history of Latin America. The bandit is asleep. And his image silently conveys the promise or the menace of what he may do when he wakes up, fulfilling the best dreams of his contemporaries, or their worst nightmares. | I.A. FRANZISKA NIDHI-KUMARI ANJOU AGRAWAL km23, Conchán, 2008 Photograph 100 x 66 cm 39 3/8 x 26 in Franziska Agrawal is a photographer and multidisciplinary designer born in Germany in 1979. She studied industrial design at the Advanced School of Design (HfG) in Pforzheim, Germany, and at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, United States. In 2005, Agrawal was awarded the Raymond Loewy Foundation International First Prize for her groundbreaking work in industrial design. She has worked as a designer in Germany, the United States, and Mexico. For more than ten years she has represented Germany in snow sculpture international competitions. Many of her design projects have been carried out in Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Agrawal lives and works in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Germany-Peru, Born 1979 www.franziskaagrawal.com [email protected] Km23, Conchán is part of a series of photographs entitled Lima-a-mil, literally “Lima at one thousand.” The title of each individual photograph indicates a precise location, in this case the District of Conchán, where a particular shot was taken as part of an itinerary designed by Agrawal in order to compose a portrait of Lima viewed from the outskirts. The sequence as a whole evinces the disparities between ‘haves’ and ‘havenots,’ the urban asymmetries unintentionally created by the desire of people to enjoy better opportunities in the city, and the incongruities that result when life has to be constantly improvised in a megalopolis that has a population of more than eight million people. | F.A. 109 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ARTURO AGUIAR Argentina, Born 1963 www.arturoaguiar.com [email protected] Arturo Aguiar’s photographic work stands out because of its unique method. The artist uses long exposure times, and he intervenes during the shooting by manually illuminating the scene. Thus his work achieves a contemporary synthesis of the opposites that dominated photography in its beginnings. During the 19th century the objective nature of the mechanism of photography was 110 DEOLINDA AGUIAR La representación / Representation, 2005 Color photograph, direct action shot 120 x 120 cm 47 1/4 x 47 1/4 in deemed incompatible with artistic subjectivity. While painting was valued as an image made by human hands, photography was an “image drawn by light” in which Nature was drawing herself as in a mirror. In Aguiar’s works, light penetrates complex settings to unveil only a few details. All things—men, women, objects, space itself —emerge from the same luminous substance that lingers through long shadows and comes out at times in faint bright beams. “The contrast between darkness and gleaming brightness accentuates the mystery of our being human, in all its beauty and, sometimes, all its terror,” asserts the artist. Aguiar avoids the descriptive literalness of photography and turns to the tone contrasts of Baroque painting in order to unveil the unfathomable movements of the human soul. | V.G. Desvio/Detour, 2010 Photographic print on vinyl paper 159 x 220 cm 62 5/8 x 86 5/8 in Deolinda Aguiar’s work has been shown in several collective exhibitions throughout Brazil. She had her first solo exhibition, Individual Simultânea [Simultaneous Individual] at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná, in Curitiba, in 2002. Since then she has held solo shows in several locations in Brazil and in Lisbon, Portugal. Aguiar’s compositions are site specific; they are created as soon as the artist chooses a particular architectural space. In Desvio [Detour], she built a wall, which she then broke and photographed. Later on, she added to that photo digital images of Brazil, Born 1962 www.deolindaaguiar.com [email protected] blue-and-white tiles that appear to be falling into the Dantesque black hole of the broken wall. The fragility of the tiles suggests a reflection on all that is ethereal and on the struggle for survival in a world in constant movement. The blue-and-white tiles, which are popular in Portugal, have strong visual associations with Brazil’s colonial past; they are also associated with existing contemporary architectural spaces. With the tiles’ double reference to the past and the present, Aguiar invites the public to enter into spaces filled with dense layers of history and energy. | F.R. / E.G. 111 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe PAULO ALMEIDA SANTIAGO ALDABALDE Uruguay, Born 1973 www.santiagoaldabalde.com [email protected] Santiago Aldabalde is a self-taught artist who works in informal abstract art at the workshop of well-known artist Nelson Ramos. His works have been shown in solo and group exhibits in Uruguay and abroad. They are part of private collections in Uruguay, Argentina, the United States, Canada, France, China, Spain, and Malaysia. Aldabalde’s works are a kind of urban readymade that addresses change and the passage of time and uses, as its basic support, posters found on street walls in Montevideo. He sees posters as “a skin that grows on the walls of cities.” This skin 112 Ferrer Serra, 2010 Mix media on street posters 100 x 135 cm 39 3/8 x 53 1/8 in grows in layers, when new posters are pasted on top of old ones; and it is lost in layers, when posters are eventually peeled off by people or by weather and time. Aldabalde peels the city’s skin off and uses it as the raw material for his works. In each of his compositions, the peels of layered posters are reconfigured but remain visible, as they become the fragmented layers of skin of the works themselves. On the textured surface of these works, Aldabalde traces with colorful brushstrokes the signs of a mysterious calligraphy all his own. | A.O. Retrato / Portrait, 2011 Oil on canvas 110 cm 43 5/16 in (diameter) Paulo Almeida graduated in fine arts from the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation, in São Paulo, in 2005. He has participated in several group exhibitions, including the 3rd Rumos Artes Visuais [3rd DIRECTIONS Visual Arts] at the Itaú Cultural Institute in São Paulo in 2005. His first solo exhibition was at Galeria Leme, in São Paulo in 2007. In the same year he also presented his works at the IX Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador. Since then he has shown his work throughout Brazil, and in Mexico and Argentina. Recently, Paulo Almeida has created a series of works in which he reproduces the environment of the exhibitions in which he is invited to participate. Brazil, Born 1977 www.galerialeme.com/artistas_bio.php?lang=por&id=31 [email protected] The resulting work is a view of the space that surrounds Almeida’s piece as if it were reflected in a convex mirror or seen through a fish eye camera lens. Critic Cecilia Fiel points out that Almeida travelled to one of his exhibition sites “and painted in the gallery, making works that reflected their surroundings. But that was not all: Almeida painted on already-painted canvases, paintings that were part of previous installations. [Each] work … displayed traces of the painting that preceded it, like a palimpsest, an approach that separates Almeida from traditional pictorial illusionism and from the myth of the original work of art.” | F.R. / E.G. 113 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GUILLERMO ÁLVAREZ CHARVEL SIMÓN ALTKORN MONTI Uruguay, Born 1958 www.simonaltkornmonti.com.ar [email protected] Simón Altkorn Monti graduated from the University of Buenos Aires with a degree in economics. In Argentina, he studied cinematography with Simón Feldman; photography with Juan Travnik, Gabriel Valansi, and Rodolfo Lozano; lighting design at the Motivarte School of Photography; and contemporary art with Valeria González and Reinaldo Laddaga. He has shown his works in solo and group exhibitions in Argentina, including the Fourth National Visual Arts Salon in Cipolleti (2008); the Bahía Blanca National Biennial (2009); and Gachi Pietro Gallery in Buenos Aires (2010). Altkorn currently lives and works in Argentina. 114 Leni sueña con S.E./ Leni dreams of S.E., 2010 Archival print photograph 150 x 100 cm 59 x 39 3/8 in Altkorn’s artistic work is about telling stories that aim to reveal different facets of the human psyche and emotions: dreams, fears, desires, obsessions. “In my images,” says Altkorn, “I try to recreate historical atmospheres, sometimes with Romantic overtones, in which characters appear torn between light and darkness.” He is interested in the mysteries, powers, and contradictions inherent in being human. Like the character in Terence’s play, Altkorn affirms, “Nothing human is alien to me,” a phrase that accurately represents the most salient qualities of his work. | A.O. Pajarera / Bird Cage, 2009 Installation 33 x 200 x 38 cm 13 x 78 3/4 x 15 in Guillermo Álvarez Charvel has presented five solo exhibitions in different venues in Mexico City, including the Gallery at the Jesús Reyes Heroles Cultural Center (2003) and the University of the City of México (2005). He has also shown his works in several national and international exhibitions, including Retratos de México [Portraits of Mexico] at La Maison d’Amérique Latine [House of Latin America], in Brussels (2008); and the IV Yucatán National Visual Arts Biennial (2009). Throughout his career, Álvarez Charvel has been obsessed with exploring the potential of matter Mexico, Born 1975 [email protected] for being transformed by the processes of thought in the universe. Following the way in which nature repeats hereditary structural patterns in order to ensure survival, the artist created, for instance, seven fractal sculptures, based on the repetition of a single element, a single geometric shape, all done in paper. Each piece develops in a process similar to that of nature itself, each of its stages captured in photographs during a twelve-month period of “organic” growth. | V.G.D. 115 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KINDI LLAJTU-VICENTE ÁLVAREZ JACANAMIJOY Colombia, Born 1974 ANDRÉ ALVIM Pescador de colores / Fisherman of Colors, 2010 Wood and natural fibers 200 x 30 x 25 cm 78 3/4 x 11 3/4 x 9 3/4 in Arquivo do Mar / Sea Archive, 2007 Polyptych (series of 9 photographs) 100 x 73 cm 39 3/8 in x 28 3/4 Brazil, Born in 1964 www.flickr.com/photos/aalvim/sets/ [email protected] [email protected] Vicente Álvarez Jacanamijoy was born in the Valley of Sibundoy, in Putumayo (Colombia) in 1974. The artistic name Kindi Llajtu means “hummingbird nest” in his native Inga (a local Quechua dialect). Álvarez Jacanamijoy moved to Bogotá to study at the School of Fine Arts of the National University, where he graduated in 1998. He has exhibited individually in Bogotá, México City, and Washington D.C. He is considered a Native-Colombian artist. 116 Álvarez Jacanamijoy’s Pescador de colores [Fisherman of Colors] is a canoe-like object that departs from the style of his paintings which, according to the artist, is inspired by images, symbols, characters, ceremonies, ritual instruments, and animals of his native culture. | F.A. In André Alvim’s words, “A metal case filled with files, left on the beach next to the water, is about to lose its function and become an image. The sea swells, and ever stronger waves break against the case, as if they were provoking it. The top of the case opens, letting go of the files that until then have been protected and kept in alphabetical order. The force of the waves offers the case being abandoned there the opportunity to acquire a new organization.” André Alvim’s Arquivo do Mar [Sea Archive] is a destructive art performance. But it closely resembles the ritual, common on the beaches of his native Rio de Janeiro, in which people throw flowers to the sea as an offering to the goddess Yemanyá. This adds to the destructive performance a magical dimension of renaissance and regeneration. Magic rituals embody a form of dialogue between human beings and the forces of Nature. Modern science, in turn, affirms that in Nature “nothing is lost, everything is transformed.” The conservation of energy, addressed in the first law of Thermodynamics, acquires poetic and political significance when it is applied to cultural objects and values. In this sense, the alphabetical office archive disappears, but its energy persists, waiting for a new opportunity to be reconfigured. In his works, Alvim questions the idea of progress, of a rational knowledge that supersedes magical thinking; his works insistently link the magical and the rational in a cyclic process. In some way, Alvim is heir to the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, who conceived of art as a form of ritual in which inner self, society, and Nature are perfectly harmonized. | V.G. 117 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MARÍA LUCILA AMATISTA Argentina, Born 1978 www.lucilaamatista.blogspot.com [email protected] S/T, 2007 Enameled stoneware 14 x 13 x 5 cm 5 1/2 x 5 1/8 x 2 in S/T, 2008 Enameled stoneware 12 x 8.5 x 6 cm 5 x 3 x 2 3/8 in TERESA ANINAT SAHLI / CATALINA SWINBURN KUFFERATH S/T, 2007 Enameled stoneware 9 x 6 x 6 cm 3 1/2 x 2 3/8 x 2 3/8 in El que no se arriesga no pasa el río / He Who Does Not Venture Does Not Cross the River, 2008 Photograph 120 x 180 cm 47 1/4 x 70 7/8 in Chile, Born 1973 and 1979 www.aninat-swinburn.cl [email protected] / [email protected] The invention of abstract art during the 20th century generated the appearance of two complementary tendencies. Geometric abstraction was generally associated to the search for a universal order of essences that underlies the multiple and changing appearances of the sensible world. However, the active forces of Nature, in permanent transformation and difficult to grasp, were those that inspired the emergence of biomorphic abstraction. Lucila Amatista’s ceramic works belong to that tradition. To her love for vegetal and organic forms, the artist adds aesthetic values that were long considered unworthy of modern art because of their association with the feminine: the techniques of pottery itself, traditionally considered as a minor art or domestic craft, the small scale of her objects, and 118 the decorative sense shown in the brightness of their enameling. For Amatista, there is no medium more suitable to express the nature of live organisms than the process of modeling a soft substance that subsequently undergoes an irreversible mutation when fired in a kiln. Works in ceramic always reveal an effort to think of form as expression of the potential of a specific substance. “A piece of clay becomes more intelligent when it is made into art,” said British artist Tony Cragg. Form and matter are inextricably tied, so that the silhouettes, lumps, curves, cavities, and protuberances in Lucila Amatista’s works express, among other things, what clay can do when it is being worked on with the perseverance of a sculptor. | V.G. The duo of artists Teresa Aninat and Catalina Swinburn was formed in the year 2000. At the center of their work is an attempt to rescue the ritual function of art. “Art, in itself, is an act of faith,” they say. “It is from that faith that springs our artistic practice. We aspire to make our art a catalyst for the faith of its viewers and, in doing so, we seek to return to art its value as a meaningful ritual.” This “return” means that images recover the meaning they once had, before modern Western art rid itself of its social functions, from its ancient magic and funerary uses to its religious or political ones. For the artists, this is not a matter of going back to past forms of art but of recovering art’s transcendence by rescuing symbols, rites, and gestures that are present in our daily life. This cross between traditions and the contemporary world generates a synthesizing body of work where sacred and popular, mythic and pragmatic, moral maxim and humor live together. Although Aninat and Swinburn make use of diverse supports, the center of their work is performance. The two artists, dressed in dark robes and executing long and solemn movements, often occupy center stage. The rituals they perform encompass different dimensions of social memory, from mourning or commemoration to political protest. El que no arriesga no pasa el río [He Who Does Not Venture Does Not Cross the River] is one of a group of popular Spanish sayings that the two artists gathered in their project entitled Lugares communes [Commonplaces]. In 2008 they engraved these expressions of popular wisdom on the benches of a square in Santiago de Chile, in a space that is as public and as commonly shared as the sayings themselves. | V.G. 119 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ALLAN ARGÜELLO JAIME HUGO ANTILLAQUE CARNERO Peru, Born in 1967 www.jaimeantillaque.blogspot.com [email protected] Jaime Hugo Antillaque Carnero graduated with a major in painting and a minor in engraving from the Carlos Baca Flor Advanced School of Art in Arequipa, Peru, in 1997. He has won prizes and special mentions in several national art competitions and has participated in exhibitions in numerous venues throughout Peru. 120 Ni, 2008 Mixed media 90 x 65 cm 35 9⁄16 x 25 9⁄16 in Antillaque Carnero’s works are poetic reconstructions of his memories, loves, and emotions. Through the pictorial embodiment of different crucial moments in his life, he seeks to articulate the telling of his own story, making visible all the thing that matter the most to us and that, for that reason, cannot be said but only shown. | I.A. P5-Raspados Olancho y Mollejones / Snowcones Olancho y Mollejones, 2009 Collage 92 x 122 cm 36 1/4 x 48 in Allan Argüello is heir to the traditions of León, his hometown, and has also been influenced by his mother, a visual artist. He has studied business at William Carey College, Mississippi, and fine arts in Spain and Brazil. In 1986 he participated in a collective exhibit of local Hispanic artists at the Fine Arts Museum of the South 86, Mobile, Alabama. In 1988 he exhibited his works in Townhouse Gallery, at the University of South Alabama. His works have also been exhibited in Spain, Brazil, and the United States. Nicaragua, Born 1953 [email protected] Allan Argüello’s works include paintings— daily life scenes, portraits, landscapes, and still lifes—as well as sculptures that perfectly combine the primitivism typical of the traditional art from his native León with the spirit and techniques of Expressionism, in particular the dynamic composition of his sculptures and the stark and powerful colors of his paintings. During the last few years he has also immersed himself in the universe of women in order to be able to present it, in his own words, “in all its magnitude.” | V.G.D. 121 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ALEJANDRO ARGÜELLES Argentina, Born 1968 www.arguellesalejandro.blogspot.com [email protected] In 1890, Maurice Denis had already declared: “It is important to remember that before being a battle, a nude, or some anecdote, a painting is essentially a flat surface covered with colors that are placed in a certain order”. When Alejandro Argüelles asserts that his work is an inquiry into landscape, he is not referring to Nature but to a genre that summarizes the long and complex history of painting. Variaciones [Variations] is a series centered on the shades that can be elaborated by the accumulation of matter on the canvas’ surface. The constructive gesture, which oscillates between brushstroke and drawing, often proceeds by subtracting or diluting pigments with solvent. Argüelles works exclusively with black enamel, so as to not distract us with “the lyricism of color” and to evoke in his minutely crowded and exuberant canvases the standstill of a photographic moment. 122 LUCY ARGUETA Gran variación / Great Variation, 2008/2009 Mixed media on canvas 150 x 450 cm 59 1/8 x 177 1/4 in In Gran variación [Great Variation], the large scale generates in the spectator a feeling of being physically immersed inside the painting. This is what famous painters like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko sought to achieve with their works. But the one Argüelles mentions as his point of reference is Cándido López, a marginal painter of the 19th century in whose works “everything is detail.” “That same detail is what makes the image seem some kind of battleground.” Cándido López painted the War of Paraguay; Argüelles paints, in turn, a battle of matter against itself. The Paraná River Delta “is all river,” Patagonia is “all earth and desert.” His landscapes are dramatizations without a human figure; they remind us that the perception of space carries a psychological charge in every culture and time. | V.G. Espacio de vuelo / Flightscape, 2010 Photograph 90 x 58 cm 35 x 23 in In addition to her work as an artist, Lucy Argueta has participated in several workshops on criticism and development of artistic projects at the Asociación Mujeres en las Artes [Association of Women in the Arts] and the Centro Cultural de España [Spain’s Cultural Center] in Tegucigalpa. She has developed an ongoing collaboration with the art collectives Molotov, Artistas en Resistencia [Artists in Resistance], and Lacrimógena [Highly Sentimental], as well as with artists Walterio Iraheta, Ronald Morán, and Léster Rodríguez. Her works have been shown in exhibits and biennials, including Parábola [Parables] at the Photography Festival of El Salvador, ESFOTO 10 (2010); the III Biennial of Visual Arts of Honduras, Paraninfo Universitario [University Hall], Tegucigalpa (2010); and the VII Biennial of the Central American Isthmus, Teatro Rubén Darío [Rubén Darío Theater], Managua, Nicaragua (2010). Honduras, Born 1983 www.lucyargueta.blogspot.com [email protected] Since 2008, Argueta has worked on photographic documentations and installations that explore the geography of female clothes. She is interested in exploring locations where those garments acquire a life and a corporeality of their own as they integrate themselves into the scenery and become a metaphor of molting, of shedding skin. Argueta currently works in the development of cultural outreach projects, as a member of the board of the Escuela Experimental de Arte y Capacitación Técnica EAT [Experimental School of Art and Technical Training], in Tegucigalpa, an emerging institution for education and training in arts and crafts. | V.G.D. 123 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe EWAN ATKINSON ANDRÉS ASTURIAS Guatemala, Born 1978 www.andresasturias.com [email protected] Andrés Asturias has shown his works in national and international venues, including the PhotoEspaña Festival (2007); Guatemala’s National Culture Palace (2008); the XI Paiz Art Biennial, in Guatemala (2008), where he won the Silver Glyph Award; and the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2008). Two social investigation projects are currently using his photographs: Arquitectura de Remesas [Remittance Architecture] and En Clave Afrocaribe [In an Afro-Caribbean Key], sponsored by the network of Spain’s Cultural Centers in Central America; both projects will conclude with two itinerant exhibitions and two books. 124 Sin Título (Somos…) / Untitled (We are…), 2008 Photograph 465 x 110 cm 43 1/4 x 183 in Sin Título (Somos) [Untitled (We are…)] is a mural made up of snapshots of 342 different people taken on the streets. Asturias focuses on the realities of present-day Guatemala, a multicultural country where 27 different languages are spoken. Trapped in an identity crisis, Guatemala ignores its indigenous majority and looks up to the United States as a social and behavioral model. In Asturias’ own words, his images “show all individuals from the same angle, the same profile, as a metaphor for Guatemala’s identity: a myriad physical differences, but a globalized identity in continual evolution.” | V.G.D. Starman series, 2009 Digital prints 25 x 10 cm 10 x 8 in In 1998, Ewan Atkinson obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Atlanta College of Art, in the United States. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in cultural studies at the University of West Indies and teaching fine arts at Barbados Community College. His work is represented in the collections of the United States Embassy in Barbados, in the Barbadian National Art Collection, and in numerous private collections. Atkinson’s work deals with defining the roles that a person, in his case a Barbadian, takes on within a community. His main interest lies in Barbados, Born 1975 www.ewanatkinson.com/ewanatkinson.com/Starman.html [email protected] questioning the moral and social values that control these roles. This query manifests itself in the Starman, a fictional character who “questions the purpose of structure” in society. Starman (2009) is a series of photographs in which the image of Starman is projected into various Barbadian settings. “When I was a child, I would regularly interrupt my father to ask him what he was doing. He would replay that he was ‘building a wigwam to wind-up the moon.’ This confounding phrase became the key to Starman’s mission.” | A.O. 125 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe HUGO CESAR AVETA Argentina, Born 1965 www.hugoaveta.com [email protected] Without doubt, the high standing of staged photography in contemporary art has to do with the questioning of the alleged distinction between fiction and objectivity, either because art reflects critically on the media as discourses that construct what we call reality, or because it regards subjectivity as a reliable historical source. Hugo Aveta’s work leads to this second path. The artist creates scenarios by means of scale models, illuminates them dramatically, as if in a film 126 GABRIEL BAGGIO Serie: Saque! SALA DE ESPERA Hospital Unquillo / Series: Kick-off! WAITING ROOM, Unquillo Hospital, 2010 Photograph 40 x 40 cm 18 7/8 x 18 7/8 in set, and photographs them. In general, these are old and dusty spaces, with no signs of human presence. They are a sort of memento mori that reminds us of the passing of time and the transience of all things. Even though only some of his works refer to real spaces or institutions, in all of them there are loaded and intriguing atmospheres and vestiges of degradation that function as metaphors of the successive economic and political crises in the turbulent history of Argentina. | V.G. Motivo para sábana (variaciones cromaticas y formales) / Sheet Print Pattern (Chromatic and Formal Variations), 2009 Enameled ceramic 160 x 200 cm 63 x 78 3/4 in The center of Gabriel Baggio’s work are his performances in which he recreates old domestic chores. He cooks and feeds people, he sits down to knit and talk, he takes classes in handicrafts with older artisans. “I love to learn from people who still make their own clothes by hand, who cook every day, and make their own tools,” he has said. Baggio’s task is not the nostalgic recovery of obsolete crafts. In those slow, minutely stretched times of his grandmothers’ generation, he perceives Argentina, Born 1974 www.boladenieve.org.ar/node/16 [email protected] a reservoir of symbolic and vital resistance against the superficial speed of consumer culture. He is not engaged in the retrieval of intimate memories but in an archaeological reconstruction of meaning. Inspired by his mother and his grandmother, Baggio has set himself up as the heir of a feminine lineage. And although all this is honest and true, this inheritance is not a biographical acknowledgment but an artful genealogical move to recover art as a lived and shared experience. | V.G. 127 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LUCAS BAMBOZZI Brazil www.lucasbambozzi.net [email protected] Lucas Bambozzi is a multimedia artist based in São Paulo, Brazil. His works explore the possibilities of artistic media in a wide variety of formats, such as installations, single channel videos, short films, and interactive projects. He has shown his work in solo and collective exhibitions in more than 40 countries, often receiving important awards and prizes. Bambozzi was a visiting artist at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAIA), where he did extensive research about on-line privacy and pervasive systems as part of his Master of Philosophy studies, which he concluded in 2006 at Plymouth University, United Kingdom. Post Cards is a work permanently in progress for which Bambozzi visits different places and tries to synthesize each experience, however fleeting, 128 ALAIN BAÑÓN Post Cards, 2000/2007 Video and postcards installation in an image. These are sites that are typically featured on post cards, situated between the banal and the extraordinary. About this project, Bambozzi has said: “I have been capturing on video various tourist spots where the landscape may suggest a little more than their post cards reveal. The proposal exists in video installation formats, web and single-channel video. The cards are the same as the ones used in the ‘on site’ recording of the scenes, which coincide with the places where the cards themselves were photographed. Video images are projected on the reverse of each card to show both the card and the updated reality of the landscape it depicts—a contrast between the realistic quality of the video image and the ‘glamorized’ aesthetics found in most post cards.” | E.E. Children of Tomorrow 2, 2009 Photograph 138 x 78 cm 54 1/4 x 30 3/4 in Children of Tomorrow 4, 2009 Photograph 138 x 78 cm 54 1/4 x 30 3/4 in Children of Tomorrow 1, 2009 Photograph 138 x 78 cm 54 1/4 x 30 3/4 in After studying journalism and photography, Alain Bañón began to travel to different places using cultural anthropology as a basis for the development of his work as a photographer. He has produced photographic reports in Spain (on Gypsy life); Morocco; Nepal (Tibetan Refugees, and An Education Without Castes); Bulgaria (on the mining crisis); Haiti (The Orphans of Haiti); Cuba (From Havana to Santiago); New York City; and the Dominican Republic. His works have been shown in several solo and group exhibitions, among them the one at Casa de Teatro [Theater House] in Santo Domingo, where he won First Prize for Black and White and Second Prize for Color Photography in the Wilfredo García International Contest (Dominican Republic, 2009). In 2009, his work was also exhibited at Punta Cana Art Gallery, Casa de la Cultura [House of Culture] of Puerto Plata, the First International Art Fair (Santo Domingo), and the 25 International Biennial of Santo Domingo, all in the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic, Born 1970 www.alainlens.com [email protected] The Children of Tomorrow photographic series addresses the timely issue of the indiscriminate exploitation of our natural resources and the extinction of species in our planet. In these pictures, Bañón repeatedly shows the consequences of the despoiling of nature: a child becomes the lone protagonist-spectator in a vast, desolate landscape. The presence of the child forces on the viewer an innocent gaze that warns about the despoiled Earth that our children and our children’s children may inherit. | E.E. 129 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LEONARDO ANDRÉS BATTISTELLI ANDRÉA BARATA Brazil, Born 1970 www.barataartes.blogspot.com [email protected] Andréa Barata concluded her studies in fine arts in 1994 and since then has participated in both group and solo exhibitions in Brazil and the United States, working mostly in charcoal and acrylic. The literal English translation of the artist’s last name, Barata, is “cockroach.” This beetle-like insect’s tenacity has recently received attention because cockroaches have been identified as one of the few species able to survive a global nuclear war. The playful and the informal are present in Andréa Barata’s pieces, which bring 130 Barata QuebraCabeça/ Cockroach Puzzle, 2010 Mixed media 110 x 140 cm 43 5/16 x 55 1/8 in up for discussion polemic issues such as donating organs to the altar of modern science. Through the repetitive representation of the alter ego suggested by her family name, the artist questions her own understanding of the space she lives in, opening a dialogue between the micro and macro levels of society as well. Coexisting between the abstract and the figurative, Barata’s creative themes deal with the issues and problems of a big metropolis such as São Paulo, where she was born and raised. | F.R. / E.G. Universo inventario / Inventory Universe, 2004 Enameled porcelain 2480ºF Leo Battistelli’s work has a unity of meaning that is grounded in its material, the soil, in an inventory of forms inspired by nature, and in a universe of symbols related to life and death and the processes of metamorphosis and rebirth that are the passages from one to the other. Battistelli’s works are part of a single vital sequence. The form of an egg is the symbol of birth, the seed that generates life through its transformations. Serpents and skins follow naturally after the egg is hatched. Ceramic scales extended over a wall allude to the remnants of a process of metamorphosis, of life recycling itself. Clay is the material Battistelli uses in all his works: porcelains made of minerals from the center Argentina, Born 1972 www.leobattistelli.com [email protected] and south of his native Argentina, ceramic made of white clays from the center and north of Brazil, the country where he currently resides. Lichens and other symbiotic forms of life connote ways of harmonic coexistence of different beings, a mode of life that, according to the artist, should be an example for human culture. Universo inventario [Inventory Universe] takes its inspiration from alchemy and its comprehensive, all-encompassing view of nature. The suggestive white glass vessels retain natural aromatic extracts in their interior. The work is an offering for whoever wants to lean out and look. In any case, this subtle reservoir of energy and wisdom will patiently wait for its opportunity. | V.G. 131 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LA VAUGHN BELLE Trinidad and Tobago, Born 1974 www.lavaughnbelle.com [email protected] La Vaughn Belle is an artist, TV producer, and professor who studied English and sociology at Columbia University, in New York, and visual arts at the Instituto Superior de Arte [Advanced Institute of Fine Arts] in Havana, Cuba. She has received numerous grants and artist residency awards in the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States. Her works in painting, video, installation, and performance art have been exhibited since 1999. Belle teaches experimental and advanced painting techniques at the University of the Virgin Islands at St. Croix, where she currently resides. Los Diarios de Porcelana [The Porcelain Diaries] is a series of animation films whose action figures are decorative figurines that the artist found in Havana’s private residences. These toy-like symbols of domesticity can be seen as 132 JOAN BELMAR Los Diarios de Porcelana / The Porcelain Diaries, 2003 Video Duration: 00:12:00 defining the character of a typical middle-class Caribbean home; they are placed in prominent decorative displays in their owners’ homes. “This project,” Belle explains, “came out of an interest in the aesthetics of Caribbean interior décor and in particular the commonly featured coffee table or mesita de sala. … Different from the religious altars, I saw these ‘decorative altars’ as another type of engagement with the sacred, the intimate, and the ritual. However, like the religious altars, they were spaces full of possibility for transformation and exchange. Through the animation of these static objects, I try to show how that possibility could be achieved.” Thus the figurines come to life and act out scenes of an imaginary world made out of their owners’ dreams and expectations. | E.G. 1968 (Typhoon), 2010 Acrylic, Mylar, ink, gouache, wood and acetate on masonite 81 x 104 cm 31 7/8 x 40 7/8 in In his recent work, Chilean-born, United States-resident artist Joan Belmar uses a particular technique of 3D painting. He combines his former painting and collage techniques with painted and untreated Mylar and acetate strips in circles and curvilinear shapes. He places them in horizontal and vertical lines, perpendicular to each other, on a painted background, and then he covers them (not always entirely) with a lightly frosted Mylar. As a result, changes in transparency are produced as light and the viewer move in relation to the work. Collage originally emerged in the works of Picasso and Braque as part of analytic Cubism. The aim of this movement was to fragment the mimetic representation of an object by placing different points of view on the same plane, that is, by making successive stages of vision appear all at the same time. Picasso and Braque deliberately chose unimportant motifs (still lifes, portraits) in order to concentrate attention not on the painting’s subject but on its form. Chile, Born 1970 www.joanbelmar.com [email protected] For Joan Belmar, on the contrary, the fractures and superimpositions of the pictorial plane are inseparable from the painting’s chosen subject. The presence of a bicycle and of children’s toys integrates subjective memory into the temporal layers. His works have an unmistakable nostalgic accent. According to Belmar, the idea of change appears in the movement evoked by the bicycle wheels, in the technical and stylistic evolution of his own work, in the optical effect produced by his 3D procedure, in the transformations that memory operates on what is being remembered, and in the gap between inner soul and external world. | V.G. 133 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GABRIELA BENÍTEZ ÁVILA EVELYN BENDJESKOV Croatia - Argentina, Born 1963 www.bendjeskov.com.ar [email protected] Evelyn Bendjeskov was trained in textile and clothing design in her native Croatia. From early on in her career, she was interested in rescuing the traditions of native communities, in which utilitarian and symbolic needs are one with the respect for the environment and its natural resources. For this reason, those traditions constitute a reservoir of great importance to our contemporary world. 134 Lo que tiras yo lo tomo / What You Discard I Pick Up, 2009 Textile art, recycled felted sheep wool 150 x 37 cm 59 1/8 x 14 5/8 in As she settled in Argentina, Bendjeskov found there the ideal conditions, both geophysical and social, to introduce and develop the technique of wool felting. In her view, her personal work is intimately tied to the search for social solutions: the generation of new jobs, the self-sustainable satisfaction of basic needs, and the development of ecological awareness. For that reason, more than inventing new images, her creative work consists of an aesthetic re-evaluation of discarded objects. The piece entitled Lo que tiras yo lo tomo [What You Discard I Pick Up] combines the technique of textile recycling with a contemporary discarded object—the bottle. For Bendjeskov, primitive communities, where wool provided clothing and housing and satisfied all basic needs, should be the model to be followed by today’s societies where, according to her, “the permanent generation of consumption needs and the short life cycle of objects produce a dramatic change in the scale of values.” “I am moved by the endless horizon of the Argentine Pampas,” said Bendjeskov. In general, small cooperatives and self-managed enterprises, which prospered in Argentina particularly after the great crisis of 2001, often show an ecological perspective and solidarity completely absent in the global macro-economy. | V.G. Envolviendo al arcoíris / Wrapping Up the Rainbow, 2008 Installation: photographs, paper, recycled fruit cardboard boxes 200 x 200 x 200 cm 78 x 78 x 78 in Gabriela Benítez Ávila studied first at the Hernando Siles Fine Arts School in La Paz, and then at the École des Beaux Arts [School of Fine Arts] of Le Mans, France, where she graduated with honors in 2004. Benítez Ávila has experimented with both photography and ceramics, winning several first prizes, notably at the Bienal de Arte Femenino [Biennial of Women’s Arts, La Paz] in 2006 and at the Bienal de Arte Reciclado [Recycled Art Biennial, La Paz] in 2008. Bolivia, Born 1981 [email protected] Benítez Ávila’s art synthesizes a great variety of materials and techniques nourished by Bolivia’s rich Andean culture and traditions. She seeks to create a visual cross-pollination of the diverse social and cultural components that constitute her own identity as an individual as well as that of the Andean region. Dominant in her work are the references to the elements of nature and to objects of everyday life. | E.E. 135 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe FLORENCIA BLANCO Argentina, Born 1971 www.florenciablanco.com.ar [email protected] In this series, Florencia Blanco recovers Oil Photographs, a kind of image widely popular among Argentina’s working and rural classes in the middle of the 20th century. They were commissioned to honor the memory of a loved one who had died or to remember an immigrant’s family member who had stayed in Europe. As their name suggests, oil photographs were a combination of photography and painting. The indexical nature of photography guaranteed the presence of the person being honored, whose 136 Natividad y Lucía / Natividad and Lucía, 2008 Photograph 60 x 60 cm 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in face was always kept intact. Oil gave color and relief to the image, often adding some invented details. “This work intends to recover those old oil photographs and restore their value. I look for them in houses where the families still keep them, and I photograph them in scenarios to which they bear no relation.” The scenes assembled by Florencia Blanco are an echo of the rite of homage that took place at the point of encounter between respect for the original photography and the creation of fine garments and colorful backgrounds. | V.G. From the series Abstracciones paisajísticas 01- A.P. (EO. 8-6) / Landscape Abstractions, 2007 Digital photographic assemblage 120 x 90 cm 47 x 35 1/4 in JOSÉ ANTONIO (MUU) BLANCO-ANGULO José Antonio Blanco-Angulo earned scholarships to study at the Federico Brandt Art School and at Armando Reverón Institute for Advanced Studies in Visual Arts, both in Venezuela. After a few years of study, he abandoned the academic world, which at the time seemed completely alien to him and to his way of working. In 2002, however, Blanco-Angulo returned to the Reverón institute to pursue a Master’s of Fine Arts in systems of representation in contemporary art. Blanco-Angulo’s visual work has been shown in art fairs, biennials, and group exhibitions in Argentina, Germany, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Venezuela, Born 1966 muublanco.blogspot.com [email protected] Switzerland, and the United States. His multiple interests include TV and radios production, and music: he is a well-known DJ in Venezuela. Abstracciones paisajísticas [Landscapes Abstractions] is a series of paintings in which Blanco-Angulo seeks to bring forth the abstract forms embedded in our everyday experiences, although he gives them twists that gradually detach them from their anchoring in reality, turning them into unfamiliar, often mysterious shapes. In some respects, many of his works are similar to musical improvisations, in which there is necessarily room for the contingent and the unexpected. | F.A. 137 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe TERRY BODDIE St. Kitts and Nevis-USA, Born 1965 www.terryboddie.com [email protected] Photographer and mixed media artist, Terry Boddie received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, in 1989 and a Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College, City University of New York, in 1997. He is currently an art instructor at the Tisch School. His work has been exhibited in the Dominican Republic, France, and across the East Coast of the United States, including at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC (2001); at the Philadelphia Museum (2006); and at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2001), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001), 138 ENEIDE BONEU Trade I, 2009 Photo emulsion and acrylic on handmade paper 28 x 23 cm 11 x 9 in and the Brooklyn Museum (2001), in New York. Terry Boddie’s artworks often incorporate photography, drawing, and painting. “The photographic process,” he says, “is the grounding medium for my work. I use it in combination with other media such as oil, ink, charcoal, and soil in order to blur the distinctions between them. The layering of images and media is also a central device in these works. It implies the accretion of history and memory, as well as the competition between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ voices for narrative space.” In the Trade series, Boddie used photo emulsion to paste together drawings of traditional forms of African money and of British coins of the colonial period, old postage stamps, and fragments of shipping documents, all of them blended into hand-made paper, to express his vision of globalization as an integrating process rooted in exchange and migration. | E.G. Fashion Victim, 2010 Mixed media dress (made out of designer's labels) Eneide Boneu was born in Argentina. She currently lives and works in Asunción, Paraguay. Because of her age and trajectory she definitely belongs to the generation of the ‘80s, but her work is clearly in tune with the concerns that mobilize today’s younger artists. In 2007, Boneu was chosen to represent Paraguay at Documenta X, which was held in Kassel, Germany, and is one of the exhibitions of reference in international contemporary art. In Fashion Victim, Boneu gets into the world of fashion in order to introduce a critical view inside the system. To do that, she has created a woman’s dress exclusively made out of designer’s labels. Designer logos now replace the utilitarian function of clothing, rendering the dress useless as a dress and laying bare the superfluous imagination of fashion. This work speaks of women fallen victim to an industry that imposes on them compulsive consumption and stereotyped standards of beauty. In some way, Boneu brings into the world of fashion the same conceptual operation that Marcel Duchamp brought into the world of art with his “ready-mades.” Lacking the beauty, expressivity, or craftsmanship deemed essential in a work of art, the artistic condition of Duchamp’s objects depended exclusively on his signature, which authorized them as art. In a similar move, Boneu Argentina-Paraguay, Born 1954 www.eneideboneu.com [email protected] reduces the pieces of clothing to the labels of the companies that produce and sell them. She plays with the ambiguous nature of clothing as a cultural sign in which usefulness and identity have become incompatible terms. Like a “second skin,” clothing keeps us warm and protected, but it also conceals and disguises us. Clothing gives us some form of social belonging, but at the price of transforming us into mere “products.” | V.G. 139 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe TOIA BONINO Argentina, Born 1975 [email protected] Toia Bonino’s work was radically transformed with the creation of Jauría [Pack of Hounds], her 2008 video. There she used a henhouse to elaborate a kind of counter-fable. In a fable, the author—La Fontaine, for instance—makes use of personified animals in order to convey a story with a moral lesson. Bonino, in contrast, shows—through the animal world—the limits of our moral taboos. Hungry hens can eat each other: there is no cruelty in that. And yet as observers, we can’t avoid personifying 140 GABRIEL BRIZUELA SANTOMÉ Fiesta 5 / Party 5, 2010 Digital photograph 110 x 85 cm 43 1/4 x 33 1/2 in the hens and feeling disgusted at them. Through the hens we are able to see the capacity for gratuitous self-destruction that distinguishes human beings from animals. In later works, Bonino incorporated art history motifs, like the open-air luncheon of 19th century painting, or Ophelia’s romantic death. In the series of photographs she presents in About Change, the artist—not without humor—stages a party in which animals wear other animals’ carnival masks. | V.G. Untitled, 2008-2010 Digital art 30 x 45 cm 13 3/4 x 17 3/4 in Untitled, 2008-2010 Digital art 30 x 45 cm 13 3/4 x 17 3/4 in Born in Asunción in 1957, Gabriel Brizuela Santomé has become the artist of reference for Paraguay’s young artistic generations. He has had a multidisciplinary training that combines visual arts, architecture, and graphic design. He has given impulse to the professional and academic development of those areas, to which he has also dedicated himself as a teacher. He is currently the Director of the Museo de Arte Digital [Digital Art Museum], the first of its kind in Paraguay. The museum not only supports the development of new media and technologies in the field of visual arts, but it also works at building ties with other cultural institutions in the country as well as in the region and abroad. The disconcerting effect of Brizuela Santomé’s digital images is produced by the unexpected and successful fusion of two divergent traditions: Pop art, Paraguay, Born 1957 www.onlinemad.com/webbrizuela [email protected] and the deep narratives of Expressionism. From Pop art comes the preference for photographic images, saturated and vibrant colors, and the use of a language close to that of graphic design. From Expressionism come his human figures, which appear fragmented, imprisoned, blinded, and speechless, as bodies marking a return to the essential dramas of human existence. The lighthearted tone of Pop becomes thus a dissonant outer layer that covers but does not conceal the tragic character of those human figures. Using his intimate acquaintance with advertisement and social communications, Brizuela Santomé speaks to us of the profound solitude and silence that beset us in this technological age. | V.G. 141 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe HOLLY BYNOE St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Born 1980 www.hollybynoe.com [email protected] Visual artist, writer, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the ARC Magazine, Holly Bynoe graduated from the International Center of Photography at Bard College, in New York, with a Master of Fine Arts in advanced photographic studies. Her works have 142 DANIEL CABALLERO Imperial, 2010 Digital collage 64 x 92 cm 25 1/4 x 36 1/4 in been exhibited in Argentina, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. She currently lives and works in New York City. Moving to New York had a profound effect on Bynoe’s awareness of herself and her surroundings. She was impressed by the vastness, energy, and cultural diversity of that megalopolis with a population 2,000 times greater than that of her entire native island of Bequia in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and she wanted to explore “what it means to really occupy a space,” both physically and culturally. She knows well and admires the work of Caribbean writers like Dionne Brand and Derek Walcott, who are concerned with the individual and collective dislocations that are central to a West Indian experience. Their poetry, short stories, and novels helped her realize that exile—or self-exile—is a necessary condition for her creative work. Coming to this realization found its expression in Compounds, a series of photo-collages created by digitally overlaying dozens of images from a variety of sources, including Bynoe’s family photos, with images from the New York Public Library collections, scans “of sand, hair, dirt, skin, maps, and objects that have an embedded familial connection,” in Bynoe’s own words. Compounds, she explains, “interrogates and highlights the tensions between the past and the present. The question of kinship, and of finding oneself ‘in-between,’ becomes a metaphor for the marooned and uprooted,” to whom her works are giving voice. | E.G. Não pise na grama ou Arcádia / Don’t Step on the Grass, or Arcadia, 2010 Installation 100 x 67 cm 39 3/8 x 26 3/8 in Daniel Caballero belongs to a new generation of Brazilian artists who, singly or jointly seek to open with their work alternative spaces outside the museum and the art gallery, not simply by criticizing the art system—as usually did the avant-gardes—but by actually finding or creating non-institutional spaces where other forms of engagement with viewers could be possible. This is the case with Arcadia, an intervention that was part of a collective appropriation of an old house. Daniel Caballero took up the bathroom and, without trying to conceal its functional structure, Brazil, Born 1972 www.caballeroland.blogspot.com [email protected] transformed it into a magical space. He covered every surface in the bathroom with planted grass, texts, and his typical mural paintings made out of lines that look like strange water pipes or serpents climbing freely on the walls, as if completely indifferent to the rational logic of architecture. For Caballero, the limits of an architectural space represent the social order, which often represses an individual’s creative force. What he does is not to “decorate” those limits or even deny them but to engage them and the space they define in a new kind of dialogue. | V.G. 143 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MARCELA LETICIA CABUTTI Argentina, Born 1967 www.cabutti.com [email protected] Argentine art in the ‘90s was strongly influenced by the legacy of Pop, by the massive presence of consumer goods, and by the new geometrical painting that recreated the tradition of concrete art with a daring use of color. In this context, Marcela Cabutti oriented her art towards the metaphorical language of Surrealism. Her work, which seemed strange in that period, can be evaluated more fairly today. Her daydream worlds combine nature and human constructions. Her characters, as those of traditional fables, often take the form of animals. Cabutti insists that landscape encompasses the history of the human gaze towards the natural world. Human beings project their fantasies, their desires, and their fears on the landscape. Marcela Cabutti believes that the function of fantasy in art 144 ¡Mira cuántos barcos aún navegan! / Look How Many Boats Are Still Sailing!, 2008 Installation has nothing to do with evading reality and everything to do with a form of knowledge different from that of scientific or rational thought. ¡Mira cuántos barcos aún navegan! [Look at How Many Boats Are Still Sailing!] is an installation that, from its very title, proposes that cognitive connection between metaphor and reality. The work alludes to the floodings that, in a country like Argentina with its vast undeveloped areas, often have dramatic consequences, such as entire towns in which people lose all their possessions. However, in that flooded ground it is still possible ”to sail,” to have a horizon, some illusion, or promise. In the end, the purpose of art is not the creation of an artificial nature but of a poetic counter-image of the world around us. | V.G. SANTIAGO CAL Breathing, 2009 Figures, made of wood and glass, seated on a bench A native of Belize, Santiago Cal has received his master’s degree in fine arts from the Virginia Commonwealth University and has exhibited his work in Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan, the United States, and Venezuela. In addition to being an artist, he teaches art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the United States. About his sculptures, Cal says, “The human image and its contextual implications are the primary focus of my work.” His characters are often placed in settings that challenge our notions of scale, balance, and, more broadly, common sense. These characters’ blank, sad, or sinister expression is deliberately incongruous with their activities, which makes them look like aliens or mechanical dolls intruding in the world of regular people, and perhaps threatening them. By playing with contrasts, Cal creates what he calls “magical moments.” These moments allow viewers to transcend the realm of the ordinary and to experience that which is imagined with the spontaneity of Belize, Born 1973 www.santiagocal.com [email protected] children who are able to participate at once in real and imaginary worlds. “Although the pieces may seem pleasantly wholesome, they also contain elements of dark humor, melancholia, and pointed social statements, all contributing to our inner dialogue and subconscious.” | E.G. 145 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe EDGAR ROLANDO CALEL APEN Guatemala, Born 1987 [email protected] Edgar Rolando Calel Apen graduated from the National School of Visual Arts (ENAP) of Guatemala in 2007; he was awarded a scholarship to study at ESPIRA/La Espora Advanced School of Art in Managua, Nicaragua (2005-2007). He has exhibited his work in numerous venues, including the XV Paiz Art Biennial, in Guatemala, in 2006; Valoarte, in Costa Rica, in 2008, where he was awarded an honorable mention; the Museum of 146 JEAN MARC CALVET Sin Titulo / Untitled, 2009 6 bags 27 x 28 cm 10 5/8 x 11 in each Painted cardboard boxes Variable dimensions Contemporary Art and Design, in Costa Rica (2009); and the Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE), in 2009 and 2010. For Calel, the idea of capturing time and living spaces within a given site is a way of leaving accessible evidence of his personal memory and existence. He strives to trap a fragment of time and space, “freezing” his experience and making it visible to others. | V.G.D. Comme un Insecte sur le dos / Like an Insect on Your Back, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 130 x 165 cm 51 1/4 x 65 in Jean-Marc Calvet was born in Nice, France, in 1965. He currently lives and works in Nicaragua. His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions: Calvet, Gallery Ruine, Geneva (2011); Jean Marc Calvet, The Americas Collection, Miami (2011); No return, Área 23 Gallery, Miami (2010); Códice Gallery, Managua (2009); Redemption, Monkdogz Urban Art Gallery, New York (2008); The Darker Side of Midnight, Monkdogz Urban Art Gallery, New York (2008); Seven Nights in a Week, 43 8th Avenue Gallery, New York (2005); Los locos también van al cielo [Crazy People Also Go to Heaven], Paseo de Arte, Granada, Nicaragua (2004). Calvet has also participated in many important collective exhibitions: Seize, Monkdogz Urban Art Gallery, New York (2011); Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano [Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial], Managua (2010); Bienal Nicaragüense Fundación Ortiz Gurdián [Ortiz Gurdián Foundation Nicaraguan Biennial], Managua (2009); Efímera. Muestra de arte público [Ephemeral. Public Art Exhibit], Managua (2009); several shows at the Monkdogz Urban Gallery of New York (The Armory Show Weekend Brunch & Open House, 2007; Encore Une Foix [Once More], 2007; The Next Tortured Genius, 2007); Exposition Internationale D’Arts Plastiques de Paris [Paris International Visual Arts Exhibition] (2006); Festival de Arte en la Calle [Arts Festival in the Streets], Managua (2006); France - Nicaragua, Born 1965 www.jmcalvet.com [email protected] Festival International de Arte Fusión [Fusion Art International Festival], Granada, Nicaragua (2005, 2004); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Julio Cortázar [Julio Cortázar Contemporary Art Museum], Managua (2004). Free automatism is the distinctive mark of Jean-Marc Calvet’s painting, which is filled with characters that live in a constant motion of life, death, sex, and love, expressing the conviction that human beings are made of countless details, words, and colors. Calvet was awarded the Prize of the Visual Arts Biennial of Nicaragua (2009) and the Jury Prize from the Paris International Visual Arts Exhibition (2006). His works are part of the permanent collection of the Ortiz Gurdián Foundation, Nicaragua, and the Flint Museum of Michigan, United States. | V.G.D. 147 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CHARLES CAMPBELL ANA CAMPANELLA Uruguay, Born 1980 www.anacampanella.blogspot.com [email protected] Ana Campanella studied art under renowned Uruguayan artist Fernando López Lage. She currently studies architecture at the University of the Republic in Uruguay (UdeLaR). She has been an active member of the Contemporary Art Foundation of Montevideo since 2002. Her works have been shvown in several solo and group exhibitions, including the Sixth Biennial of Video and Media Arts, Santiago de Chile in 2003, and ArteBA at the Paseo Gallery, Buenos Aires Argentina in 2009. Campanella’s artistic output can be divided in two phases. Initially she worked primarily with digital media, producing colorful animations and 148 Paisajes Naturales / Natural Landscapes, 2009 Fine aluminum thread embroidered on canvas 160 x 200 cm 63 x 78 3/4 in photographs. Since 2005, she has immersed herself in the task of developing a technique in which she embroiders the canvas with fine aluminum thread. Campanella has said that in works such as Paisajes Naturales [Natural Landscapes] she tries “to keep the spirit of embroidery.” Her sparing use of color and her use of industrial materials—white canvas on silver aluminum— is reminiscent of early minimalism. According to journalist Melisa Machado, Campanella’s “original truss of metallic thread represents a critical gaze towards a feminine universe permeated by fashion designers, magazines, and seasonal trends.” | A.O. Bagasse Cycle 1, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 220 x 550 cm 86 5/8 x 216 1/2 in Born in Jamaica in 1970, Charles Campbell moved with his family to Canada in 1975. He graduated from Concordia University, in Montreal, in 1993, and moved back to Jamaica, where he established himself as an artist, art critic, and art professor. In 1998 Campbell entered the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Goldsmiths College of the University of London. After completing his degree, he returned to Canada where he now lives and works. Recognized for the “ascetic cerebral detachment” of his art, Campbell, in his own words, uses “aspects of Caribbean social history to investigate the intersection between image and meaning and Jamaica, Born 1970 www.charlescampbellart.com [email protected] open up the possibility of personal and social transformation.” The word bagasse refers to the fibrous waste material left after the extraction of juice from sugar cane. In Campbell’s painting entitled Bagasse, the mass of crushed plant is rendered in blackand-white and magnified to a gigantic scale. The sheer scale of bagasse and the stark color palette, somewhat reminiscent of old documentary chronicles, produce an overpowering effect and allow Campbell to make a powerful statement on “an economic system that views society and human relationships as mere by-products.”| E.G. 149 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe TANIA CANDIANI Mexico, Born 1974 www.tania.com [email protected] The works by Tania Candiani have been exhibited in numerous venues in Mexico, Canada, England, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and the United States. She has participated in several international events, including the Kaunas Textile Biennial in Kaunas, Lithuania (2007), where she won first prize; the XI Cairo Biennale, Egypt (2008), where she was awarded a special mention; and the Brussels Biennial 1 / Off Program (2008). She has been awarded artist residencies in several national and international institutions, including the Bennis Center for Contemporary Art, Nebraska (2003-2004); the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes [National Foundation for Culture and the Arts], Mexico (2006-2007); and the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), in New York City (2010). She is the recipient of a 2011 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Her works are part of several permanent collections in the United States, including the Museum of 150 Art Must Live Reality. 2009 Embroidered rubber balloons, plastic holders, darts, shelf 110 x 80 x 30 cm 43 1/4 x 31 1/2 x 11 3/4 in Contemporary Art La Jolla, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, the San Diego Museum of Art, and La Jolla’s Alberta Du Pont Bonsal Foundation, all in California, and the Great American Women´s Sculpture Park, in New York. Candiani’s creations reflect on contemporary aesthetic patterns. She is interested in producing images, objects, interventions, and participative art about the perception of urban spaces, contemporary popular culture, and rituals of every kind. She tries to go beyond form to explore the emotional states of people or social groups and their context as well as investigate materials and techniques. Candiani conceives emotions as a category of aesthetics and art as a tool for emotional communication. From this perspective, she wants art to function as a reasoned dialogue between our culture and our immediate circumstances. | V.G.D. Mutaciones I / Mutations I, 2005 Polyester resin; glass fiber; PET containers; polypropylene woven sacks; organic fiber (loom knitted Phormium leaves) 140 x 100 x 30 cm 55 1/8 x 39 3/8 x 11 7/8 in MURIEL CARDOSO Muriel Cardoso has studied textile and craft design, color theory, creative development, and art history. She has been an art teacher for years and has organized textile workshops across Uruguay. Her works have been shown since 1974 in numerous venues and have been part of Borde Sur [Southern Border], a travelling exhibition organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay in 2009. In a career that spans more than thirty years, Cardoso has experimented with textiles and recycled materials. “Giving new meaning to an obsolete object,” says the artist, “was a process that marked my artistic trajectory, pushing me to go out of two-dimensional and into three-dimensional space. …The energy of objects is related to the spirit. The challenge is to revive them and give them a second opportunity, that is, to metamorphose Uruguay, Born 1948 [email protected] disposable things in order to feed other new things that seem to be born out of nothing, thus making the old and the new multiply and live together in a vibrant work.” | A.O. 151 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GERARDO CARELLA / FEDERICO MENESES / ERNESTO RIZZO Uruguay, Born 1971, 1974 and 1966 www.montevideofoto.org [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Visual artists Gerardo Carella, Federico Meneses, and Ernesto Rizzo are the creators of Un Carrito al Cielo [A Little Cart to the Sky], a group performance that has been playing in different venues in Montevideo since 2008. Originally part of the traveling show Borde Sur [Southern Border], organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay, this performance received an Honorable Mention at the IX Salto Biennial, Uruguay (2011). In the performance of Un carrito al cielo, one of the artists—usually Ernesto Rizzo—pushes through 152 Un carrito al cielo / A Little Cart to the Sky, 2009 Urban intervention, photograph 150 x 100 cm 59 x 39 3/8 in the busy streets of downtown Montevideo a shopping cart on top of which a large mirror has been mounted horizontally; the other two artists—usually Campanella and Meneses—take pictures of the city and its people as they are reflected in the travelling mirror, which captures their images from unusual, unexpected perspectives. The presence of the cart in the streets catches people by surprise and forces them to look at their city with “new eyes,” making them perceive again the surroundings they usually take for granted and therefore do not “see.” | A.O. JOSÉ MANUEL CASTRELLÓN Priti Baiks series, 2010 Photographs 30 x 30 cm 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in José Manuel Castrellón studied TV production at the Universidad del Istmo [Isthmus University], in Panama City, and photography in Rockport College, in Maine, United States. He has shown his works in solo and group exhibitions in numerous galleries in Panama, including La Boheme Gallery (2003), Mateo Sariel (2004), Arteconsult (2008), and Diablo Rosso (2009); at FotoGrafia, Festival Internaziole di Roma [PhotoGraphy, International Festival of Rome (2009)]; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama (2010). Castrellón is a photographer interested in cultural changes and their impact on people and places. The Priti Baiks [Pretty Bikes] series is a perfect Panama, Born 1980 [email protected] example of his unique approach. As an artist, he is particularly attuned to register transformational impulses in society as well as the influence of other cultures and of commerce, construction, and the modification of urban and rural spaces— that is, any process or event that may bring about change in the life of individual people and of entire communities. In his work, Castrellón seeks to portray human beings in their immediate contexts, with a perspective that is, at the same time, socially sensitive and highly poetic. | V.G.D. 153 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CARLA CHAIM GABRIEL CENTURION BRAGA Brazil, Born 1978 www.gabrielcenturion.blogspot.com [email protected] Gabriel Centurion Braga graduated in fine arts from Universidade Estadual de Campinas [Campinas State University] in São Paulo. In his works, he combines his original artistic production with illustration and video. In 2004, he participated in the Resfest Digital Cinema Festival in São Paulo, and since then he has been showing his work in Brazil and abroad. Inspired by the works of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1770-1849) who produced a 154 Mondo Macho/ Macho World, 2009 Acrylic, spray, and felted pencil on wood 35 x 65 cm 13 3/4 x 25 5/8 in series of 36 views of Mount Fuji, Centurion Braga created Mondo Macho [Macho World] by observing the changes taking place in a famous and busy metropolitan region of São Paulo called Largo da Batata, where chaos and disorganized urban construction seem to never end. Bustling, intense, and dynamic, this painting represents a microcosm of the reality of any big city, exemplified in this case by São Paulo. | F.R. / E.G. Abstrações da mesma unidade ímpar / Abstractions of the same singular unit, 2010 6 drawings 76 x 58 cm 29 7/8 x 22 3/4 in (each) Brazil, Born 1983 www.carlachaim.multiply.com www.carlachaim.com.br [email protected] Carla Chaim holds a master’s degree in fine arts from the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation in São Paulo. She has participated in multiple group exhibitions since 2009, including Em torno de, Nos Limites da Arte [Around the Art Boundaries] at Funarte [National Art Foundation] in São Paulo; Project Room at Galeria Leme, São Paulo; Entre Tempos, Carpe Diem [In the Meantime, Seize the Moment] in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2009, she won the First Prize at Energías da Arte [The Energies of Art] awarded to young artists by the Tomie Ohtake Institute in São Paulo, which led her to the renowned residency program at The Banff Center for the Arts in Canada. Carla Chaim’s works are focused on the body and its surroundings. “Through my work,” she explains, ”I intend to reflect on the body as a working instrument and a site for conceptual discussion. [I seek to] explore its physical and social limits.” Chaim conducts her artistic exploration of the body with a multiplicity of expressive means such as video art, performing, drawings, and sculpture. Carla Chaim work is inspired by several modern art movements, among them Italian Arte Povera, American Minimalism, and German Expressionism. Anchored in the past, and looking towards the future, she recognizes Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Brice Marden (1938), and Richard Serra (1939) as her models, while remaining an artist who makes an original contribution to the concept of contemporary art. | F.R. / E.G. 155 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe BENVENUTO CHAVAJAY GONZÁLEZ Guatemala, Born 1978 [email protected] Benvenuto Chavajay González graduated from the National School of Plastic Arts of Guatemala in 2000. He won scholarships from the National University of Costa Rica (2002); ESPIRA/La Espora Advanced School Art in Managua, Nicaragua (2007); and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, United States (2009). He taught at the National School of Plastic Arts of Guatemala from 2003 to 2010. Chavajay González has shown his work in numerous national and international venues, including the Children’s Discovery Museum, in Costa Rica (2004); the Metropolitan Cultural Center, in Guatemala City (2005); and Spain’s Cultural Center, Guatemala (2008). 156 MARGARET CHEN Untitled, 2010 Chancletas de la marca Suave Chapina (Suave Chapina Brand Flipflops) 250 x 200 cm 98 3/8 x 78 3/4 in In his works, Chavajay González uses materials as concepts. Materials such as plastic have become an incontrovertible part of Guatemalans’ life and serve as mediators in all their daily transactions. “In some way,” says the artist, “everything has been plasticized.” The “Suave Chapina” brand of flip-flops represents Guatemala’s poor, especially as they lived during the civil war that wrecked the country. “With the advance of globalization,” he says, “the flip-flops have become nostalgic objects that recall our now remote childhood, our first contacts, experiences, and possessions.” | V.G.D. Cross-section of Arc, 1999 Wood strips & x-rays prints 36 x 305 x 137 cm 14 1/4 x 120 1/8 x 53 7/8 in Margaret Chen is a fine arts graduate of the Jamaica School of Art and of York University of Ontario, Canada. Her works have been exhibited in Jamaica, Canada, the Dominican Republic, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Creativity, for Chen is “not only a meditative process but,” as she puts it, “a subterranean journey, …an attempt to plumb the depths of the void of the primordial slime from which life first emerged and reveal… the site of one’s own origin.” Chen sees transformation as a way of maintaining continuity in the reality of all things impermanent. Her artworks are often made with fragile materials, such as paper, or x-ray prints, to remind us that material existence always comes to an end. In Jamaica, Born 1965 [email protected] turn, her shapes—concentric circles and spirals— allude to gradual spiritual elevation towards achieving ultimate simplicity. About Cross-Section of Arc, the artist has said: “It is a metaphor for the rite of passage. On the one hand, the arc’s ovoid shape suggests a womb or a cradle. And on the other hand, [it is] a boat, a symbol in Greek mythology of transition of the souls of the newly-dead, across the River Styx, into the underworld.” The ‘skeletal structure’ of the arc is lined with x-ray prints instead of wooden planks, as if inviting the beholder to contemplate the transition of the human soul from the temporal shell of the body to the eternal spiritual world. | E.G. 157 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GUIDO DAVID CHOUELA Argentina, Born 1969 [email protected] During the interwar period, the aesthetic valuation of documentary photographic language turned the archive into a legitimate artistic format. In those years, the leading documentary photographers were the German masters August Sander, Albert Renger Patsch, and Kart Blossfeld. An archive has two distinctive features. First, its uniformity and systematic character depend on a pre-established relation of consistency between “subject matter” and “form” or, in photographic terms, between theme and capture. Second, each individual case is valid and, therefore, is constructed as an example of a previously defined typology. Nurtured in this tradition, Guido Chouela has elaborated a register of old industrial buildings 158 GALO COCA Sin título / Without Title, 2002 Photograph 50 x 50 cm 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in that have survived in Buenos Aires, either adapted for new uses or entirely abandoned. The documentary style combines an objective look with subtle gradations of black and white. The ambiguous beauty of these photographs recalls old dreams of development and grandeur that were thwarted in the history of Argentina. For the artist, however, it is not just a matter of the nostalgic evocation of a dead past. For him, those ruins still exhale the brightness of a distant splendor and, therefore, they are capable of speaking not so much about failures but about illusions, about hopes and tasks yet to be undertaken. | V.G. El Elegido / The Chosen One, 2009 Photograph 97 x 133 x 2 cm 38 x 52 x 3/4 in Born in 1979, Galo Coca was trained as an architect at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés [San Andrés Major University] in La Paz. He currently works as a designer at the Museo Nacional de Arte de Bolivia [National Museum of Fine Arts of Bolivia] and as a professor of graphic design at Universidad Católica Boliviana (Catholic University of Bolivia). He collaborates with artists from various artistic disciplines, including theatre, music, and dance. The intellectual background of Coca’s work is the exploration of the tensions between the traditional and the popular, in the context of present day Latin America. With this in mind, Coca Bolivia, Born 1979 [email protected] explains his interest in the ceremony of the popular “fiesta” as the locus where these tensions reach their zenith and where the artist can “deconstruct the self” through a distortion of the body features that define the individual. Coca aims at “generating wondrous objects and ephemera” as a transitional channel between the individual and a universal experience that transcends individuality. | E.E. 159 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe DONNA CONLON/ JONATHAN HARKER United States - Panama, Born 1966 / Ecuador - Panama, Born 1975 www.donnaconlon.com / www.jonathanharker.com [email protected] / [email protected] Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker currently live and work in Panama. They have participated separately in the Venice Biennial: Conlon in 2005 and Harker in 2007. Conlon received a scholarship for emergent Latin American artists from the Cisneros Foundation in Miami in 2007; Harker was awarded the same scholarship in 2008. Conlon studied biology; Harker, cinema. Their collaboration fuses Conlon’s ability to observe reality with Harker’s unconventional style of storytelling. Conlon and Harker have shown their collaborative works in numerous international venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), in Costa Rica (2006); the Atlantic Center of Modern Art (CAAM), in Las Palmas, Canary Islands (2007); the X Havana Biennial (2009); the Palais de Tokyo [Tokyo Palace], in Paris (2009); and the Pontevedra Biennial, Spain (2010). Conlon defines her arts as “a socio-archaeological inquiry into my immediate surroundings.” 160 Sem título #7 / Untitled #7, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 130 x 160 cm 51 1/4 x 63 in (Vídeo) Juegos / (Video) Games, 2008-2009 Interactive work with videos And she adds: “I collect and accumulate ordinary objects and images from daily life and local environment, and then use them to reveal the idiosyncrasies of human nature and the contradiction inherent to our contemporary lifestyle.” Harker, in turn, points out: “all my works seek to manipulate and make visible the blurry frontiers that exist between iconography and ideology in order to challenge and destabilize the constructed system of perceptions, representations, and values that we call ‘reality.’” In spite of the global economic crisis, Panama City is suffering the effects of a constructions boom fueled by an out-of-control real estate explosion. This schizophrenic metamorphosis of Panama City, considered by many as a symptom of “modernization,” is producing the obliteration of the architectural history and the collective memory of the city. According to Harker, “there is an almost antiseptic compulsion to destroy old buildings and houses, regardless of their aesthetic value, with the goal of erecting in their place a vertical and soulless ‘new’ city.” (Video) Juegos [(Video) Games] is, in Conlon’s words, “a multi-channel video installation comprised of a series of invented games played with objects recovered from the ruins of houses demolished in Panama City. Each (video) game draws on its own logic and rules to comment on problematic issues in our current urban climate, layering inter-personal interactions with their political counterpart. | V.G.D Sem título #6/ Untitled #6, 2009 Oil on canvas 110 x 130 cm 43 1/4 x 51 1/4 in ADRIANA CONTI MELO Brazil, Born 1965 [email protected] Adriana Conti Melo graduated from the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation in 1988 with a degree in industrial design. In her personal creative process, Conti Melo represents common objects related to domestic work—buckets, brooms, cleaning rags—that are often kept out of sight. Conti Melo’s paintings open our eyes and minds to what we may call a “backstage reality,” one that usually remains hidden or is made invisible. “My work,” she says, “proposes a change in the way we look at the world, showing the importance of those fundamental structures that are often forgotten or even seem not to exist.” According to Conti Melo, “Life cannot take place without some basic domestic chores. Washing clothes, cleaning, sweeping the floor are simple activities, but they are also metaphors for more complex questions about change and the human condition.” | F.R. / E.G. 161 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CESAR CORNEJO Peru, Born 1966 www.cesarcornejo.com [email protected] César Cornejo holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Peru, and a master’s and a doctoral degree in fine arts from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He has been awarded numerous distinctions: grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2008) and the British Council (2005); Art Omni International Artist Residency (2010); The Henry Moore Institute research visitor (2004); The Tokyo National University Museum of Art Sculpture Prize (1999); and the Ministry of Education of Japan Mobusho Scholarship (19962003), among others. His works have been shown in numerous international venues in England (London, Birmingham, and Leeds), Austria, Venezuela, Peru, Japan, and South Korea. 162 PEPE CORONADO La Cantuta, 2005 Installation: paper flowers, wire 120 x 900 x 1200 cm 47 1/4 x 354 1/4 x 472 3/8 in On July 18th 1992, members of the army entered the campus of the National University at La Cantuta and kidnapped nine students and one professor. Six months later, their bodies were found in clandestine graves in the outskirts of Lima. In 2005, after living abroad for nine years, Cornejo returned to Peru and decided to create an art piece in memory of what is now known as “La Cantuta Massacre.” In a visit to La Cantuta, Cornejo found out that at the university fashion workshops beautiful flowers for weddings were made out of white fabric. He chose to use black flowers made with crepe paper in those workshops as the central motif of his installation, which includes 60,000 of those flowers, one for each of the victims of the period of violence in Peru. In Cornejo’s own words, “more than 1,000 people were involved in the making of the flowers, including students and faculty from the university, school children, and relatives of the victims.” He also used “nine student desks and one teacher desk from those used during the years when the killing took place.”| I.A. Obstrucción I / Obstruction I, 2008 Photograph 81 x 56 cm 31 7/8 x 22 in Obstrucción IV / Obstruction IV, 2008 Photograph 81 x 56 cm 31 7/8 x 22 in Obstrucción X / Obstruction X, 2008 Photograph 81 x 56 cm 31 7/8 x 22 in Pepe Coronado was born in the Dominican Republic and has recently moved to New York. He holds a master in fine arts in photo/digital media from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He has had extensive experience as a professor of art at the Maryland Institute, and at the Corcoran College of Art and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. As a specialist in printmaking, Coronado was a Master Printer at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the Hand Print Workshop International in Alexandria, Virginia, and at the Serie Project in Austin, Texas. His work has been exhibited in solo shows in the United States, Palestine, and China. The images of the Obstruction series are digital photographs printed with black and white Dominican Republic, Born 1965 www.pepecoronado.com [email protected] pigment inks on Somerset uncoated printmaking paper and mounted on Masonite boards. Somerset paper is used because of its velvety matte surface, purity of color, and archival properties. These ephemeral installations are created to document the interactions between a space and a series of elements—walls and lines, light and shadow—that come together to form structures. The minimalist and quiet quality of these images conceals the energy to build, to create, to interact. The architectural aspects appear solid and permanent, but they are fleeting, flexible, and in a constant state of transition: they divide and unfold in space during their existence and, in the process, create new spaces, leaving the image as the only permanent marker of a continuous process. | E.E. 163 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JOSÉ MANUEL CORTEZ ARCE GUILLAUME CORPART MULLER France-Mexico, Born 1977 www.gcmfoto.com [email protected] Born in France, in 1977, Guillaume Corpart Muller went to Canada with his family at the age of six; he currently lives in Mexico. Corpart Muller works in documentary and fine art photography. He has developed a unique technique, called Pitch White, which brings night time cityscapes into luminous life. His photographs have been featured in magazines such as National Geographic and B&W and have made the cover of Regards. His work has been shown in numerous venues, including the Querétaro Museum of Modern Art, the Fotoseptiembre Biennial Festival in Mexico City, and the PDN World in Focus Exhibition in New York. Corpart Muller has a significant body of work divided into thematic groups such as Nada nos 164 Ambiente Tenso / Tensions in the Atmosphere, 2007 Photograph 45 x 30 cm 17 3/4 x 11 3/4 in harán las penas [Sorrows Will Do Nothing to Us], about the disappearing Mexican cantinas [bars], and Chaosopolis, in which he develops portraits of large cities like New York, Tokyo, Chicago, and Mexico City. The photographs presented in About Change are part of the group on the Mexican cantinas, which addresses subjects such as table games and their protagonists or music and atmosphere. For Corpart Muller, the typical Mexican bars are the keepers of an important part of the country’s cultural identity. In his own words, “Some institutions change. Others remain unaffected by time. The Mexican cantina is a centuriesold institution that has resisted change, thriving better today than most others of its sort (such as the Church, for example). This may be due to the fact that the fuel that supports it is at the core of Mexico’s way of life: beer, tequila, antojitos, and companionship.” | I.A. La Fuga / The Escape, 2010 Oil on canvas 200 x 325 cm 78 3/4 x 128 in José Manuel Cortez Arce was born in Lima in 1959. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru. His work has been shown in several solo and collective exhibitions. He practices a form of Abstract Expressionism that uses broad brush strokes freely applied to very large canvases, thus revisiting New York’s tradition of action painting. In an experimental performace held in 1992, Cortez Arce made the exhibition time coincide with the time of execution of his paintings. According to art critic Elida Román, “Cortez knows how to compose his definite brush strokes in an open space of his own where colors sail or float, as if they were tensed and suspended. It is precisely this ability to create a latent tension that gives individual character to Peru, Born 1959 [email protected] his work and communicates a deep gestural impulse meant to touch us deep within.” In many ways, painting is a form of art that vividly reflects Western culture’s assumption that individual freedom is well above any collective value. Cortez Arce declares himself to be “a free painter,” someone who does what he knows how to do best: painting. At the heart of this simple statement is our ability to be the makers of our own destiny and to find a purpose for our lives. Painting seems to be currently out of fashion. It takes great courage and determination to choose to be a painter today. Cortez Arce has done it, just like that. | F.A. 165 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe BLUE CURRY JOHN COX Bahamas, Born 1973 www.iamjohncox.com [email protected] John Cox studied art at the College of the Bahamas and art education at the Rhode Island School of Design. Since his return to the Bahamas, Cox has become a leading figure in defining the role, place, and course of contemporary visual arts in Bahamian culture. Cox has been a curator at the Bahamian National Art Gallery and a lecturer at the College of the Bahamas. He is also a director of Popop Studios Center for Visual Arts in Nassau, which supports experimentation and innovation in contemporary art and has become a creative hub for Cox and other national and international artists. In the diptych I Am Not Afraid to Fight a Perfect Stranger, the overlaid silkscreened head of Buddha, 166 I Am Not Afraid to Fight a Perfect Stranger, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 167 x 275 cm 5 1/2 x 9 ft the ornament with fleur-de-lis, and the red stars, all symbols of world cultures that influenced the Bahamas, serve as a background to an imprint of a pair of men. The two male figures, which are copies of John Cox’s selfportrait, are a mirror reflection of each other. They seem to be boxing, except that the artist did not depict fists or boxing gloves. Instead, there are drawings of two plummets on each part of the diptych. The plummets are probably a reference to architecture, which Cox studied in Rhode Island as well as a metaphor of the search for one’s own self. A man who comes from a world that is a fusion of cultures is presented with the challenge of facing who he is. Cox commented that the I Against I series, to which this painting belongs, began as an exploration of male identity in modern society and gradually evolved into a reflection on the issues of coming of age and overcoming hardships. | E.G. Discovery of the Palm Tree Phone Mast, 2009 Video (edition of 5) variable viewing size, Diration: 00:02:17 Bahamian Blue Curry studied fine arts at Goldsmiths College, London. Following his graduation, Curry has been working in the United Kingdom, while maintaining close ties to the Bahamas. He has represented his country at international art shows. His works are in the collection of the Bahamian National Gallery. Since the time of his student exhibitions, Curry has received critical acclaim for the intellectually brilliant and visually striking installations that he created in reaction to the fetishizing of the Bahamas as a tropical paradise. Discovery of the Palm Tree Phone Mast is the artist’s ironic take on that issue using the medium of video art. Borrowing from the aesthetics of nature documentaries, investigative journalism, and silent film, Curry’s video Bahamas, Born 1974 www.bluecurry.com [email protected] chronicles its author’s exploration of an unusually tall palm tree, in the middle of a Bahamian forest, that turns out to be a disguised mobile phone tower. The fake palm tree is an obvious attempt on the part of the mobile communications provider to disguise a piece of equipment that not only spoils the idyllic landscape but can also cause public criticism for exposing the local population and international vacationers to potentially hazardous radio waves. This video illustrates the ways in which the illusion—not the reality—of paradise is created. | E.G. 167 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe REGINA DE BATRES Guatemala www.reginadebatres.com [email protected] Visual artist Regina de Batres lives and works in Guatemala Her media of choice have been painting, drawing, and sculpture but she has recently moved into photography and video. Her work is represented in the collections of the Bank of Guatemala, the Carlos Mérida National Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of the University of San Carlos, both in Guatemala, and in several private collections in Guatemala and abroad. In Regina de Batres’ words, Libertad Condicionada [Freedom Behind Bars] “is the distillation of many earlier reflections on the human 168 SANDRA DE BERDUCCY Libertad Condicionada / Freedom Behind Bars, 2010 Video Duration 00:02:31 condition and its multiple alterations in daily life. This project ties in to similar concerns that I once explored using photography. The fear, uncertainty, violence, and crime that pervade society today are the issues I chose to address in this video. People living in cities in my country try to protect themselves against hold ups and assaults but, as they try to do so, …they surround their houses with iron bars, barbed wire, and electrified fences in order to feel safe, obtaining thus a false sense of security at the price of freedom.” | E.E. Migración (Desenvolver) / Migration (Unravel), 2007 Photograph 70 x 50 cm 27 1/2 x 20 in Sandra De Berduccy graduated in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahía (Federal University of Bahia), in Brazil. Since 1991 she has exhibited at various national and international shows, including Visionarios [Visionaries], an overview of audiovisual art in Latin America organized by the Cultural Center of the Brazilian Itaú Bank Group, as well as the IV Biennial of Latin American Audiovisual Art held at the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank. Bolivia, Born 1980 www.berdebertigo.blogspot.com www.expodesenvolver.blogspot.com [email protected] De Berduccy uses a variety of visual languages such as photography, video art, performances, and installations to explore the rituals and ceremonies associated with traditional forms of labor, in particular Andean weaving. She is not focused on the finished product per se, but rather on the act of creation as a set of symbolic gestures, actions, and activities that affirm a social map of resistance and underline complex layers of social and historical meaning. | E.E. 169 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JEAN-ULRICK DÉSERT HENRIQUE DE FRANÇA Brazil, Born 1982 www.flickr.com/photos/henriquefs9 [email protected] Enrique de França graduated with a master’s degree in graphic design from the São Judas Tadeu University, in São Paulo, in 2008. He also studied poetics and visual arts at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. França has shown his work in several group exhibitions, including Desenho Ocupado [Busy Design] at Galeria Leme in São Paulo in 2009, and SP-Arte Specific at the International Art Fair in São Paulo in 2010. 170 Susto #1 / Fright #1, 2010 Pencil on cotton paper 50 x 100 cm 19 3/4 x 39 3/8 in Henrique de França’s works revolve around religion and everyday urban and rural life; they are also filled with allusions to colonialism. His figurative drawings are based on old photographs, mainly from the first half of the 20th century. When unified—quite literally—by the horizon lines, which are always present in his compositions, his works collectively create a larger narrative and invite viewers to reflect on their own perspective on how modern Brazilian culture came into existence. | F.R. / E.G. Prix Nobel / Nobel Prize (from Trophies the series), 2009 Ink on rag paper 80 x 90 cm 31.5 x 35.4 in Born in Port-au-prince Haiti, Jean-Ulrick Désert received his degrees at the Cooper Union School of Art and at Columbia University in New York. Désert has lectured at the universities of Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Humboldt. He is the recipient of many awards and commissions, including those from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (United States), Villa Wald berta/München-Kultur referat (Germany), and the Cité des Arts (France). He currently works in Berlin. Désert’s visual work includes many art mediums and methods, among them billboards, performances, paintings, site-specific sculptures, and videos. Désert often combines cultural iconographies and historical metaphors to disrupt and shift pre-established meanings. He has said that his practice may be characterized as visualizing “conspicuous invisibility.” Désert’s Trophies series is an invitation to consider the validity of the message, promoted by contemporary mass culture, that “anything is possible, that you can be whoever, or whatever, Haiti, Born 1965 www.jeanulrickdesert.com [email protected] you want to be” (i.e. Prime Minister, President, UN Secretary General, even an artist). Each piece in this series is a multilayered conglomeration of iconic images of individuals and organizations that symbolize prestige and good will, signed and sealed in the manner of official certificates. The images are rendered as paint-by-number drawings reminiscent of the kits that were marketed in the middle of the 20th century as a domestic pastime and an alternative to formal art training. | E.G. 171 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe TOMAZ DIAS VIANA Brazil, Born 1976 www.galeriamovimento.com [email protected] Born in Bahia in 1976, Tomaz Dias Viana (aka TOZ) moved to Rio de Janeiro as a young boy. It was during this time of transition that TOZ created his imaginary world inhabited by characters inspired by GI Joe’s and Playmobil toys. TOZ represents the typical exponent of the contemporary Brazilian graffiti art scene, now at its third generation. Since 2006, street artist Tomaz Dias Viana has been exhibiting not only on public walls in Rio but in more traditional venues as well, both in solo and group shows at art galleries and 172 OLY CAROLINA DÍAZ TORRES Untitled, 2006 Mixed media on paper board cultural centers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, thus completely blurring the artificial distinction between arts destined to the street and art for formal exhibition spaces. More interested in the fantasy aspect of popular culture, rather than in social or political commentary, TOZ’s imaginary world is inhabited by characters from the artist’s childhood inspired by American cartoons, Japanese Mangas, and Playmobil toys, a visual universe shared by the majority of Brazilian youth of his generation. | F.R. / E.G. Paisaje Amarillo / Yellow Landscape, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 89 x 209 cm 38 x 82 1/4 in Oly Carolina Díaz Torres studied at the Armando Reverón Institute for Advanced Studies in Plastic Arts in Caracas, Venezuela (1991-1996). She also studied in England, at the Chelsea College of Art and Design (1997-1998) and at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where she obtained a Master of Fine Arts in combined media. Her works have been shown in numerous galleries, museums, and cultural institutions in Venezuela, England, and the United States. The collective psyche of Venezuelan people has experienced a fundamental shift in the last Venezuela, Born 1972 www.olydiaz.net [email protected] decade with the advent of a new political regime and the impact of its newly adopted social and economic policies. Some want to fight against the new political reality, while others unconditionally embrace it. But whether in agreement or in dissent, Venezuelans are now confronting the unstoppable force of globalization and the uncertainty it produces about the future. Typical symbols and icons of national identity, such as maps and flags, populate Díaz Torres’ canvases, creating a visual context for examining the many challenges Venezuelan society must face today. | F.A. 173 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe SANTIAGO ECHEVERRY JUAN DOFFO Argentina, Born 1948 www.artebus.com.ar/doffo/ [email protected] Each photograph by Juan Doffo implies a return trip to Mechita, his hometown. In the vast Pampas, the artist inscribes with fire metaphysical signs or powerful geometries. The ritual, in which the villagers take part, is as important as the resulting image. Sometimes the ceremonial gathering is the center of the work, as in Arquitectura del infinito [Architecture of the Infinite]. Sometimes, Juan Doffo’s own emotional projection becomes a collective symbol, as when he dug his father’s grave. 174 Arquitectura del infinito / Architecture of the Infinite, 2001 Photograph 150 x 120 cm 59 1/8 x47 1/4 in The brief existence of a man and a neighborhood summarize the endless circle of universal time. One man is all men, because Juan Doffo connects the present of an experience not with the multiform collection of anecdotes that constitute a biography, not even with a given country or a certain time, but with the vital energy that, in its unfolding and transmigrations, includes human beings and all substances into the same fundamental and glorious destiny. | V.G. EYE C U, 2007 Video Duration: 00:03:35 Santiago Echeverry was born and grew up in Colombia, a country in which, in the artist’s words, “drug lords where blowing up my city, AIDS was killing my friends, and death squads were threatening me for being openly gay”. Echeverry became an activist, using technology and new media to call attention on himself and to promote social change. Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, he moved to New York and received a master’s degree in interactive telecommunications from New York University. Colombia, Born 1970 www.santi.tv [email protected] In 2005 he moved to Florida to coordinate the Electronic Media Art and Technology Major at the University of Tampa. In his current, more secure environment, Echeverry has remained focused on issues of discrimination and intolerance. His work “has progressively evolved into a study of the nature of memory”. His interactive projects explore “the fragility of life, the effects of media on our experiences, and the nature of digital empathy.” | F.A. 175 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CRISTIAN ELIZALDE Chile, Born 1981 www.flickr.com/spaceubses [email protected] It may seem astonishing that a middle-class university professor who lives in a big city in the Western world should affirm that his mission is to give a mystical message to the new generations. The case of Chilean artist Cristian Elizalde is a timely warning about the terrible mistake of trying to reduce our understanding of Latin American art to the progressive parameters that structure the history of international art. Something that at first sight may seem to be a backward attitude, may, at bottom, be a gesture of independence. In the middle of the ubiquitous availability of information that globalization provides, to place oneself in the rearguard may be a form of resistance. 176 LORENA ENDARA Durmiendo en América / Sleeping in America, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 cm 11 3/4 x 15 3/4 in Nueva Generación / New Generation, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 cm 11 3/4 x 15 3/4 in Elizalde cannot remember his life before painting, but he does remember his trip to the Amazon, which revealed to him his true vocation and produced a change of direction in his work. “I live in a city, but I think I belong in the Amazon forest.” This double belonging has turned him into a “medium” charged with transmitting to his fellow humans the magical mysteries he discovered in his incursions into unknown latitudes. | V.G. Sin título / Untitled, (from the Pan American Dreams series), 2009 Photograph 24 x 20 cm 9 3/8 x 7 7/8 in Lorena Endara graduated with a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Sarah Lawrence College, in New York City, in 2006. Her work has been exhibited in numerous countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Poland, Canada, and the United States. Her photographs have received awards from the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada (2009), and the Daylight Magazine / Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, North Carolina (2010). She currently lives and works in Panama City and is the founder and director of Imaginer Foundation, an organization dedicated to the promotion of Latin American art. Endara’s passion for photography is directly related to her profound interest in social and political issues and her commitment to social justice. Her art is rooted in her firm conviction that art has Panama, Born 1984 www.lorenaendara.com [email protected] the power to transform reality. In many of her works, Endara explores the effects that the economic or social development of a particular locality may have in that locality’s natural landscape. About her work, Endara has said: “I use photography to reflect on the country in relation to the historical, political, and economic processes that continually shape it. As I photograph in the documentary tradition, I am guided by a sense of nostalgia for a Panama I never knew as well as a concern for the future of my country. By capturing the multiplicity of worlds that exist within Panama, such as the fragile relationship between urban jungles and natural havens, I seek to explore and represent Panama’s identity as well as my own.” | V.G.D. 177 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe NICKY ENRIGHT MAURO ESPÍNDOLA Ecuador, Born 1971 www.lightbolt.net www.lightbolt.net/multimedia.html [email protected] Nicky Enright is a multimedia artist who was born in Ecuador and presently lives and works in New York City. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union (1996) and a Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College (2008), both in New York City. He has undertaken numerous public commissions for clients such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York (MTA), as well as the Smithsonian Institution and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Washington, DC. He has been the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including a residency 178 Bi-Ocular, 2008 Video Duration: 00:02:47 in Bangkok, Thailand, awarded by the Apexart Residency Program in 2010. “In both my life and work,” says Enright, “I strive to elucidate ideas of origin, belonging, authenticity, and boundaries. Instead of viewing borders as edges between discrete realities, I view them as intermediary spaces to inhabit. I experiment with collage strategies, and my activity as a world-music DJ also informs my work.” In Inter National Anthem, one of Enright’s video projects, he fuses “the anthems of all the countries in the world” into a single song whose words ironically play “with national pride and underscore everyone’s enforced status as a citizen of a given nation.” His art projects and performances engage the general issue of borders in a search for “fusion and synthesis.” | F.A. / E.E. Suíte Nactividade Enthes Paterctomizados 1, 2010 Oil on paper 74 x 74 cm 29 1/8 x 29 1/8 in Mauro Espíndola’s trajectory began in the ‘90s, after his first solo exhibition entitled Color and Choreography, which was an investigation on the pictorial possibilities of fusion between choreography, color, and movement. In 1995, he opened another exhibition at Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim [Laura Alvim Cultural Center] in Rio de Janeiro, where he presented research on the dissection of the human body. Playing with the fascinating and complex relations between 20th century science and technology, Espíndola invented Dr. Victal, an imaginary double similar to the fictional characters that Fernando Pessoa called “heteronyms.” But while in the case of Pessoa, the fictional characters were authorial alter egos with different lives, experiences, and writing styles, Dr. Victal is a creature born out of transplants, prostheses, and cloning. Grounded on these three notions, Espíndola has Brazil, Born 1962 www.mauroespindola.com [email protected] created objects and installations that explore the concept of a body in constant mutation, thus challenging static notions of personal identity. In many of his works, he examines our changing concepts of body healing and decay, as well as the extent to which those concepts have been molded by media pressure and by aesthetic medicine and plastic surgery. | F.R. / I.A. 179 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MAURICIO EDGARDO ESQUIVEL MAURICIO ESQUIVEL / KAREN ESTRADA / MELISSA GUEVARA / JAIME IZAGUIRRE / MAURICIO KABISTÁN El Salvador www.mauricio-esquivel.blogspot.com El Salvador, Born 1983 www.mauricio-esquivel.blogspot.com [email protected] Mauricio Esquivel graduated in fine arts from the University of El Salvador (UES) in 2008. He has shown his works in several international exhibitions, including the X Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2009); the VII Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2010); and the 31st Pontevedra Art Biennial (2010). He has also shown his works in several venues in Central America, including the Metropolitan Cultural Center in Guatemala, the Museum of Man in Honduras, the Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE), and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Costa Rica. Esquivel has been awarded several honors, including the X Premio de Arte Joven [X Young Art 180 José Martí and George Washington, 2009 Sculpture 18 x 15 x 15 cm 7 x 5 7/8 x 5 7/8 in Prize] from Spain’s Cultural Center in San Salvador; second place at Valoarte, in Costa Rica; and first place in painting at the Festival Fuerza Joven [Youth Force Festival], organized by the Youth Department of El Salvador. He has been the recipient of art residencies at the Batiscafo program in Cuba and at ESPIRA /La Espora Advanced School of Art in Nicaragua. According to critic Clara Astiasarán, in his more recent productions Mauricio Esquivel “has transformed coins—currency, money—not only into the concrete material of his work but into an ironic symbolic capital.” Esquivel uses currency to explore social issues related to migration, colonialism, and war. Since 2001 El Salvador has been forced to adopt the US dollar as its currency. The José Marti and George Washington pair is part of a series entitled Displacement Line, in which Esquivel cuts holes into US 25 cent coins with different forms and figures that challenge the monetary value of currency as opposed to that of social “capital.” Esquivel’s works call attention to the fact that “dollarization” has contributed to the poverty and violence that persist in his country. | V.G.D. / I.A www.karen-estrada.blogspot.com Untitled, 2010 Digital photo 22 x 33 cm 8 3/4 x 13 in This group of artists started working together as part of a visibility strategy that does not exclude their individual work. Their need for analysis and debate through their collaborative efforts has driven these artists, who recognize their alliances as essential to their growth in an artistic environment with limited possibilities. The background of their collaboration goes back to the Artificio collective, to which many of these artists gravitated, intent on studying and analyzing their place in the present world of art. Artificio was dissolved by consensus after their first—and last—exhibition entitled Tregua para el Aburrimiento [A Truce for Boredom] in 2009. Some of Artificio’s former members still work together and invite other artists to participate in shared projects. The artistic proposal currently shown by this collective is the photographic documentation of their piece entitled El Pasajero B.H.H. [Passenger B.H.H.], which was exhibited at the VII Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2010). The piece is a hollow cinderblock made up of human bones, marble, and white concrete; it alludes to the psychosocial consequences of violence and the dynamics of the relation among its three protagonists: victim, victimizer, and viewer. www.melissa-guevara.blogspot.com www.jaime-izaguirre.blogspot.com www.kabistan.blogspot.com The work seeks to generate a reflection on how we are building the foundations of our social future, and on the presence of death, illegality, and impunity as recurring phenomena that become part of our daily lives. Six of these cinderblocks traveled throughout Latin America, entrusted to friends and colleagues who received them and used them as a symbolic foundation for the future of their own societies. | V.G.D. 181 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ERIKA EWEL JOSÉ ESTUARDO Chile, Born 1980 www.jos.artelista.com [email protected] José Estuardo’s work is focused on the change of paradigm brought about by the digital age and globalization. According to him, “scientific and technical advances have been reconfiguring our world and our ways of thinking about it.” This transformation has also affected artistic practices. In his photographic series, which have been digitally manipulated, Estuardo creates a surface of contact between the old manual procedure of the brushstroke and the use of technological means. Moreover, in these seemingly abstract works, the artist particularly evokes the paintings of Abstract Expressionism—or Informalism—whose principal value is the visible trace of the gesture of the artist ‘s brush as he paints. Thus he proposes a territory where mechanical 182 Sobredosis / Overdose, 2010 Digital video Duration: 00:02:56 techniques and subjectivity can meet and live together. On the other hand, these images also evoke a modality of modern photography that, through cropping or closeups, does not reproduce the appearances of the real as much as it shows a penetration into the secret fabric of things. In this sense, Estuardo’s work reminds us of Walter Benjamin’s well-known observation that, in photography, opposites meet each other, so that “the most precise technique may yield magical results.” Estuardo’s Sobredosis [Overdose] is a video that, from its very title, alludes to the feverish multiplication of information in the age of mass media. It also alludes to the double sword of mass media. On the one hand, today information and global knowledge seem to be available to everyone, and “the individual has changed from being an exclusive recipient into being a powerful emitter of information.” On the other hand, individuals find themselves immersed in an almost impenetrable labyrinth of data. As Kracauer observed with pessimism, “never had an age so much information about itself; never had an age less knowledge about itself.” | V.G. El Agua del Cielo / Water from the Skies, 2007 Installation: ceramics and water Variable dimensions Erika Ewel was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in 1970. She now lives and works in La Paz. Graduated in visual arts from the Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais [Federal University of Minas Gerais] in Brazil and the Academia de San Carlos [San Carlos Academy] in Mexico, Ewel is one of the most representative Bolivian artists of the younger generation. She has represented Bolivia at various biennials, such as Cuenca, Ecuador; MERCOSUR, in Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Bienal Internacional de Estandartes [International Banner Biennial] in Tijuana, Mexico. Her work was included in Mastering the Millennium: Art of the Americas, an exhibition jointly organized by the World Bank Bolivia, Born 1970 [email protected] www.erikaewel.com Art Program and the Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of the American States, in 1999. Agua del Cielo [Water from the Skies] is composed of colorful, simple bowls, which are ubiquitous objects found in the markets and houses of Bolivia as functional, economically accessible, everyday vessels. The installation offers a multiple reading of the bowls’ function and of their relation to the water, as multiple as are the signifiers for the liquid elements in the complex map of Bolivia’s traditional belief system. The transitory and unstable disposition of the bowls in the installation directly alludes to an intricate landscape where the bowls are symbolic of a broader Bolivian social context. | E.E.. 183 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MARCELO FAÚNDEZ LAURA FACEY Jamaica, Born 1954 www.laurafacey.com [email protected] Sculptor Laura Facey studied at West Surrey College of Art and Design in England and at the Jamaica School of Art in Kingston. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Cuba, Curaçao, England, Japan, Jamaica, and the United States. She presently lives and works in Jamaica. The installation Their Spirits Gone before Them is inspired by the controversial reaction to Facey’s 2003 sculpture Redemption Song, which features a pair of nude figures, a male and a 184 Their Spirits Gone Before Them, 2006 Cottonwood canoe, resin, dried sugar cane 84 x 610 x 183 cm 33 x 240 x 72 in female, rising from the water, facing one another and looking towards the sky. Redemption Song won the national competition for the best sculpture commemorating the emancipation of slaves and was installed in the Emancipation Park in Kingston. It was criticized, however, for its display of nudity and the supposed Caucasian features of the woman in the pair. In response, Facey created the installation Their Spirits Gone Before Them, where identical miniature replicas of her sculpture are laid inside a boat. The figures are tightly packed and placed in rows, in the style of 18thcentury prints depicting the interior of slave ships. The boat “sails” amidst the waves of sugar cane, a symbol of sugar production, which was the main reason for importing African slaves to Jamaica. Despite their references to the taunting effect of slavery on today’s Jamaican society, Facey’s works are more about inner freedom: “The Redemption Song miniature figures, all one thousand three hundred and fifty seven of them,” said the artist, “echo the inspired words of Marcus Garvey as used by Bob Marley in his Redemption Song: ‘none but ourselves can free our mind.’” | E.G. Chile, Born 1981 www.flickr.com/photos/macheran0/ Identidad / Identity, 2010 Video Two significant aspects of contemporary art frame the works of Marcelo Faúndez: on the one hand, the passage from the artwork as object to artistic work as research; on the other, the renewed interest of visual artists—particularly those from Latin America—in social issues. His work, defined as an exploratory undertaking grounded in a specific field of interest (the marginal population that lives on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile), takes shape in a variety of mediums, from painting to performance and video. Identidad [Identity] is a very brief video in which a person, photographed at medium distance as in ID photos, is questioned about his name, country of origin, and place of residence. The video reduces “identity” to the procedure of police identification, with a special focus on the question of migration. It is perhaps useful to note that, within South America, migrations to and from neighboring countries are small in number. Likewise, the presence of immigrants is often insignificant within the economic and labor structures of the countries in the region. Nonetheless, there still exists a www.flickr.com/photos/macherano10/ [email protected] discriminatory, fantasizing way of looking at migrants as threatening usurpers. Faúndez's work also refers to this fear. Although in the rest of the world, migration policies and their ideological imaginaries possess other specific traits, fear of migrants may be more generally understood as a defense reaction to the displacement of the labor force typical of the transnational stage of capitalism. | V.G. 185 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MERCEDES FIDANZA Mexico-Argentina, Born 1974 www.mercedesfidanza.com [email protected] If we examine Mercedes Fidanza’s pottery outside the context of her entire body of work, we risk reducing them to simply decorative or nostalgic objects. This Argentine artist was born in Mexico, where her parents were exiled during the military dictatorship (1976-1983). “To return to one’s native land does not mean to be out of exile. Exile lives on inside,” she wrote on the invitation card to one of her performances in a park of Buenos Aires, in which two trees were embracing each other and the participants raised, as if they were flags, offerings and clothes brought in from distant latitudes. Central to Fidanza’s work is ritual performance, which had a heroic past in the Latin American avant-gardes of the ‘60s and ‘70s. For her, art is a 186 OSCAR FIGUEROA CHAVES Retorno / The return, 2008 / 09 Installation: ceramics Variable dimensions symbolic terrain for reparation and the construction of identity. Her works speak of the pains and hardships of a complex subjectivity forged within displaced spaces of belonging. When she created her series entitled Retorno [Return] the cacti molded in clay were charged with all these connotations. In her installation, the cacti have no prickles (no defense drive) and grow in spiral along a wall, in a necessarily meandering path. As Argentine historian Juan Pablo Pérez remarked, the pieces of clothing left by the trees, as well as the clay she molded with her hands, bear the singular marks left on the body by lived experience, which are reanimated in the work of art. | V.G. Alegorías / Allegories, 2007 Transferences to paper and lithograph pencil drawings 50 x 250 cm 19 3/4 x 98 3/8 in Oscar Figueroa Chaves has shown his works in numerous national and international venues, including the XII International Biennial of Engraving, at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2006); the VIII International Biennial of Lithography, Acqui Award, in Acqui Terme, Italy (2007); the VI Costa Rican Biennial (2007); the VI Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2008); and the Costa Rica, Born 1986 www.oscarfigueroachaves.blogspot.com [email protected] Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Costa Rica (2010). The works by Figueroa Chaves included in About Change modify the semantics of images as well as objects that have somehow represented the identity of Costa Rica since the 1800s to the present date. In Figueroa’s lithographs and drawings, these elements—banknotes, horse-drawn carts, coffee, bananas, sugar cane—establish a dialog with objects and images that represent industrialization, globalization, and mass media. His project intends to question paradigms of nationality as well as show the many facets of the notion of national identity in modern times and its relation to 19th century Costa Rica. | V.G.D. 187 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KATIA FUENTES GONZALO FUENMAYOR Colombia, Born 1977 www.gonzalofuenmayor.com [email protected] Gonzalo Fuenmayor is a Colombian artist currently residing in Miami, Florida. In 2000 he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Art Education from the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he was awarded a full tuition scholarship from the Keith 188 Génesis / Genesis, 2010 Charcoal on paper 200 x 130 cm 78 3/4 x 51 1/8 in Haring Foundation. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2004. His drawings have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United States, and Venezuela. In the large charcoal drawings of his series entitled Esplendor [Splendor], Fuenmayor explores ornamentation and its role in contemporary culture. The point of departure of these drawings are Victorian chandeliers, mirrors, and lamps “reminiscent,” in the artist’s words, “of a colonial past.” These Victorian objects seem to come out of or fuse with banana bunches, “alluding to a tragic and violent history in a Banana Republic, like Colombia.” According to Fuenmayor, “these hybrid images attempt to evidence the complicit and amnesiac nature of ornamentation and its relation with tragedy.” In Colombia, “past and present, the vernacular and the exotic constantly expose and disguise one another in everyday life in ways that only become truly visible when they are transmuted by art. I am interested in exploring how this visibility, this often decorative distance, may adorn and nourish oblivion.” | E.E. Nursery Rhymes (edition of three) Photograph: archival ink on canvas 25 x 25 cm 10 x 10 in Katia Fuentes studied art and communications at the Universidad del Nuevo Mundo [UNUM, New World University]. She studied photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and at the New England School of Photography in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 1998, she lives and works in the Mission area of San Francisco. Mexico, Born 1971 www.fuenteseye.net [email protected] Fuentes has shown her work in numerous venues in the United States, including the Prada Gallery in Washington D.C.; the Nurture Art, Gallery in New York City; the Mexican Museum of San Francisco; the International San Francisco Photographic Print Exposition; and the de Young Museum. Her Self-portrait as a Mexican Saint was featured in Camera Arts magazine. She is an artist in residence at the Project Artaud arts complex in San Francisco. Fuentes’ work focuses on the personal scale, but with socio-political and cultural underpinnings. Through her creations, she connects projected symbols on objects, with the desire of exploring the rich meaning of their relations. | V.G.D. 189 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LUJÁN FUNES Argentina, Born 1944 lujanfunes.blogspot.com [email protected] They are shoe soles, many of them. They are different forms of footwear, different footprints of use and wear and tear. Luján Funes has collected them; she has cleaned them, bagged them, classified them. She plays the role of the only official of an imaginary organization, the “Ente regulador de suelas” [Entity for the Regulation of Soles]. Like a scientist or a detective, Funes deduces information about the unknown user-owners of the shoes: age, gender, profession, place of belonging. At first sight, everything seems to function as it would in a normal archive. But if we stop and read carefully what is written in each entry, a different world emerges. Her description of how the shoes are worn, of the 190 RICHARD FUNG Los caminantes, su clasificación / The Walkers, Their Classification, 2003 Installation, variable dimensions different ways of walking, of the features of the ground, becomes a true inquiry into subjectivities, feelings, ways of life. Funes seems to be registering cold statistics about a population group, but in fact she uses the archive in order to establish characters and, through them, offer a poetic and social reading of reality. In Washington, Funes presents a special section with shoe soles that were used by immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. Following the same archival method, some of her inferences are purely descriptive (“They come from El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico. They now live in New York”), others pierce into people’s emotional lives (“These shoes have got along through real hardships”) and project a sensitive look toward their hardships (“Tribal meeting of women at sunset: they share information to survive”). Others still venture perceptive social observations (“They don’t speak loudly. They know other states have been hostile to their countrymen”); or, more acutely: “They believe they live in the First World”. All the works of Luján Funes function according to the same premise: the marks of reality and experience are there, in plain view. All that is needed is that we should want to look at them. | V.G. My Mother’s Place, 1990 Digital video, Duration: 00:49:00 Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Richard Fung currently lives in Toronto, Canada, where he teaches at the Ontario College of Art & Design. A former Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University, Fung has taught at the University of California, Irvine, at the California Institute for the Arts, and at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1996 he received the Bulloch Award for Best Canadian Work in the Inside Out Film and Video Festival. In 2001 he won the Bell Canada Award for Lifetime Achievement in Video Art and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Arts. Fung’s videos have been screened and are collected all over the world. My Mother’s Place is an experimental documentary video that examines the themes of immigration, colonialism, diaspora, and family. The Trinidad and Tobago, Born 1954 www.richardfung.ca/ [email protected] video is focused on the artist’s mother, a thirdgeneration Chinese-Trinidadian, granddaughter of Chinese indentured laborers brought to Trinidad in the mid-19th century. At 80 she still has vivid memories of a history that is quickly vanishing and that she rescues from complete oblivion by recounting it with frankness and without avoiding uncertainty or even contradictions. My Mother’s Place is a work about memory, oral history, and autobiography, weaving together a personal narrative, interviews, home movies, and verité footage of the Caribbean in order to explore the formation of race, class, and gender under colonialism. | E.E. 191 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ILIANA EMILIA GARCÍA Dominican Republic, Born 1970 www.ilianaemilia.com [email protected] Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Iliana Emilia García studied at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including Exit Art in New York and the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art Bachelor of Arts in Newark, New Jersey; it is represented in the permanent collection of El 192 SCHEREZADE GARCIA Unknown Distances / Undiscovered Island 1, 2006 Archival print on canvas 111 x 81 cm 44 x 32 in Museo del Barrio of New York, the city where she currently lives and works. According to García, the base of her work as an artist and designer “is the emotional history of things,” such as chairs and other objects that become tools to tell visual histories and universal symbols that evoke people’s memories and heritage. | A.O. Catedral / Cathedral, 2009 Soft sculpture 243 x 137 x 120 cm 96 x 54 x 47 in Born in the Dominican Republic in 1966, Scherezade Garcia holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Parsons The New School of Design in New York and a Master of Arts from the City College of New York. Her work is represented in the collection of El Museo del Barrio of New York, the city where she has lived since 1986. She has exhibited at the Lehman College Art Gallery, in New York; the Jersey City Museum, in Jersey City, New Jersey; the Mary Anthony Gallery and the Leonora Vega Gallery, in New York; the Newark Museum, in Newark, New Jersey; and the Havana Biennial (2000), among others. She uses media such as drawing, painting, video animations, and installations as narrative tools. She frequently addresses themes related to the Caribbean experiences brought about by colonialism: mestizo culture, migration, syncretism. For Dominican Republic, Born 1966 www.scherezade.net [email protected] Garcia,“fascination with human experience in Caribbean society since the discovery of America and its multifarious results” is an “essential part” of her discourse “and an endless source of inspiration.” She makes use of the symbols and readymade objects of this syncretic culture. | A.O. 193 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe EDUARDO GIL JOSCELYN GARDNER Barbados, Born 1961 www.joscelyngardner.com [email protected] Barbadian printmaker and installation artist Joscelyn Gardner received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts in Canada. Currently, Gardner commutes between Ontario, where she teaches contemporary media, and the Caribbean, where she finds inspiration for her work. She has exhibited 194 Aristolochia Bilobala (Nimine), 2010 Hand-painted stone lithograph on frosted Mylar 35 x 23 cm 14 x 9 in in prestigious venues in Barbados, Brazil, France (Martinique), India, and the United States. Being a descendant of a family that settled in Barbados in the 17th century, Gardner, in her own words, aims “to articulate the intertwined historical relations shared by black and white women in the Caribbean in order to reconcile the past with the present and move toward a metaphorical healing of historical wounds.” The hand-painted lithographs in the Creole Portraits III: Bringing Down the Flower series feature fantastic formations, somewhat reminiscent of family crests and composed of images of plants, instruments of torture, and braided hairstyles. The dark symbolism of these meticulously finished creations becomes clear in the context of the untold history of the colonial Caribbean, some of whose secrets Gardner uncovered through her research. The plants she depicts were used by slave women to terminate unwanted pregnancies, or to kill themselves, while the slave collars were a form of punishment for those women who were believed to have induced an abortion. Gardner’s rich metaphorical language extends from the imagery to the titles of her artworks. Each title contains a name of the depicted plant, according to the Linnaean classification system, and the name of a person, probably a slave. | E.G. Paisajes 1-4 / Landscapes 1-4, 2005/09 Photograph, direct capture 100 x 124 cm 39 x 49 in Eduardo Gil has said that artistic creation often implies distancing oneself from some certainties and habits. This reflective attitude has prompted Gil, one of Argentina’s distinguished photographers, to revise the very assumptions of his previous work. In his series entitled Paisajes [Landscapes], Gil deconstructs one of the most traditional artistic genres: the portrait. “At a time when appearances are made spectacular, I exclude all indication of social differentiation: clothes, adornments, makeup.” The artist resorts to the standardized dryness of an ID photo. In addition, he photographs his subjects with their eyes closed. These people, who offer themselves openly to our gaze—because of Argentina, Born 1948 www.eduardogil.com [email protected] the images’ frontal view, their large size, and their abundance of detail—are themselves devoid of a gaze. It is as if, besides depriving his subjects of all personal marks, Gil were even denying their personhood. “I suppress thus a determining element in the history of the portrait; I force myself into a sort of abstinence, stripping myself of my craft and experience, and letting photography’s indexical logic manifest itself, silent and intense”. Reduced to its purest objectivism, photography is rendered incapable of expressing anything. People have turned into “landscapes,” that is, into purely epidermic cartographies that say nothing about themselves. | V.G. 195 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KILIAN GLASNER Brazil, Born 1977 www.kilianglasner.com [email protected] Kilian Glasner is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris [Advanced National School of Fine Arts of Paris], where he studied under the guidance of Italian artist Giuseppe Penone. His works have been exhibited in solo shows in several galleries in Recife (Brazil), Paris and Lisbon. He has also participated in several group exhibitions in Recife, São Paulo, Paris, and Rome. Kilian Glasner’s most recent photographic project, entitled Rua do Futuro [Street of the Future], is a series of nine color photographs. This work was done in several stages, in a long process that started with the artist looking for and finding 196 FERNANDO GOIN Rua do Futuro 3 / Street of the Future 3, (series of 9), 2009 Photograph, 105 x 70 cm 41 1/4 x 27 5/8 in an abandoned house ready to be demolished. In Glasner’s words, “Once I find the house, I draw a landscape with dark pastels on every one its walls. When I finish drawing, I start tearing the house down: designs, ceilings, walls eventually tumble down. During the process, I photograph the changes brought about by the advancing demolition, which breaks the drawn landscapes, revealing a fissure in time where past and present converge.” The demolition process opens big holes in the walls and ends up fusing inside and outside. Thus, a tree that is behind a wall becomes eventually visible and is combined into a single landscape with the trees drawn on the wall. Rua do Futuro is a work of exploration that addresses the abandonment, reoccupation, and transformation of urban space. | V.G. Los mismos de siempre / The Same Ones as Always, 2008 Acrylic on vinyl canvas 140 x 220 cm 55 1/8 x 86 5/8 in Traditionally, the visual language that an artist uses is understood in terms of style, as the distinctive mark of an individual subjectivity. Contemporary artists often resort to different languages in order to construct different meanings. In the case of Fernando Goin’s series entitled Líneas de tiempo [Time Lines], for instance, the artist represents certain historical periods by juxtaposing sequences of narrative scenes and statistical tables. In the first case, the codes of descriptive painting are used, in the second, those of geometric abstraction. Thus, the “mark” of the author no longer resides in the visual appearance of the work but in the thought that sustains it, a thought that involves a certain vision of the times in which the artist lives. Considered as a conservative form of art by some avant-garde circles, painting can recover, in this context, all its conceptual power. In some Argentina, Born 1968 www.fernandogoin.com [email protected] sense, its secular task of representing the world has not been yet solved or exhausted. According to Goin, Los mismos de siempre [The Same Ones as Always] “refers to the conclave of those who were the authorities responsible for making decisions in Germany during the decade of the ‘30s.” But, although the image may point to a definite historical moment because of the authorities’ attire, it carries, at the same time, a contemporary gesture. Fernando Goin has decided to continue painting because, if the strategies of power are essentially “always the same,” then artists will also continue projecting always the same critical view on reality. | V.G 197 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe DULCE GÓMEZ LUCIANO GOIZUETA FEVRIER Costa Rica, Born 1982 www.lucianogoizueta.com [email protected] Luciano Goizueta Fevrier studied graphic arts at the Central University of Costa Rica. His works have been shown in numerous venues in Costa Rica and abroad, including the Figueres Ferrer Gallery (2005, 2009) and the National Gallery (2007, 2008), both in San José; the Pelissier Street Gallery in Windsor, Canada (2008); the Buschlen Mowatt Gallery in Vancouver, Canada (2010); and the Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery in Miami, United States (2010). The city has been a constant preoccupation in Goizueta’s work, and his vision of it has become 198 Como sea que lo imagines / Whichever Way You May Imagine It, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 100 x 100 cm 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in sharper with time. He has gone from a rather comprehensive, anthropological view of the city and its manifestations, to the analysis of the practical objects that we create as a species, following them through time until they are no longer useful or usable and become, in a certain way, art objects. “My work,” Goizueta says, “has everything to do with time, that physical dimension that allows us to measure duration and to organize a sequential order of events, that gives us past, present, and future, and grants us causality.” | V.G.D. / I.A. Early in the morning 7, 2006 Acrylic on canvas mounted on wood 160 x 140 x 5 cm 63 x 55 x 2 in Dulce Gómez received a Diploma in Visual Arts from the Cristóbal Rojas School of Visual Arts in 1986 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Experimental University for the Arts (UNEARTE) in 2010. Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in her native Venezuela, as well as in Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the United States. Dulce Gómez’s approach to creating images involves both careful planning and an acceptance of the role of chance in art. She is interested in the relations between shapes and the materials used in the process of developing a visual composition. Despite starting with a more or less defined intention, the image may evolve in a direction not necessarily foreseen from the very beginning. From this perspective the modus operandi of Gómez’s work is similar to the process used by mid-twentieth century French and North American abstractionists, who relied on the unconscious in order to free expression for the benefit of art for art’s sake. “Since the beginning of my career,” Gómez says, “ I have worked with assemblages, installations, Venezuela, Born 1967 www.dulce-gomez.com [email protected] painting and most recently, video. By using different materials, each work can bring forth new life. I am interested in researching the relations between systematic organizations and the unconscious. How do unconscious processes influence or redirect established patterns of image-production, such as seriality? How is it that the medium itself could end up being the theme of the final image?” According to the artist, the image she finds at the end of the process is as important as the one she had in mind at the start. | F.A. / I.A. 199 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GILMER ROBERTO GÓMEZ DELGADO Peru, Born 1980 [email protected] Gilmer Roberto Gómez Delgado studied fine arts and advertising design and has shown his works on several exhibitions in Peru. His paintings are highly gestural and reminiscent of the neo-expressionist trends of the ‘80s, which, in turn, owe a great deal to those of the ‘40s and ‘50s. Gómez Delgado’s works appear to carry with them society’s anxiety about the constancy of change as well as society’s apparent lack of 200 MYRIAM GONZÁLEZ Compartiendo un solo cuerpo / Sharing a Single Body, 2009 Mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 1/4 x 47 1/4 in commitment to ensuring that such change brings about a better world. We live in a time when what matters most seems to be enjoying the present or making the best of it, no matter what the consequences. However premeditated they may be, Gómez Delgado’s aggressive “improvisations” mirror the presentism of our lives and the corresponding anxiety we have learned to live with. | F.A. Cambio (PIB) / Change (GDP), 2010 Video Duration: 00:11:00 During the ‘60s, Myriam González studied Economics at the Universidad del Valle [University of the Valley], Colombia. In 2005 she started studying Visual Arts at the Departmental Institute of Fine Arts of Cali. Her works have been shown in Colombia, in Casa Cuadrada Gallery in Bogotá (2007) and at the University of the Pacific, in Buenaventura. Her video entitled El Cambio [The Change] was screened at the X Festival Internacional de la Imagen [X International Image Festival] in Manizales, Colombia. In her works, González seeks to bring together and integrate concepts, media, and techniques that seem to be opposite: her training as an economist with her artistic training, her love for cave painting with her interest in technology and the new media. In Cambio [Change] González deftly fuses a technological means with the natural phenomenon of light and its reflection, composing thus captivating artistic shots. This video invites its viewers to engage in a moment of pure contemplation in which to wonder about how our Colombia, Born 1956 [email protected] technological systems invisibly manipulate us, in many ways defining the shape and rhythm of our lives. Changes in light and shadow, projections, light reflections, music, voices, phrases are the means by which González conveys a definite message: gross domestic product may be a measure useful to gauge economic well-being, but it is completely useless for assessing the quality of our life. | E.E. 201 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ANA GONZÁLEZ ROJAS Colombia, Born 1974 www.anagonzalezrojas.com [email protected] Rosita / Little Rose, (series of 45 pieces), 2009 Porcelain, Ana González Rojas graduated from the Universidad de los Andes [University of the Andes] in Colombia with a degree in architecture. She also obtained a master’s degree in arts and visual media from the École Supérieure ESCP/EAP in Paris. She has worked in Paris and Bogotá with several book publishers, and consults in the field of design and embroidering for peasant and Indigenous groups, an activity that has given her a first-hand experience with the life of thousands of Colombians displaced by violence. Rojas objects attempt to materialize stories associated with violence that have been orally transmitted, both individually and collectively, and exist only in the memory of people. Her objects thus become the only physical reference to whatever happened to people at a given time. In selecting fine materials such as silk and porcelain, Rojas elevates and preserves memory instead of letting it crumble in moments of suffering and death. The artist emphasizes appearance, rescuing forgotten recollections that are stored in dark corners of the mind, and awarding them the immaculate appearance and the dignity they deserve. | F.A. 202 Desplazamientos (serie de 3 piezas) / Displacements (series of 3 pieces), 2009 Engraving on metal tools 45 x 70 cm 17 3/4 x 27 5/8 in ANA PAOLA GONZÁLEZ SALAMANCA Born in 1987, Ana Paola González Salamanca is presently a senior student at the Visual and Studio Art Program of the Francisco José de Caldas University, in Bogotá. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions, besides working as a cultural promoter. Like many of the younger contemporary artists in Colombia, González Salamanca came of age at a time when the country was on the verge of being taken over by terrorists and drug dealers who fought for control of the country´s destiny with Colombia, Born 1987 [email protected] little regard for the rights of the civilian population. Violence persists today. Many uprooted communities are forced to migrate to the larger urban centers where they gather in shantytowns ruled by gangs and organized crime groups. González Salamanca engraves farming tools with scenes that tell stories of forced migration in a country with little hope for peace, and she documents these engravings by photographing them, revealing through an artistic metaphor the true magnitude of a situation that no words could accurately describe. | F.A. 203 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ISABEL GOUVEIA Brazil, Born 1956 www.isabelgouveia.com [email protected] A graduate from the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation in São Paulo, with a degree in industrial design, Isabel Gouveia has a vast experience in engraving and printmaking, which she has practiced since 1990. She had solo exhibitions at the Espaço Cultural [Cultural Space] of the Caixa Econômica Federal [Federal Savings Bank] in São Paulo, in 1995; at the Espaço Cultural of Banco do Brasil [Bank of Brazil], in 1997; and at Florida Stage 2005-2006 204 MARLON GRIFFITH Insularity (R1, P1, B1, Y1), 2010 Oil, wax on canvas 104 x 83 cm 40 7/8 x 32 3/4 in Season in Florida, United States, in 2005. Gouveia lives in Florida since 2002. Isabel Gouveia was born and raised in rural Brazil. Inspired by the forms she finds in native plants in particular Brazilian ecosystems, she presents the public with the beauty of simplicity in her canvases. As she has stated: “I appreciate the beauty of combining color and space in simple composition. My paintings translate the things that, in my view, are essential.” | F.R. Hukaro, 2009 Installation Diameter 243 cm 95 3/4 in Marlon Griffith is a carnival designer, printmaker, and installation and performance artist who studied graphic design at the John Donaldson Technical Institute in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He has participated in art workshops in South Africa, Martinique, and Guadeloupe and has been awarded art residencies in South Africa (Bag Factory and City + Suburban Studios), in Japan (Mino Paper Village), and in the Bahamas (Commonwealth Connections International Arts Residency). He was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2010. Griffith’s work has been shown in his native Trinidad and in London, New York, Washington, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Toronto. About his artistic practice Griffith has said, “My refashioning of carnival forms… challenges both the commercialization of Trinidad’s rich traditions of performance and their appropriations by Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians.” For his installations Trinidad and Tobago, Born in 1976 www.marlongriffith.blogspot.com [email protected] Constellations (2005), Symbiosis (2008), and Hukaro (2008) Griffith created paper constructions in fantastic shapes inspired by Caribbean flora and fauna. Leaving the surface of paper naturally white, Griffith introduced to it lace-like cutout patterns allowing air and light to become integral parts of his creations. The ephemeral and the resilient coexist in the outward beauty of these brilliantly engineered and executed works, offering a critical commentary on what Griffith has described as the “tension-filled interdependency between competing social groups that shapes contemporary Caribbean societies.” | E.G. 205 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ROBERTO GUERRERO MIRANDA MARCELO GROSMAN Argentina, Born 1958 [email protected] GUILTY! Masculino 31-35 # 2 / Male 31-35 # 2 Acrylic, wood, synthetic enamel, print on vinyl 120 x 240 cm 47 1/4 x 94 1/2 in In his series “Guilty!” Marcelo Grosman appropriates and resignifies one of photography’s oldest functions as part of a police record. In its original function the ID portrait is personal and intends to be unequivocal. But making use of digital manipulation, Grosman superimposes several ID images, creating thus phantasmal, even monstrous effigies. These reconfigured identities allow the artist to reveal that rather than being descriptive, one of photography’s social functions is performative, a fact stressed by the exclamation mark in the title. In 1966, in Thirteen Most Wanted Men, Andy Warhol had used frontal and profile shots as a parodic flipside to media celebrity. In a more disturbing way, Grosman’s images explore the ambiguous relation between representation and repression. | V.G. 206 Últimos implementos delicados para un futbolista delicado /Latest Dainty Accesories for a Dainty Soccer Player, 2005 Sequined ball and sneakers Variable dimensions Roberto Guerrero Miranda majored in graphic design at the University of Costa Rica, where he also studied art history and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in cinematic arts. Since 1998, he has dedicated himself to photography, working with everyday objects. His works have been shown in several individual and collective exhibitions at the Costa Rican Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), and the Jacob Karpio Gallery, all in San José; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama, the Art Museum of El Salvador, and the Roebling Hall Gallery in New York, among others. Guerrero was chosen to represent Costa Rica at the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial in 2003 and 2005. Guerrero has been long working in an examination of his own sexuality and of the male image in the cultural context of patriarchal Latin American society. In that regard, he has tried to use parody to unsettle stereotypes of masculinity and, in particular, those related to soccer, given Costa Rica, Born 1978 [email protected] the importance of that game in the cultural imagination of Central America. His works allude to the changes that are currently taking place within those societies with respect to sexual orientation and otherness, the right to be who one is and to lead a life with dignity and without repression. Guerrero’s works address the need to redefine the discourses of power to achieve a more just and harmonious relation among individuals and between individuals and their societies. | V.G.D. 207 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JOSEFINA GUILISASTI HÉCTOR GUERRERO SKINFILL Mexico, Born 1982 www.photo-x.org [email protected] Héctor Guerrero Skinfill has worked as a photographer for prestigious international news agencies such as France Press and Reuters. His works have been exhibited in international shows, including the V and VI Biennial of Photojournalism at the Center for the Image, in Mexico City (2003, 2005); the International Photojournalism Festival of Perpignan (2005); and the 3rd Latin American Photography Festival, in Paris (2007). Concerned about pollution and the quality of life in big cities, Guerrero Skinfill concluded that he 208 En bici 2 / On Bike 2, 2009 Photograph 120 x 80 cm 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in should choose a bicycle as his exclusive means of transportation. From then on, his life changed significantly: his bike riding helped him find his life partner, brought him relief from some illnesses, and made him more sensitive to the nature and quality of his surroundings. En bici [On Bike] is a series of photographic images that document and chronicle the everyday life of urban cyclists, showing how the bicycle functions as the thread that connects their lives. | V.G.D. El Duelo / The Duel 2009 180 oil paintings of variable dimensions Overal installation 1200 x 400 cm From the collection of Juan Yarur, Santiago, Chile The works of Josefina Guilisasti spring from one imaginary hypothesis. Let’s suppose that the world of art history (for instance, the genre of Mannerist and Baroque still life of the 16th and 17th centuries) is a kind of lost civilization of which all that remains are fragments, like some old ruins. Let’s suppose that humans apply to these ruins the procedures of recovery, study, classification, and conservation usually applied in archaeology or in museums of natural history. In El Duelo [Mourning], Guilisasti presents a series of hyper-realistic paintings of porcelain vases and plates, arranged in rows on the shelves of a large piece of furniture, as if they were real Chile, Born 1963 www.josefinaguilisasti.cl [email protected] objects. Guilisasti transforms the conventional genre of “still life” into a life truly “dead.” The motifs that in 17th century painting appear structured in a single scene are shown now as dissected or mummified specimens kept on the shelves of a museum of natural sciences. In Homenaje a Sánchez Gotán [Hommage to Sánchez Gotán], the artist evokes the famous still lifes of that 17th century Spanish painter. Against the “faithful” reproductions of Sánchez Gotán works in decorative posters, Guilisasti presents pieces of pottery and ceramic shards, hanging from string, as if they were remnants of a world that has been literally broken into pieces. | V.G. 209 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe IGNACIO GUMUCIO Chile, Born 1971 [email protected] The artistic career of Ignacio Gumucio began in the ‘80s, upon returning with his family from France after the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Gumucio’s paintings present human figures dispersed in apparently habitual spaces: streets, banks, classrooms, hospitals. Initially, Gumucio seems to strictly obey the codes of realistic representation. But his paintings exude a strange atmosphere. He introduces subtle displacements and dislocations: distortions of perspective, desaturation of colors, inexplicable empty spaces that appear in the middle of areas densely populated by characters, odd leaps In scale. To these incongruities is added the heterogeneous diversity of sources and techniques that the artist usually gathers on the surface of a single painting. Sometimes, instead of drawing something, he inserts a photocopy; sometimes he uses as referents 210 ABIGAIL HADEED Huelga de hambre / Hunger Strike, 2011 Oil on linen 140 x 240 cm 55 1/8 x 94 1/2 in common photographs that people have forgotten or discarded. He also uses real materials as signs: wood to represent wood, sand to represent sand, or wall paint on the represented surface of a wall. About Huelga de hambre [Hunger Strike] Gumucio says that it is “an attempt at ‘historical’ painting. Using newspaper photographs of a hunger strike as a base for his painting, he proposes a motionless, ambiguous scene open to many possible readings. “A hunger strike,” says Gumucio, “is a strange form of protest that is hard to make visible by photographic means. It is pure absence, because what matters here is that which is not done (eating) and that which is not seen (hunger).” Often executed in large format supports, his works present in a vast single space characters that seem to operate like the pieces of a large, well-oiled machine. But there is something disconcerting that seems to have taken place or to be about to happen, something that the viewer feels, like a premonition, without knowing exactly what it is. | V.G./I.A. Black Star (from the Trees Without Roots series), 1995 Archival pigment ink prints on watercolor paper 43 x 28 cm 17 x 11 in Trinidadian photographer Abigail Hadeed was the First Prize winner of the 2004 Commonwealth Photographic Award for the series entitled Trees Without Roots, in which she pays homage to the Afro-Caribbean people of Central America and to their “courageous story of determination in making a life for themselves and their children born out of a traumatic displacement.” Shot in Panama and Costa Rica during 1999, Trees without Roots is a photographic series that seeks to rectify the exclusion of Afro-Caribbean people from the official historiography and collective awareness of the Hispanic majority in Central and South America. In her work, Hadeed rescues the important contributions that Afro-Caribbeans have made to the development of the region, telling their long and complex “story of slavery and migration,” of low-wage workers imported from the West Indies to fuel the burgeoning banana agro-business and the massive infrastructures of the transcontinental railway and the Panama Canal. The title of Hadeed’s series—Trees without Roots—evokes Marcus Garvey’s famous phrase: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” Garvin was a powerful and magnetic Negro Trinidad and Tobago, Born 1963 gallery.me.com/abigailhadeed/100727 [email protected] Renaissance social activist who “kindled the imagination of millions of black people” in the 1920s with his exhortations to a massive exodus back to their ancestral home in Africa. Black Star Line is a powerful and touching work, depicting the hands of elderly English teacher Iris Morgan as she holds an old bond of the Black Star Line industry, the steamship company that Garvey launched in 1919, backed by the financial support of the poor black communities in the Americas. The Black Star Line was supposed to support worldwide commerce among black communities. And although it was a business fiasco that lasted only three years, the Line became a powerful symbol to a dispossessed people. | E.E. 211 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GERARD HANSON Jamaica, Born 1972 www.gerardhanson.com [email protected] Gerard Hanson was born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican-Irish parents. He studied printmaking at Wimbledon School of Art and has taught art for more than fifteen years. Currently, Hanson is a full-time artist based in Kingston, Jamaica. Hanson’s background in printmaking has allowed him to integrate this technique with other artistic media, including photography, digital imaging, and painting. Since he prints his works from electronic files directly on canvas, he can reproduce them without losing the quality of the original. This is a possibility that Hanson welcomes, because his artworks can thus be displayed in 212 JOSÉ ALBERTO HERNÁNDEZ CAMPOS Gaza, 2009 Archival inkjet and acrylic paint on canvas 66 x 63 cm 26 x 24 in public spaces and engage audiences that may not frequent art galleries or museums. In The Meaning of Style, the series represented in the catalogue by Gaza, the artist addresses “the presence of young African Caribbean men in Britain over the past 40 years.” The men in his portraits appear one-on-one with the “issue of being out of place” in the mainstream culture. Dressed to make an anti-establishment stylistic statement, they are placed in lower-middle-class urban settings, artificially enlivened by splashes of brilliant color. The penetrating gaze and mistrustful expression of the young man in Gaza confronts the viewers and challenges them to engage in an open dialogue on the realities of inclusion and exclusion in a multicultural society. | E.G. General and Platinum Display, 2009 Installation 2 led screens 70 x 10 x 10 cm 27 x 4 x 4 in Graphic designer and photographer José Alberto Hernández Campos graduated from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Costa Rica in 2005. He has shown his work in numerous venues in Costa Rica and abroad, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) and TEOR/éTica, in San José; the Contemporary Art Museum, in Santiago de Chile; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), in Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, in Santo Domingo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama. He has been twice awarded a fine arts scholarship by the Ministry of Culture of Costa Rica. He was selected by the Graphic Designer Association of Madrid (DIMAD) to participate in the First IberoAmerican Biennial of Design, in Madrid, in 2008. Hernández Campos’ works express his conviction that some aspects of contemporary society need urgent change as well as his passionate stance against violence and firearms. They constitute a reflection on the marketing of firearms as objects of Costa Rica, Born 1978 www.josealberto-espaciosvacios.com [email protected] desire, full of seduction and power. In General and Platinum Display, Hernández Campos combines the means of graphic design with the language of the economic and financial establishments in order to explore how the subtle games of world economy affect the lives of common citizens. | V.G.D. 213 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MIMIAN HSU FEDERICO HERRERO Costa Rica, Born 1978 [email protected] Federico Herrero has shown his works in numerous venues in Costa Rica and abroad, including the 49th Venice Biennial (2001), where he received the Golden Lion Award; the Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris (2002); the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain (2004); the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tokyo (2005); the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, in San Francisco (2008); and the Kunstverein Freiburg [Freiburg Art Association], Germany (2008). Herrero’s public art projects include several permanent murals he painted in Japan, for the Hara Arc Museum for Contemporary Art in Gumma (2008) and the Towada Arts Museum in Aomori (2007) respectively; paintings on public 214 Ábaco / Abacus, 2010 Mixed media on canvas 200 x 400 cm 78 3/4 x 157 1/2 in transportation buses at the Kanazawa Prefecture, Japan (2001, 2005); and a mural for the Lydmar Hotel in Stockholm. “At a time of aesthetic anxiety,” Herrero has pointed out “when object art dominates curatorial discourse, painting becomes somewhat of a hybrid position or a poetic retreat in which a different imaginary dimension affirms itself. Only a form of stylistic or historiographic Darwinism can assert that we have seen the end of representation.” For him, the practice of painting and the discovery of the world as a vast canvas constitute “revolutionary gestures” in the face of contemporary art, gestures that point to painting as a legitimating document and a re-inscribed way of seeing the world. | V.G.D. Rations Given to the Chinamen, 2008 Porcelain with gold enamel Variable dimensions Mimian Hsu graduated from the University of Costa Rica with a master’s degree in fine arts in 2009. She has shown her works in numerous exhibitions, including the V Caribbean Biennial in the Dominican Republic (2003), where she received an honorary mention; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in San José (2004); the V, VI, and VII Visual Arts Biennial in San José (2005, 2007, 2009); and the VI Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2008). Mimian Hsu is a descendant of Taiwanese immigrants who arrived in Costa Rica in the 1970s. Thus her life and work are enmeshed in the process of cultural hybridization and acculturation of Chinese immigrants in the American continent. Forced to integrate themselves racially and cultur- Costa Rica, Born 1980 [email protected] ally, Chinese immigrants insisted on maintaining their language, their traditions, their distinctive cuisine, which are nonetheless inflected by certain aspects of Western culture. Mimian Hsu’s work is unique, within Costa Rica’s cultural production, because she incorporates her Chinese inheritance and an autobiographical quality in a body of work that goes beyond “intimism” and invites us to question the meaning of identity and its place and function in today’s world. Although her pieces reveal a playful sense of humor, they are charged with a visual poetry that often challenges conformism and reveals how Chinese immigrants went from being at the margins of society to assuming a political stance. | V.G.D. 215 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe NADIA HUGGINS Trinidad and Tobago - St. Lucia, Born 1984 www.nadiahuggins.com [email protected] Born in Trinidad in 1984, Nadia Huggins moved in her early childhood to St. Lucia, where she currently lives and works as a photographer and graphic designer for an advertising agency. Her interest in photography started quite early, and by chance, when first a friend and later her father, exposed her to the traditional film cameras, which she, in her own words, “used to fill with black and white film and just shoot” whatever she found fascinating around the island. From that early sense of freedom, Huggins has maintained the desire to preserve in her work the sense of excitement that she had when she took pictures for the sheer pleasure of it. 216 FRAN ILICH The Garden, 2005 Digital Print 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in In her photographs, Huggins carefully deconstructs—first in situ, and later with Photoshop—the intense juxtapositions of light and shadow of the Caribbean, as well as its vibrant colors, in order to “explore the many recesses of life’s darkest experiences”. Huggins photographic explorations constitute a questioning of “sociological structures that are receptors of uncharted emotions,” which she reads as “the result of years of suppression and repression” of the people in the Caribbean. Nonetheless, in her interrogation of the past and present of her region, Huggings strives to expose a “glimpse of hope beneath all the darkness.” | E.E. Mexico, Born 1975 Spacebank, 2005-2010 Net-based project Fran Ilich is a writer and media artist who has worked on the theory and practice of narrative media. He is the author of several novels, including Metro-Pop, Tekno Guerrilla, and the more recent Circa 94, which won a national award for young novelists in Mexico in 2010. He has been the editor-inchief of Sputnik, an online digital culture and technology magazine, and during 2002 he was a researcher for the Multimedia Center at the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City. He has participated in international media and digital art exhibitions and festivals including the Transmediale Festival and the Documenta 12 exhibition, both in Berlin; the Copenhagen Inter national Documentary Film Festival; Havana’s International Digital Arts Show; and the MIT Media in Transition International Conference. He has taught seminars on narrative media at universities in Mexico, Spain, and Austria. He is currently working on a spacebank.org [email protected] book that explores the material and ideological possibilities of narrative in the digital age. Ilich believes that narrative can change the world by generating alternative possible realities. In his view, narratives can achieve that goal through formal and structural techniques that challenge traditional storytelling, even when presenting stories from everyday life. His work deals mainly with three basic interrelated areas: narrative, digital culture, and hacking. He experiments broadly with narrative techniques across media, and he believes that ideas and content are what primarily matters, but that structure and form are essential aspects of a work of art. | V.G.D. 217 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JUAN PABLO INZIRILLO CARLOS MIGUEL IMBACH Argentina – Costa Rica, Born 1982 [email protected] At the end of the ‘60s, the conceptual art revolution put forth the view that an artist could no longer be a mere image maker but had to be someone capable of reflecting on the conditions of art and culture as well as of using any means to communicate his ideas. Conceptual art presents us with pieces that combine a rather simple execution with definitely complex contents. This passage from manual to intellectual work also inaugurated a new kind of leading role: that of the spectator. In the same decade, two works of literary theory heralded the birth of the reader as maker: Opera Aperta [The Open Work] by Umberto Eco (1962) and The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes (1968). 218 Sin Título 2 / Without Title 2, 2009 Vinyl and mirror 180 x 300 cm 70 x 118 in This work of Carlos M. Imbach consists of a full-body mirror on which it is adhered a page of the mentioned text by Barthes, in white vinyl. Through the play of letters against background (full against empty in sculptural terms; positive against negative in photographic terms) the viewer can either read part of Barthes’ text or see himself and his surrounding in the reflection of the mirror. That is, “the death of the author” coincides with the emergence of the literal situation in which the piece is located and perceived. “This work tries to invert the hierarchic relations that exist between author, work, and interlocutor, traditionally conceived in a ranking order: first the author, then the work, and finally the interlocutor” affirms Imbach. The artist designs perceptive experiences with an almost scientific methodology, in order to reveal the conditions under which we construct the meaning of things. | V.G. La granja / The Farm, 2010 Synthetic enamel on wood 230 x 320 cm 90 x 126 in The dehumanization of man has been one of the mayor themes in 20th century art. Although Surrealism had already raised this issue in the ’20s, it was the Second World War that made evident the consequences of modern progress in a dramatic way. For a new man to be born it was necessary to forget all that had been learned. Thus emerged a new outsider art inspired by the drawings of children, mental patients, and primitive people. By the end of the ‘70s another kind of outsider art came on stage, inspired this time by street art, graffiti, and the codes of different urban “tribes.” What was at stake was no longer an existential definition of man, as it had been in the ‘50s, but the right of minority groups to freedom of speech. Juan Pablo Inzirillo’s painting finds its sources in that art, as well as in comics and videogames. In his large size works, strange figures appear, together with fragments of texts, against flat backgrounds. La granja [The Farm] is inhabited by hybrid creatures that are a mixture of human being, animal, and robotic machine. There is phrase inscribed at the Argentina, Born 1986 www.juanpabloinzirillo.com [email protected] bottom of the painting that makes an ironic comment on man’s dehumanization in a sexual key: “Le inyectaste insulina@sony para hacerle el amor” [You injected her with insuline@sony to make love to her]. In the late ‘70s “bad painting” became a new style in the United States. In some peripheral cities, urban underground languages still have a singular vitality. In Inzirillo’s own words, this is still a “rapid, shameless, and rebellious art,” one capable of creating “world spaces,” like the dialects spoken in the streets. | V.G. 219 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe SRI IRODIKROMO WALTERIO IRAHETA El Salvador, Born 1968 www.landschaftserie.blogspot.com [email protected] Walterio Iraheta studied graphic design at Matías Delgado University, El Salvador, and graphic arts at the Chicago Cultural Center (1997) and La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, Mexico (2000). He has received several awards for his work, including first place at the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial 220 Faraway Brother Style 1, 2009-2010 Color photography 60 x 40 cm 23 x 15 3/4 in (1998); and first place at the Paiz Art Biennial, Guatemala (2007). He has held over 35 solo exhibits and participated in over 100 collective shows, including the Venice Biennial (2011), the X Havana Biennial (2009); the Latin American Video Exhibit at the Itaú Cultural Institute in São Paulo (2009); and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía [Queen Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art], Madrid (2009). His works are part of several museum collections in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States. During the first years of his career, Iraheta was interested in expressing himself through drawings, but lately he has become interested more and more in photography, video, and object installations. The subjects that draw him the most now are those related to human migrations, hybrid cultures, and the way values and traditions of people from different regions become interwoven. Faraway Brother Style is a series of photographs in which Iraheta explores the changes that are presently taking place in El Salvador’s rural architecture driven by the remittances sent by family members who live abroad. | V.G.D. Frekti kon na wan / Entangled Into One, 2010 Batik and mixed media 267 x 147 cm 105 x 58 in Born in the Netherlands, Sri Irodikromo, daughter of famous Surinamese artist Soeki Irodikromo, grew up in an environment where painting, ceramics, and traditional Javanese batik were parts of daily life. After graduating from the Nola Hatterman Art Academy in Paramaribo in 1989, Irodikromo specialized in graphic arts at De Vrije Kunst Academie [De Vrije Arts Academy] in The Hague, Netherlands. Inspired by Suriname’s growing spirit of ethnic and cultural reconciliation and moved by the desire to support the country’s effort to break out of the isolation in which the military dictatorship had kept it, Irodikromo decided to return to Suriname in 2005, after ten years of active artistic research and production in the Netherlands. From the start she contributed actively to the efforts of the Federation of Visual Artists of Suriname (FVAS) to remove the barriers that had made Suriname an isolated country. As part of this effort, in 2006 Irodikromo participated—and won first prize—in The Living Art Show, an event in which visual and performing Surinamese artists present jointly an artistic project that fosters a rich cultural debate on multiculturalism. Subsequently, her work was featured in numerous exhibitions; her first solo show in 2008 was a large success. Frekti kon na wan [Entangled Into One] is part of a broad national art project undertaken in 2010. It is a large batik that represents a creative synthesis of motifs and techniques from a multiplicity of sources, from local Amerindian and Netherlands-Suriname, Born 1972 www.readytexartgallery.com/sriirodikromo [email protected] Maroons traditions to the artist’s own Javanese heritage. Typical of Irodikromo’s style, Frekti kon na wan is a passionate explosion of saturated red, with some carefully applied contrasting color details. Monique Nouhchaia Sookdewsing, owner of the Readytex Gallery and a key player in Suriname’s visual art world, observes that “the intricate craftsmanship and the diverse textures are also immediate eye catchers, but it is only upon closer inspection that the many techniques used by the artist truly become evident. The work is a result of daring experiments in the combination of different techniques and materials.” | E.E. 221 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JAIME IZAGUIRRE El Salvador, Born 1985 www.jaime-izaguirre.blogspot.com [email protected] Jaime Izaguirre studied cultural promotion, programming, and management at the University of Granada, Spain, and graduated from the University of El Salvador (UES) in 2011 with a degree in fine arts. He is the recipient of first and second prize awards in art competitions in El Salvador and of an artist residency at ESPIRA/La Espora Advanced School of Art in Nicaragua. He has shown his works in several venues, including the Metropolitan Cultural Center, in 222 MARLON JAMES Maniobras de guerra / War Games, 20072008 Stop motion animation Guatemala, in 2008; the Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE), in 2009 and 2010; the Museum of National Identity, in Tegucigalpa, in 2010; and the VII Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial, in 2010. Izaguirre’s works often address the asymmetries between innocence and power and the violence of street gangs imported from the United State. He proposes ironic representations of power, filtered through games, and creates images that provoke the senses as well as the mind. | V.G.D. Jabari, 2009 Black and white photography 76 x 101 cm 30 x 40 in Mark and Gisele, 2009 Black and white photograph 76 x 101 cm 30 x 40 in Marlon James began his art studies at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1998. While majoring in sculpture he discovered his passion for photography. Under the direction of Donette Zacca, he began his creative development as a photographer, and photography quickly became his primary medium. As an artist Marlon James is committed to creating powerful images that should command the viewer’s full attention. He defines himself as an unorthodox photographer who strives to break the cycle of monotony. His practice is varied and includes Jamaica, Born 1980 www.mjamestudio.com [email protected] dark room and digital, color and black and white, fashion and fine art photography. He has focused mainly on the human figure. “Capturing the soul of someone,” says James, “was never my initial objective. I just wanted my subjects to be relaxed in front of my camera. I don’t like to impose any directions on them, I just let them be, and the results have been fascinating, especially to me, as these people unveil themselves in front of my lens. Mainly using one source of light with a monochromatic tone allows me to create a mood that seems to bring out their true character, to reveal the individual beneath the layers.” | E.E. 223 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe BAYROL JIMÉNEZ Mexico, Born 1984 www.luisadelantadomexico.com [email protected] Bayrol Jiménez studied fine arts from 2003 to 2006 at La Esmeralda School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, in Mexico City (2003-2006). From 2006 to 2008, he attended L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art [National School of Fine Arts] at the Villa Arson in Nice, France. He currently divides his time between Mexico and France. His works have been featured in solo and collective exhibitions in the United States (2003, 2007), Mexico (2003-2010), Spain (2007-2009), France (2008, 2009, 2011), Canada (2009), Italy (2009), Puerto Rico (2009), and Holland (2011). For Jiménez, images are the basic stuff to build a different reality. He does not try to imitate what he sees; instead, he uses elements drawn from the media, the streets, films, comics, religion, and literature to create collages that reflect his 224 ANDREA JUAN Llegó la muerte / Death Has Arrived, 2010 Ink on paper 123,5 x 150 cm 48 5/8 x 59 in Bonito Infierno / Pretty Hell, 2010 Ink on paper 123,5 x 150 cm 48 5/8 x 59 in point of view about places he has visited. Mixing images from Christian iconography, American and French comics, and other artifacts of our globalized culture, he aims to describe the events happening at worldwide and local levels, inviting the viewer to go beyond what he sees daily in the news media. Jiménez has said: “I am interested in involving the public in the process of my works, which allows me to be in perpetual mutation. I am interested in things in transit, in society’s rituals, in chaos, in mythology and the ephemeral. In my works, I seek to find new angles capable of expressing reality and of constructing a discourse with a social and political perspective on the places he passes through.” | V.G.D. / I.A. El Bosque / The Forest, 2010 Photograph 120 x 80 cm 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in Around the year 2000, Andrea Juan’s work experienced a turning point, when she discovered a subject, absent from Argentine art, that possessed an enormous potential for international visibility: the Antarctic Territory. While today Antarctic soil is the object of scientific research related to climate change, in the past it was a subject for the imagination. It was an unknown and inhospitable land at the “end of the world,” where reports from members of expeditions were mixed with adventure novels. In her photographs, videos, interventions, and performances, Andrea Juan exploits this double significance, at once scientific and poetic, of Argentina, Born 1964 www.andreajuan.net [email protected] Antarctica. If her work contributes to raise awareness about ecological hazards, it is not by means of the dry language of conceptual art, but through captivating images. The way in which Andrea Juan films the landscape for her video-installations, the way in which she intervenes on the frozen ground with color marks, evoke the minuscule human figure facing the immensurable sea in The Monk by the Sea, Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting that embodies one of the great themes of Romanticism: the unfathomable mystery of Nature. Although Antarctica is also the site of geopolitical conflicts in Argentine history, there is no reference to this dimension in Andrea Juan’s work. | V.G. 225 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe FLÁVIA JUNQUEIRA ANGULO Brazil, Born 1985 www.flajunqueira.blogspot.com [email protected] Flávia Junqueira’s A Casa em Festa [A Festive House] is a series of staged photographs that show a young woman dressed like a little girl in the middle of a room packed with objects from the floor to the ceiling: presents, balloons, pennants, stuffed animals, and all kinds of toys. There is no one with her. She is alone, at the center of the scene, with a sad expression on her face. Another series similar to this one, entitled Na companhia dos objetos [In the Company of Objects], also addresses the horror vacui of a room filled with a mountain of presents that surround and overwhelm a girl at the center but cannot conceal a profound feeling of sadness and solitude. 226 A Casa em Festa #5 / A Festive House #5, 2010 Photograph 150 x 120 cm 59 1/3 x 47 1/4 in Junqueira’s works are metaphors of the empty promises of the consumer world, where the search for plenitude has lost its spiritual dimension, being now replaced by the ambition to possess material goods. The excessive amount of objects is an obvious impediment to the girl’s happiness. She appears to be stunned by the plethora of things that surround and paralyze her. The colorful proliferation of merchandise in these photographs is the reverse image of Pop Art and its celebration of consumer culture and its aesthetic and social value. It is also a reverse image of Paradise, where wellbeing is, as the saying goes, “all of the spirit.” | V.G. JOHN JURIC Untitled, 2010 Mixed media 160 x 245 cm 63 x 96 1/3 in John Juric studied industrial engineering and graphic design at Veritas University in Costa Rica. His works have been shown in exhibitions in Costa Rica and abroad, including Valoarte, in San José (2007, 2008, 2009); Scope Art Show, in Miami (2008, 2009); Los Angeles Art Show (2009); and Scope Art Show, in Basel (2010). John Juric’s new series is at the same time sophisticated and refreshingly naïve. He has been able to muster an original approach in creating paintings and sculptures by combining wallpaper, collage, and tapestry. Juric seeks to emulate the opulence and pretentiousness of an era when people showed off their wealth through objects and artifacts made of gleaming gold and the most luxurious silks from India and China. It was a time of crisis when few people actually had the wealth they pretended to have. With the presence of “gold” wallpaper (which has no gold), “silk” artifacts (which are not made of silk), and images of Switzerland - Costa Rica, Born 1973 www.johnjuric.com [email protected] the King of Pop, Juric’s works are eloquent metaphors of people’s constant need to show off, even when they have nothing of value. In the twentyfirst century, people pretend to have what they lack mostly by acquiring a “name,” or by associating an object they possess to the value of the name behind it, and not with the intrinsic value of the object itself. | V.G.D. 227 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MAURICIO KABISTÁN Nicaragua, Born 1980 www.mauriciokabistan.blogspot.com [email protected] Mauricio Kabistán graduated in ceramics from the University of El Salvador (UES) in 2008. He has been a member of the Colectivo Artificio, a group of emergent Salvadoran artists, and has attended workshops with international artists and curators. Kabistán was born in Nicaragua; he resides in El Salvador since 1989. Kabistán has shown his works in numerous collective exhibitions, including the Carlos Mérida Museum of Modern Art, Guatemala City (2011); the Art Museum of El Salvador, San Salvador (2010); the VII Biennial of Visual Arts of the Central American Isthmus, Teatro Nacional Rubén Darío [Rubén Darío National Theater], Managua 228 La Cena / Dinner, 2005 Ceramics 46 x 76 cm 18 1/8 x 29 7/8 in (2010); Galería 123, San Salvador (2009); and the Bienal de Arte Paiz en El Salvador [Paiz Art Biennial in El Salvador] (2007, 2005). He has received awards at the VII Biennial of Visual Arts of the Central American Isthmus (2010), at Spain’s Cultural Center, San Salvador (2010); and at the III Paiz Art Biennial in El Salvador (2005). The core of Kabistán’s work is the aesthetic and reflective exploration of ceramics and clay, the material with which he presently works. Ceramics involves time and process. Having necessarily to go through changes, clay serves him as a means to play with pre-conceived notions of art and to show their internal contradictions. | V.G.D. Maraña, sombra & bollo / Tangled Web, Shadow, and Roll (diptych), 2009 Graphite on paper Panel 1 100 x 70 cm 39 x 27 in Panel 2 (bollo) 50 x 40 x 20 cm / 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 x 7 1/2 in CYNTHIA PAOLA KAMPELMACHER Two concepts inherited from the experimental post-minimalist period are key in Cinthia Kampelmacher’s works: the phenomenology of perception, based on a concrete spatial-temporal experience, and the concept of the work of art as process. She often infuses humble, everyday materials with high poetic density and conceptual depth. In a recent series of drawings, Kamplemacher began working on certain landscapes as metaphors of the contemporary world: especially elusive, tangled webs—a Nature that rebels against the possibility of being thought. Progress in science brought about the principles of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Likewise, in Kampelmacher’s landscapes, the precious technical detail and the mimetic ability produce a world that is not transparent but opaque and inscrutable. She often submits her images to different transformation procedures that break, alter, or transmute them. The image “returns,” but it is now transformed into a fragmented remain, a dubious sign. This process evokes the fragile, selective nature of memory, as a sequence of failed translations in which the original scene is progressively vanishing. Maraña, sombra y bollo [Tangled Web, Shadow, and Roll] juxtaposes the representation of a landscape on a piece of paper with the representation of that piece of paper with the creases and wrinkles left by its having been squeezed between the fingers. The image has something akin to Magritte’s tricks, like his window that does not open to an actual landscape but to the painting of a landscape. Argentina, Born 1968 www.cynthiakampelmacher.blogspot.com [email protected] The concept of change in Kampelmacher’s work affects the very process of perception of the image as information. Time may eventually bring some understanding, but it also brings loss: the impossibility of retaining the complexity and the nuances eroded by forgetfulness. | V.G. 229 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ALEXANDRA KEHAYOGLOU JULIA KATER Brazil, Born 1980 www.juliakater.blogspot.com [email protected] Julia Kater graduated in pedagogy from the Catholic Pontifical University of São Paulo. She completed her training in photography at the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing [Advanced School of Advertising and Marketing] also in São Paulo. Using images and arrangements that remind her of her childhood, such as her old living room or library, she adds fragments of sky in picture frames and on the ceilings, creating thus an entry point into an exquisite alternative reality that the viewer may believe to be a shared space with the artist (“we are all under the same sky”). Her images are also a commentary on the fragility of life systems, metaphorically represented as historic buildings that appear indestructible, while in fact they can be effaced by such an ephemeral element as air or sky. | F.R. / E.G. 230 Et moi, je vous dis / And I am telling you (series), 2010 Photo collage 75 x 50 cm 29 1/2 x 19 3/4 in Refugio para un venado de las pampas / Refuge for a Deer from the Pampas, 2010 Handmade wool carpet 380 x 280 cm 149 5/8 x 110 1/4 in “My grandparents emigrated from Greece and arrived in Argentina fleeing from the war. When they arrived, they continued the family business of carpet making. When I started studying visual arts, I rebelled against following that family mandate. But, against all my expectations, I found freedom in the tradition I inherited, and I returned to carpet making. Thus I discovered the joy of belonging, of continuing a legacy. My work is making wool carpets, which I hand-weave, as my grandmother did. …I weave carpets because that is what I know how to do,” states Alexandra Kehayoglou. Argentina, Born 1981 www.alexkeha.com.ar [email protected] Even though many of her works are idyllic looking “refuges,” she has discovered that true art does not consist in evading reality, but in knowing how to appropriate the resources available to us. Family memories are woven into her textile work, as are the memories of an Argentine landscape that technological advances have left on the verge of disappearing. Her work brings together the possibility of constructing a personal identity with that of raising awareness about one’s natural patrimony. | V.G. 231 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ROSHINI KEMPADOO Guyana, Born 1970 www.roshinikempadoo.co.uk [email protected] Roshini Kempadoo is a London based photographer, media artist, and Reader in Media Practice at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of East London. She has degrees in visual communications and in photographic studies and was awarded her Ph.D. from Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 2008. Kempadoo’s most recent exhibitions include: Staging Citizenship: Cultural Rights in the Americas, 7th Encounter, at the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (2009); Liminal: A Question of Position, Rivington Place, London (2008); Art & Emancipation In Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario And His Worlds, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, United States (2007); and the retrospective exhibition Roshini Kempadoo Works: 1990–2004, Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, London (2004). She has lectured and published extensively in several art fields, including multimedia 232 Virtual Exiles, Frontline, Backyards, 2000 Digital photograph 39 x 60 cm 15 5/8 x 23 5/8 in JACQUELINE HELENA LACASA IGUNE Virtual Exiles, the Color Museum, 2000 Digital photograph 39 x 60 cm 15 5/8 x 23 5/8 in artworks, trans-cultural documentary practice, and Diaspora art. Roshini Kempadoo has been creating photographs and multimedia artwork that interpret and re-imagine contemporary and historical everyday experiences. Her current works are created using digital techniques such as montage, layering, narration, and interactive installations. Her works are inflected by a long career of documenting Caribbean communities, events, rights issues, and individuals. As someone from the Caribbean Diaspora, she is particularly interested in exploring the relations between British and Caribbean cultures, in particular those of Guyana and Trinidad. Through the use of photographs, audio recordings, music, interactivity and networked environments, Roshini offers an autobiographical and situated perspective on important issues of representation that often remain unseen, underrepresented, or unspoken. | E.E. Proyecto La Uruguaya / The Uruguayan Woman project, 2009-2010 Photograph 100 x 147 cm 57 7/8 x 39 3/8 in Jacqueline Lacasa’s works rescues the sense of desolation that comes with defeat. But now the battlefield does not have the bodies of dead soldiers as did The Paraguayan Woman, painted by Juan Manuel Blanes in 1880. The Uruguayan Woman is filled instead with signs of other wars whose casualties are not people but the spaces that Uruguayan art and culture used to occupy at the height of modernity. Everything in this painting points to a life that is past and gone. Within this new “battlefield,” the place of women and memory is a question that maintains all its validity and urgency. In Lacasa’s work, the woman is the one alive amid the desolation, with her reflective and somewhat defiant look. What is the space given to a woman Uruguay, Born 1970 [email protected] in our society? The same passive one Blanes gave her as a desolate surviving victim? Lacasa’s The Uruguayan Woman takes on these questions with the attitude of an activist, an icon who is herself capable of playing with disaster and the remnants of a modernity that is definitely gone. | J.L. 233 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ROSSANA LACAYO Nicaragua, Born 1956 www.rossanablogspot.com [email protected] Rossana Lacayo is a photograher, screenwriter, producer, and movie director who lives and works in Nicaragua. She graduated with a major in economics from Duke University, in the United States, in 1979. In 1980 she became newsreel producer and documentary director at the Nicaraguan National Film Institute (INCINE). In 2003 she started Gota Films, an independent film production company, of which she is currently president. Lacayo’s photographic work has been shown in individual and group exhibits in Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Spain, United States, Holland, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Since 1984, she has authored or contributed to several books on photography published in Nicaragua and abroad. She has also received numerous awards for her work in film, video, and photography. Her works can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; the Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; 234 La Chureca 9 / The Garbage Dump 9, 2009-2010 Digital photograph 130 x 100 cm 51 x 39 3/8 in NICOLÁS LAMAS La Chureca 6 / The Garbage Dump 6, 2009-2010 Digital photograph 130 x 100 cm 51 x 39 3/8 in La Chureca 5 / The Garbage Dump 5, 2009-2010 Digital photograph 130 x 100 cm 51 x 39 3/8 in the Latin American Art Museum, Long Beach, California; the Hugo Palma Ibarra Foundation and the Ortiz Gurdián Foundation, Nicaragua. Lacayo’s works are focused on La Chureca, Managua’s large garbage dump. La Chureca is the biggest source of environmental pollution in Central America; it has been a space in constant metamorphosis, from damp to animal farm, and from animal farm to endless shantytown. Lacayo’s photographs show entire families that have worked and lived for years in this gigantic dump, which is their only means of subsistence. This is, however, about to change. The dump will soon disappear. New homes will be built on the space it presently occupies, along with a recycling plant where these families should find decent work. The neighboring lake will have pure water again. Eventually, the entire population of Managua will undergo the same transformation.| V.G.D. Diorama, 2009 Ink injection on cotton paper 200 x 52 cm 78 3/4 x 20 1/2 in Nicolás Lamas studied fine arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima (1998-2002). He also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona (2002-2005). Since 1997 he has been exhibiting his work in Spain and Peru, receiving several honorable mentions and grant awards in Barcelona and Valencia, Spain. “Since 2003, most of my work has been focused on exploring the formal and conceptual parameters of painting itself,” says Nicolás Lamas. Taking the connections of painting with sculpture, architecture, and design as a point of departure, he produces individual works that recreate poetic dialogues and interactions between art and reality. In these works, Lamas seeks not to conceal but Peru, Born 1980 nicolas-lamas.blogspot.com [email protected] to reveal the artificial nature of all the rational devices with which knowledge has been constructed in Modernity. He questions the logic of systems of collection and classification like those used in museums of natural history. In Diorama, as in many of his works, Lamas subverts the typical museum diorama, taking to the point of absurdity the requirement to contextualize specimens by simulating their natural environment. He questions our conventional understanding of nature, exposing the artifice implicit in any system of representation of living forms and offering to viewers an experience of the continuous clash and fusion of nature and artifice, of fiction and reality. | F.A. / I.A. 235 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe PATRICIO LARRAMBEBERE Argentina, Born 1968 [email protected] At first sight, this piece seems to be the most bizarre work in the entire exhibit. An artist from the southernmost country in Latin America has painted Guyana as did the 19th century traveling painters. His style is undoubtedly descriptive and testimonial; it evokes the relation the old European watercolorists established with the strange or exotic environment of the New World. But has Patricio 236 Cuffy Monument by Richard Moore, 2008 Watercolor on paper 56 x 42 cm 22 x 16 1/2 in Larrambebere actually ever been in Guyana? This artist’s purpose is precisely to produce that doubt. In fact, he has made his watercolors on the basis of photographs. The aim of his imaginary ‘voyage’ is “to counteract the flattened reality of Internet,” the homogenization and the erasing of differences that virtual tourism brings about. Now, for Larrambebere, his works above all seek to make their viewer ask, “Why Guyana?” To which he answers, because Guyana is a symbol of the paradoxes and failures of British colonialism. Because Guyana is the place where Socialism won in free elections for the first time in the Americas, just at the beginning of the Cold War (1953) and the anti-communist paranoia that reigned for decades. Because it is “the land of the six peoples,” a country where more than 50% of the population descends from old immigrants who came from India to work as cheap labor after the abolition of slavery, and where Portuguese and Chinese immigrants also arrived. Because in its interior Guyana has a virgin Amazon forest with Amerindians, and a seacoast under sea level that is protected by a wall and a system of dikes built by the Dutch in the 18th century. Because Guyana is a country with brilliant politicians and intellectuals who are now dead or living in Canada, New York, or London, or in the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean. Because Guyana is a place no one talks about. | V.G. JAIME LEE LOY War in the Home Landscape, 2008 Photograph 145 x 92 cm 57 1/16 x 36 1/4 in Jaime Lee Loy describes herself as an artist and a writer who sometimes uses a camera. A University of West Indies graduate in literature and visual arts, Lee Loy is the recipient of international awards from several prestigious foundations, including the Vermont Studio Center (Vermont), The Reed Foundation (New York), and The Prince Claus Fund (The Netherlands). Lee Loy is a published author, an independent filmmaker, and a multimedia artist represented in art shows in the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States since 2001. The overarching theme of Lee Loy’s recent creative expressions has been the “domestic space as a site of war.” The Unfamiliar series deals with the view of home not as a refuge from the struggles and injustices of the outside world, as it is usually depicted, but as a space of hostility and violence. About her work, Lee Loy has said, “I often engage the domestic space and the female body as a site of contention, focusing my concerns on the psychological, the negotiations of identity and gender, and the Trinidad and Tobago, Born 1980 www.jaimeleeloy.blogspot.com [email protected] fragility/impermanence of familiar spaces. My current body of work, The Unfamiliar, extends to photography, video, installation, and performance.” The compositions that constitute The Unfamiliar are made of objects culturally associated with women and the domestic sphere—flower petals, clam shells, silverware—studded with nails or pins that partially destroy them or render them impossible to handle. The series is focused on domesticity and what Lee Loy calls the paradox of familiarity: “That you may love and fear synonymously, and that you may know yet not know synonymously. That you can identify in some ways, yet in others feel so alienated.” | E.G. / I.A. 237 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JUAN RAMÓN LEMUS GABRIEL LEMA Uruguay, Born 1972 www.gabriellema.com [email protected] Gabriel Lema studied in Uruguay at the Municipal School of Visual Arts of Maldonado (1996-1998), at the Nelson Ramos Center for Artistic Expression in Montevideo (1997-1999), and at the National School of Fine Arts (1998- 2006). He has taken workshops with artists Matilde Marín, Rimer Cardillo, and Carrie Reichardt. His works are held in private and public collections in Germany, Spain, Denmark, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay. He has shown his works in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Uruguay, including Entre la Utópica Ciudad del Sol y la Tópica de los Asentamientos [Between the Utopian City of the Sun and the Rhetoric of Settlements], Maldonado (2001); Triángulo [Triangle] at the Goethe Institute, Montevideo (2002); Laccus, at 238 Principio de identidad / Principle of Identity, 2008 Woodcut and acrylic on canvas 184 x 1694 cm 75 1/2 x 667 in the Marte Upmarket Gallery, Montevideo (2005); Obra Grafíca [Graphic Work], at El Molino Warehouse, Pueblo Garzón (2010); and at the JonesVicente Gallery, La Barra (2011). He was also part of the itinerant exhibition Borde Sur [Southern Border] that opened in Montevideo in 2009. Woodcut is the foundation of Gabriel Lema’s artistic work: its attributes and technique—wood grain and texture, ink density, relief printing—allow him to create shadowy narratives about obscure characters. His works play with the contrast between heavy, dark printing inks and vivid acrylic colors. Series such as Principio de Identidad [Principle of Identity] dramatize the necessary and complex relations between repetition, recognition, and identity. | A.O. Mirar el piso / Looking at the ground, 2010 Mixed media Juan Ramón Lemus was Deputy Director of the Leon Trotsky House Museum, in México City, from 1994 to 1997. During those same years, he participated in workshops on painting, drawing, and performance and in seminars on art criticism and art history. He was also Director of Museums in Chiapas and visual arts coordinator at Chiapas State Council for Culture and the Arts, from 1998 to 2001. He has been awarded artist residencies at Atelier Presse Papier and Atelier Silex, in Trois Rivières, Canada. He has shown his work in numerous galleries, museums, and international events in Argentina, Austria, Canada, Lithuania, Mexico, Romania, and Venezuela. His works are part of public and private collections in Argentina, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Serbia, Ukraine, Uruguay, and Venezuela. At a moment when the application of technology to art is on the rise and when artists maintain a great emotional distance towards their work, Lemus chooses an intimate treatment of the organic materials he uses and to which he imparts a definitely expressive charge. He often creates series, which respond better to his experimental attitude and his interest in registering in his art pieces the relentless march of time. This is evident in his use of discarded objects, fragments of everything, pieces of hair, dentures, glass beads— all of them reminders of our frail and ephemeral human nature. Mexico, Born 1961 www.artmajeur.com/juanramonlemus [email protected] Mirar el piso [Looking at the Ground] is a series of images that combine digital graphics, sculpture, and installation, in which Lemus explores the nature and value of shoes as extensions of our feet and as autonomous objects. Shoes are part of our equipment for life; they contribute to define what is “feminine” or “masculine;” they speak, establishing a constant dialogue with our feet. For this series, Lemus started with photographic images he took of all kinds, shapes, and colors of shoes made of different materials. He then abstracted the shoes from their original contexts and used digital means and techniques like collage in order to place the shoes in new and unusual contexts. Mirar el piso seeks to reveal how simple, common objects may have the power to portray many aspects of daily life. | I.A. 239 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CONSUELO LEWIN ADRIANA LESTIDO Argentina, Born 1955 www.adrianalestido.com.ar [email protected] In its determination to hold absolute control over the media, the last military dictatorship in Argentina took documentary photography as one of its main targets. This is why its rebirth during the process of democratic reopening initiated in 1983 was so significant. On the one hand, photographers registered social demonstrations and the repossession of public space. On the other, they documented spaces of confinement such as mental institutions, hospitals, and orphanages. Adriana Lestido did so from a feminine perspective; it mattered to her to find out how 240 La Salsera / The Salsa Dance Hall, 1992 Photography 58 x 38 cm 22 3/8 x 15 in maternal and love relations sustain themselves in extreme situations, how affection survives helplessness, jail, and injustice. The importance of Lestido’s work lies not only in its thematic relevance, but also in its ethical commitment. She identifies inner need as the only legitimate impulse for her work. “I look from the perspective of my own life,” she states. For what matters is not to point to the life of “others” but to recognize, in some situations, the essence of the emotions and conflicts of all human beings. | V.G. Fragmentos de luz natural / Fragments of Natural Light, 2009 Broken tempered glass and glass paint on 3 pieces of wood 180 x 120 cm, 70 7/8 x 47 1/4 in (each) The long-lived genre of landscape painting allows Consuelo Lewin to show that the pictorial image does not function as a direct representation of the real but always refers to other images, that is, to definite visual and cultural codes. Long before the era of technology, Dante had said that nature was God’s work of art. We cannot perceive anything that is not already shot through with an artifice of representation. For humans, there is no nature outside of the culturally conceived “landscape.” For Lewin, painting is not a neutral medium in which to produce images but an empirical field in which to investigate the properties of painting itself. At a distance we may see a landscape, but up close figures get blurred, and we are able to appreciate the work as transmuted matter—in Lewin’s case, the shiny and edgy texture of broken glass, and the brilliant pigments. Chile, Born 1970 [email protected] This de-familiarization does not derive from the forms of abstract art but is rather the result of experimenting with the image through certain production procedures. In one of her series of works, Lewin investigated the changing color of the sky by taking a vast collection of photographs, whose ample range of chromatic tonalities she materialized by immersing them in pigmented resin solutions. Lastly, she inserted texts across those images, since language—culture—is the point at which matter crystallizes into a recognizable image. Beginning with postwar gestural, or action painting, the idea emerged that the artist could spontaneously relate to his materials, without interference from the conventions of representation. Lewin, in contrast, challenges us to wonder under what cultural conditions the materiality of canvas and pigments is effectively transformed into a painting. | V.G. 241 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JORGE LINARES Guatemala, Born 1986 www.jorge-linares.blogspot.com [email protected] Jorge Linares belongs to the most recent generation of artists graduating from the National School of Visual Arts (ENAP) of Guatemala. His formative period included studying under Daniel Schaffer in his DS2 workshop in 2002-2004 and under Moisés Barrios in Fundación Contexto [Context Foundation] in 2004, both in Guatemala City. He is currently studying architecture at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala. Linares has shown his work in several venues, including the Paiz Art Biennial, Guatemala (2004, 2006); the Metropolitan Cultural Center, in Guatemala City (2008); and Ex It, a traveling exhibition shown throughout Central America (2010). 242 MARÍA DEL CARMEN LINARES RADILLO Puente Belize / Belize Bridge, 2009 Installation: serigraphy on 50 metal balls Variable dimensions In parts of Latin America, urban centers have grown in unplanned and uncontrolled ways. In his visual explorations, Linares registers the rapid development and demographic growth of Guatemala City. According to him, “throughout its history, photography has created the illusion of depth.” Starting with a photographic record of the city’s landscape, Linares explores all the formal aspects of photography and resorts to manual and industrial processes in search of that third dimension, taking as a point of departure a twodimensional image and transforming it into a photographic volume. | V.G.D. Té-ayuda 1 / Tea-Help 1, 2008 Digital photograph 30 x 20 cm 11 3/4 x 8 in María del Carmen Linares Radillo graduated in visual arts with a major in photography from the University of Guadalajara. She also studied at the Universidad Mayor de Santiago de Chile. Her works have been exhibited at the Center for Modern Art in Guadalajara and at the Posada del Corregidor Gallery in Santiago de Chile. Teapots and the brewing of tea, meant to heal people in places affected by pollution and Mexico, Born 1984 www.flickr.com/photos/krmen [email protected] plagued by war, are Linares Radillo’s favorite subjects. In her photos, a teapot is placed on different stages that represent a drought, or war, or the Arctic. In every one of those contexts, the teapot is a symbol of the transformational power that resides within each human being. | V.G.D. 243 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe HEW LOCKE United Kingdom-Guyana, Born 1959 www.hewlocke.net [email protected] Hew Locke was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in Guyana. He obtained a degree in sculpture from The Royal College, London. Locke’s sculptures, installations, and drawings are featured in major private and museum collections, including The Tate Gallery, The Victoria & Albert Museum, The British Museum, and The Henry Moore Institute, in the United Kingdom, and The 244 FABRICIO LOPEZ Republique Chinoise / Chinese Republic, 2009 Acrylic paint and felt pen on paper 37 x 30 cm 14 1/2 x 12 in Brooklyn Museum and The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, in the United States. Throughout his creative career Locke has explored the theme of "the dynamics of power and power shift." His artworks are often a reflection on the moral choices people make in order to gain and maintain power, on the ways in which power slips away from those endowed with it, and on the material remains left behind by the power they once held. To create his Shares series, Locke collected share certificates of the governments and companies “which no longer exist or have undergone transformation through takeovers, bankruptcy, nationalization … or other changes” and made drawings or painted on them. According to Locke, the resulting work “obscures in some cases the underlying information and in others draws our attention to it.” In doing so, his work presents a pictorial commentary on the cultural, economic, social, and environmental changes brought about by the issuers of these shares. While the shares’ power to bring prosperity to some and devastation to others is gone, the changes they document are often perpetuated into “more recent global events.” | E.G. Estuário / Estuary, 2008-2009 Color woodcut on Kozo paper 220 x 480 cm 86 5/8 x 189 in Fabricio Lopez has shown his works in several group exhibitions in Brazil, Canada, and Europe; he has also had solo exhibitions at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo [Pinacotheca of the State of São Paulo] and at the São Paulo Cultural Center, both in São Paulo. Since 2007 Lopez has established his studio in the historic port city of Santos. The possibility to use the large space of a maritime warehouse Brazil, Born 1977 www.ateliesantos.blogspot.com www.fabriciolopez.wordpress.com has allowed him to expand his research on color, light, and large-scale format production. Lopez’s research on light and color has convinced him of their nature as “structural components of the image.” For Lopez, color is something “that escapes even the intuition of the artist.” He sees color as an element that “invades space with so much autonomy of values and directions” that it may take a “life of its own.” | F.R. / E.G. 245 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe DANIEL MACHADO MINERVA LÓPEZ Mexico, Born 1985 [email protected] Minerva López studied at the Centro Morelense de las Artes [CMAEM, Morelos Center for the Arts] in Mexico. She has been the recipient of two scholarships from the Morelos Stimulus Program for Artistic Creation and Development. Together with Luis Nava and René Godínez, she curated an exhibition entitled Bearsation at the Museum of the city of Cuernavaca. López’s work focuses on the transition between health and illness, in people as well as in society and the environment. She is intrigued with the process of illness and the way in which it alters physical and psychological functions. She sees that process as a metaphor for the changes our 246 Infectado / Infected, 2009 Textile 150 x 200 x 15 cm 59 x 78 3/4 x 5 7/8 in world inevitably undergoes. Experimenting with different materials and techniques has become for her a new language for communicating with other people. She explains: “I grew up watching my mother knit for hours, trying to cope with her divorce, her illness, her disability. She seemed to be knitting her own memories, interlocking them into patterns. I learned to knit as a way of communicating with my mother without words. My organism responds to certain stimuli—I talk fast when I get nervous, my stomach hurts when I feel uncomfortable. When you are sick, you have to control your organism, interpret your own symptoms, and take action.” | V.G.D. La Familia Rodelú / The Rodelú Family, (series of 15 photographs), 2002-2007 Lambda print, with acid free mat 35 x 28 cm 14 x 11 in (each) Daniel Machado has studied architecture and design at the School of Architecture at the University of the Republic (UDELAR) in Montevideo, photography at the Foto Club Uruguayo [Uruguayan Photo Club], and lighting design at the School of Photography GrisArt in Barcelona. His works are held in private and public collections in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, France, Italy, Luxemburg, Spain, the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. He has participated in group and solo exhibitions, including Allea Foto-Latina in France (2004); Photo Imaging Expo in Japan (2006); Piernas y Bandoneón [Legs and Concertina] in Argentina (2008); and La Cárcel Rodelú [The Rodelú Jail] in Japan (2010). Daniel Machado’s Rodelú Project is an exercise in photojournalism that documents social and Uruguay, Born 1973 www.danielmachado.com.uy [email protected] political changes undergone by urban life in Uruguay as they affect personal relations and dynamics within the family and in places like a hospital or a jail. At present, the project includes three series: The Rodelú Hospital, The Rodelú Jail, and The Rodelú Family. The latter examines the gradual wear and tear of family bonds within the traditional Uruguayan middle class, originally made up of European immigrants who settled in the country at the end of the 19th century. For a long time, middle class families were the cultural and economic engine of Uruguay. Daniel Machado´s works chronicles the decline in recent decades of the quality of family life and of other important social and public institutions in the country. | A.O. 247 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe SEBASTIÁN MAHALUF LUCÍA MADRIZ Costa Rica, Born 1973 www.luciamadriz.com [email protected] Lucía Madriz is a painter and installation and video artist who lives and works in San José, Costa Rica. She has received several awards, including an honorary mention in the First Central American Emerging Artists Exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in San José (2003) as well as a scholarship for foreign artists from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to study at the Hochschule für Gestaltung [School of Art and Design], in Karlsruhe (2003-2004). She has shown her works in national and international venues, including the Badischer Kunstverein [Baden Art Association] in Karlsruhe, Germany (2004); the 3rd Auckland Triennial, New Zealand (2007); the X Havana Biennial (2009); and the Museum of Art and Design in New York (2010). Madriz views art as a tool for understanding the 248 Eat, 2008 Grain installation on a wood base 200 x 300 cm 78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in world. Her works go beyond the experimenting with different techniques: they explore the poetic, political, and emotional dimensions of visual arts. She is passionately interested in the preservation of our natural environment. Against the sense of impotence and doom communicated by the mass media, Madriz insists that “the world” is a construction that begins with our personal and communal habits and attitudes. In her works she seeks to affirm the intimate ties that exists between us humans and the Earth we inhabit. | V.G.D. Geometría dinámica / Dynamic Geometry, 2009 Installation Variable dimensions “Geometry is the method of study for my artistic production,” —says Sebastián Mahaluf—. First, with respect to form, geometry acts as a bridge between retinal sensations and the internal structure that all things possess. Second, geometry is a tool to apprehend space, a bridge between the objective measurements of a place and the experience of perceiving it, which is conditioned by concrete circumstances of position, distance, point of view, trajectory, et cetera.” The Minimalist movement that arose in the United States in the ‘60s, partly under the influence of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, removed geometry from the idealist and universalist tradition and used it as a means of concrete intervention in the actual space of an exhibit. Mahaluf’s work re-signifies in today’s terms this long and fruitful trend of contemporary art. Chile, Born 1973 [email protected] www.mahaluf.net “Space becomes measurable matter, but a matter that is, at the same time, intangible, ethereal.” Mahaluf takes the simplest geometrical resources as a point of departure for making evident the complexity of the perceptual experience. His works combine a high degree of precision and solidity with elusive, illusory effects. Transparencies, floating effects, illusions of expansion and contraction, sparkles, vibrations, reversibility of figure and background are some of his procedures and resources. It is only natural that an artist interested in the phenomenology of perception should resort to the practice of performance. In the case of Mahaluf, he usually places on the scene a body whose freedom of movement must engage in a dialogue with the restrictions of a concrete space and a concrete situation. The performer’s gestures of movement and repose dialectically play with matter and its changing states. | V.G. 249 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe PAULINE MARCELLE NUNA MANGIANTE Argentina, Born 1962 www.nunamangiante.com [email protected] Although “pure” photography, based in the act of shooting, prevailed between the decades of the ‘20s and the ‘60s, in its long history the photographic image has given room to creators who put the accent on preproduction (scene setting) or in post-production (manual or digital treatment of the image). The critic Nicolas Bourriaud wrote in the ‘90s that post-production is the determining aspect of contemporary art. The old pictorial photographers used to enhance their images by treating them with chemicals in the laboratory. Using a very different technique, 250 Jarrón 01 / Vase 01, 2006 Graphite on photograph (1/5) 184 x 86 cm 72 1/2 x 33 7/8 in Cómoda / Chest of Drawers, 2009 Graphite on photograph (1/5) 119 x 152 cm 46 7/8 x 59 3/4 in Jarrón 03 / Vase 03, 2006 Graphite on photograph (1/5) 184 x 86 cm 72 1/2 x 33 7/8 in Nuna Mangiante intervenes in her images by applying dense layers of graphite on the photographic copy. This graphite—dark and shiny—is present in a thick surface that competes with the illusion of volume and the realistic quality of photography. In recent years, Mangiante has devoted herself to a small repertoire of objects that evoke luxury, like carved mahogany furniture or fine porcelain vases. It is hard to determine whether the dense graphite is there to enhance or to drown their elegance. | V.G. Bend Down Boutique 25, 2010 Oil on canvas 120 x 160 cm 47 1/4 x 63 in Born in the Commonwealth of Dominica, Pauline Marcelle grew up in both Dominica and New York. She obtained her master of Fine Arts in painting, graphics, and film animation from the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria; subsequently she held a residency at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa. Marcelle’s work has been exhibited in Austria, Dominica, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. She lives and works in Dominica and Austria. The Bend Down Boutique series was inspired by Marcelle’s visit to the coastal areas of Ghana where she witnessed the culture of consumption of second-hand clothes, donated by Western Europeans and Americans to charities and later re-sold by local street vendors. “Piles of T-shirts, trousers, fisherman’s nets, shoes, ropes, and contents of the ocean formed sculptural bodies of sea-washed debris on the beach,” she wrote. The stands selling second-hand clothes are dubbed ‘boutiques’ for the associations with the clothes’ prestigious origin. In reality, they look more like piles of clothes heaped up on the ground. Digital pictures of these piles that Marcelle took on the beaches in Ghana and printed on canvas served as a basis for the paintings in her Bend Dominica, Born 1964 www.paulinemarcelle.com [email protected] Down Boutique series. While examining the fates and destinations of pieces of clothing discarded by Western Europeans and Americans and reused in cultures where people wish to emulate them, Marcelle’s works bring, in the words of Curator Andile Magengelele, “challenging questions about the effects of globalization and the meaning of the West in the developing world.” | E.G. 251 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe EMILIO MARÍN AND NICOLÁS RUPCICH ANDREA MÁRMOL Chile, Born 1972 and 1981 www.oficinadearquitectura.cl/blog/ www.nicolasrupcich.com [email protected] / [email protected] Big Pool is a video project that has as a referent the largest swimming pool in the world, situated in San Alfonso del Mar, Algarrobo, on the Chilean seacoast. The pool, which was opened in December 2006, is over a thousand meters long; it contains two hundred million liters of water, and its size is the equivalent of six thousand domestic swimming pools. It has been registered in the Guinness Book of World Records, where it stands out as a construction unique in the world. The piscine is an artificial landscape. The paradisiacal beach experience that it is intended to simulate has an already mediated image as its reference. Palm trees, crystalline water, and white sand constitute a convention about an “ideal” place 252 Big Pool, 2009 Video Duration: 00:06:30 that is exploited by travel agencies, hotel chains, and general advertising. Rupcich and Marín’s video registers this large swimming pool with shots that focus on evidence of its artifice, using framings that make visible the structures of its construction, its placement, and its relation to its geographical surroundings. When Baudrillard speaks of hyperreality to refer to the fact that the simulacrum has occupied the place of reality, he points out that we have naturalized the existence of that hyperreality, overlooking its artificial origin. As Rupcich and Marín’s video replicates the visual sign that this swimming pool is, it mediates once again something—the pool—that had as its origin an already mediated image. The video may thus become an accomplice in deception or, on the contrary, it may reveal to the attentive eye the “scene of the crime” that has been carefully concealed. | V.G. Secuencia 4 / Sequence 4, 2010 Video Duration: 00:02:41 Variable projection dimensions Andrea Mármol Juárez studied graphic arts and design at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala between 2006 and 2007. She has taught painting workshops at ESPIRA/La Espora in Managua, as well as engraving classes at Spain’s Cultural Center in Guatemala City. In 2009 she participated in the group project entitled La Forma Equivalente [The Equivalent Form], organized by ESPIRA/La Espora. She is currently working with Lester Mead in joint projects that use intervention and photorealism as resources. Her works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions in different venues, including the University of San Carlos (2006) and the National Guatemala, Born 1988 www.artelafabrica.com [email protected] Museum of Modern Art (2006), both in Guatemala City; the Museum of Man, in Tegucigalpa (2008); TEOR/éTica, in San José (2008); ESPIRA/ La Espora, in Managua (2008); and the National Show ARGR Renault, in Paris (2009). In her work, Mármol focuses on her autobiographical trajectory, prompted by insistent questions she has raised in her search for self-knowledge. The combination of videos of her childhood with new images allows her to express the complex and changing feelings brought up by the transformations that have shaped her quest for maturity and self-discovery. | V.G.D. 253 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe FABIANO MARQUES Brazil, Born 1970 [email protected] Fabiano Marques has built a strange boat that floats on the water but does not look like any regular boat. In fact, the boat looks more like those sculptures or assemblages that are made out of pieces of the most diverse objects. During the post-war period, Charles Chamberlain was one of the initiators of the so-called “junk art” in the United States: his rescuing of junk and trash carried an implicit redeeming vision of all that a thriving country was leaving on its margins. In the favelas [shanty towns] of Brazil, people build their shacks with anything they find at hand, practicing a true art of “assemblage.” In that context it makes sense that the object built by Marques should not simply be an aesthetic piece 254 Mar Pequeño / Small Sea, 2003 Video Duration: 00:36:00 but also a functional one, a kind of raft as improvised as the shacks in the favelas. Fabiano Marques boards his boat and embarks on a navigation adventure, one that is marked by constant mishaps. The boat moves ahead laboriously and then stops; its pieces come apart and fall off. Marques jumps into the water, rescues one piece, tries to put it back in place; another piece falls off, he jumps again into the water, rescues it, tries to put it back in place, and so forth and so on. Yet, what could be a failure in terms of navigation becomes a success in terms of art, an art no longer understood as the application of a procedure for constructing an object but as the ability to transform obstacles into means. Da adversidade vivemos [from adversity we live], said the great Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. Marques’ work poetically alludes to a form of life that persists, in spite of its fragility, against powerful forces that it cannot control. | V.G. Katatay (Madre-Hijo) / Katatay (Mother-Child), 2002-2010 Digital photograph diptych mounted in lit box 122 x 92 cm 48 x 36 1/4 in ALFREDO HÉCTOR MÁRQUEZ ESPINOZA Márquez Espinoza studied architecture and urbanism at the Ricardo Palma University in Lima. Since 1984 he works as a self-taught artist, experimenting with media photography, collage, installations, and videos. His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, including the III Havana Biennial, Cuba (1989); the II National Biennial of Lima (2000) and the III Ibero-American Art Biennial of Lima (2002), Peru; the I Encuentro entre dos Mares [First Encounter Between Two Seas], São Paulo-Valencia Biennial, Valencia, Spain (2007); and the First Bronx Latin American Biennial, United States (2008). The increasing violence that seems to engulf Latin America’s political life has been responsible for countless cases of attacks on civil society. Peru, Born 1963 www.madeinperu.com.pe [email protected] Every faction, no matter its political or ideological affiliation, seems to find rhetorical ways to justify its own violence. And regular citizens, who are often ignored, end up paying for the mistakes of their leaders. In this context, Márquez Espinoza approaches what he calls “the real world” with his “artistic fictions,” in which artifice serves to reveal a hidden face of reality. Using photography as a documentary tool, he captures images of anonymous people in order to question the official stories. His photographs reclaim the dignity of situations and events that often lose their human dimension when “facts” are recounted. Márquez Espinoza demands that the dignity inherent in every human being be restored. | F.A 255 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CECILIA MATTOS Uruguay, Born 1958 www.kitbasico.com.uy [email protected] Cecilia Mattos initiated her artistic training in the United States in 1975. In 1984 she received a grant from the Organization of American States to study craft design in Argentina, where she worked under artists Eduardo Médici, Alicia Díaz Rinaldi, and Marcela Montes. In 1990, Mattos returned to Montevideo to study sculpture under Professor Alfredo Torres. Since 1998, she has devoted herself primarily to photography and writing. She has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions in Uruguay, including Dibujos [Drawings] in 1981; Historias de Fin de Siglo [Turn of the Century Stories] 256 BONIFACIO MAXIA CUTZAL Quién carga con el muerto /Who Will Put Up With the Dead Body, 2006 Three-dimensional composition: oil on cardboard and wood 75 x 120 x 40 cm 29 1/2 x 47 1/4 x 15 3/4 in in 1993; and Cielo y Tierra [Earth and Sky] in 2001. She also exhibited in Itinerarios [Itineraries] at the Botín Foundation in México in 1999. Mattos has been heavily influenced by Uruguayan painter Pedro Figari. Her three-dimensional compositions in wood, cardboard, and maché paper are very close to Figari’s work in form and subject matter. Like Figari, Mattos depicts historical scenes of Uruguayan urban working class life as well as the solitude of the gauchos in the countryside. Figari’s French postimpressionist style translates into Mattos’ rich color palette. | A.O. Horchata y Piña / Horchata and Pineapple, 2002 Oil on wood 100 x 80 cm 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in Bonifacio Maxia Cutzal is a self-taught artist born in San Juan Comalapa, a municipality well known for its large community of original indigenous painters. He has shown his work in numerous national and international venues, including the Efraín Recinos Gallery (2000), El Túnel Gallery (2001), and the National Coffee Association (2003, 2004, 2005), all three in Guatemala City; art galleries in Denmark (1997), Norway (1997), and Spain (2000); and the XII Paiz Art Biennial (2000), where he was awarded an honorary mention. Guatemala, Born 1962 Maxia Cutzal’s works represent different aspects of his country’s traditional peasant culture: doves that become symbols of peace in Guatemala; instruments used by construction workers that are transformed into objects of religious practice; scenes depicting all varieties of street vendors typical of small country towns. In his canvases, Maxia Cutzal recreates daily life, transmuting it into a rich universe filled with energy and vitality. | V.G.D. 257 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe NATASHA MCIVER ALEXANDRA MCCORMICK Colombia, Born 1978 alexandramccormick.wordpress.com [email protected] Alexandra McCormick was born in the city of Cúcuta, Colombia, in 1978, and graduated from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University School of Fine Arts, in Bogotá. As an artist she has been active in the collective undertakings of groups such as Entrada Libre [Free Admission] and Estamos en Obra [We Are at Work]. Her work was also included in the New Names exhibition at the Luis Ángel Arango Library of the Colombia Central Bank in Bogotá. With a size 10 shoe used as a planter, McCormick’s sympathetic photograph of one of her objects allows for multiple readings associated with the ideas of boundaries, territoriality, and ownership, issues that have been subverted in 258 El territorio / The Territory, 2001/2010 Photograph, object 25 x 18 cm 9 3/4 x 7 in today’s transnational world. Since the early ‘40s, Colombia has been marked by a trail of violence that started in the countryside as a result of the inability of partisan political groups to coexist peacefully. That violence has changed, spilling into urban centers with the constant addition of new actors like terrorists, narco-guerrillas, drug smugglers, urban criminal gangs, and organized crime groups, all of which share the same goal of controlling strategic segments of territory, from the countryside to neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities. This is not a problem exclusive to Colombia; it affects other countries in Latin America. | F.A. Lucha Libre I / Free Wrestling I, 2009 Intervened fabric 111 x 120 cm 43 3/4 x 47 1/4 in Born in England in 1968, Natasha McIver has been based in Costa Rica for the past 18 years. She has shown her works in solo and group exhibitions in Costa Rica since 1998. Her work has developed along conceptual lines as she has increasingly felt the need to examine the changes she has witnessed during the time she has lived in Costa Rica, as well as the changes she herself has gone through. Lucha Libre [Free Wrestling] is a series in which McIver takes fabrics used to decorate hotels with tropical themes and intervenes them with acrylic paint, in a move that “fuses the image United Kingdom - Costa Rica, Born 1968 [email protected] [email protected] of the tropical paradise with a look behind the scenes.” Her work as a translator for different United Nations offices has made her better aware of the exploitation of the environment in tropical countries. Lucha Libre seeks to show, in McIver’s words, “the interplay and contradictions between the official image of Costa Rica that is projected abroad and the reality behind that image.” For McIver, what she has seen happening in Costa Rica constitutes a microcosm of what is happening to our planet as a whole, both from the point of view of our environment and of our values and attitudes. | V.G.D. / I.A. 259 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CATALINA MENA ÜRMÉNYI Chile, Born 1971 [email protected] The installations of Chilean artist Catalina Mena Ürményi feel very familiar and at the same time subtly strange. This is precisely the effect intended by Mena Ürményi, who understands art as a questioning of all the things that have been naturalized by habit in our daily life. Mena Ürményi is attuned to Surrealism that, taking up again the Freudian notion of the uncanny, insisted that the imagination had to exert its central role over the common things that surround us. But in the era of Surrealism, the critique of false morality and bourgeois customs did not include the place of women in society. It is from this “feminine” perspective that Mena, as a female Latin American artist, articulates her vision of everyday spaces. 260 Hilando Fino / Fine Threading, 2009 Life size installation: mixed technique in cotton, cord polyvinyl, acetate, and film adherent, suspended by a fine thread nailed to the ceiling. 243 x 160 x 240 cm 95 3/4 x 63 x 94 1/2 in Unlike the Surrealists, who submitted their objects to unexpected associations with other incongruous objects, in Hilando fino [Fine Threading] the artist submits her objects to delicate displacements. First, there is the mark or vestige: the concrete dining set gives way to a replica in actual size. This replica is the mark of the absence of an object that—like all furniture—alludes, in turn, to an absent body. Then there is the translation into a different kind of material: braided cotton yarn, which adds—as the title indicates—a tissue, a weaving, the thread of a story. Finally, there is the fact that the objects are suspended in the air, which suggest a suspension of all our certainties. A domain that habit has made almost invisible is now charged with magic and also with fragility: the domestic space, with its strong reference to women, yet shared by every person. In her work, Mena Ürményi alludes to the transience and fragility of the stereotypes that regulate and control not only the place of women but also that of every member of society. | V.G. ERICK ADOLFO MENCHÚ VÁSQUEZ Superhéroes / Superheroes (1 template), 2010 Cutout acrylic Variable sizes Urbanidad / Urbanity (5 template), 2010 Cutout acrylic Variable sizes Erick Adolfo Menchú Vásquez is a member of the collective La Torana, and one of the founding members of the Taller Experimental de Gráfica [Experimental Graphic Workshop] created in Guatemala in 2008. He studied architecture at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and engraving at La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, in Mexico City. Menchú has shown his work in different venues, including El Attico Gallery, in 2007 and 2009, and the XVI Paiz Art Biennial, in 2008, in Guatemala; and the VI Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial, in 2008. Among the prizes and awards he has received are an honorable mention at the Primer Salón de Grabado [First Engraving Show], in Guatemala (2005); second place at the National Competition of Concrete Art Guatemala, Born 1977 www.artelafabrica.com [email protected] in La Antigua, Guatemala (2008); and the collective first place with La Torana at the XVI Paiz Art Biennial (2008). Menchú’s works are a series of architectural templates for technical drawing, in which architectural or geometric shapes have been replaced by drawings and scenes of daily life in Latin American cities, icons of consumerism, and characters with different backgrounds. These templates are designed so people can use them to trace with pencil on paper new scenarios and situations of their own liking, enabling them to define relations and contexts according to their own ideas, thereby effecting changes in their immediate reality and proposing new alternatives for the coexistence of the elements that shape their experience. | V.G.D. 261 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GABY MESSINA Argentina, Born 1971 www.gabymessina.com [email protected] In Spanish, when adjectives can refer to two different, unrelated concepts, their position determines their meaning. “Una persona grande” does not mean the same as “una gran persona.” In the first case the adjective denotes physical size or age; in the second, it refers to moral character or stature. Gaby Messina plays with this possibility of double meaning in her series Grandes Mujeres [Great/Large Women]. This ambiguity inflects 262 LAURA MESSING Galina, 2004 Photograph 50 x 70 cm 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in the ethical and aesthetic sense of her portraits. In them, elderly women are shown with the youthful vitality that is conferred on them by the realm of their life, their profession, their passions, and their dreams. To these meanings, which the women reveal in their dialog with Messina, she adds the harmony of the scene setting, the magic of lighting, and the vigor of color. These portraits also pay homage to the classical tradition of the genre. In them, the artist does not seek to provoke but simply to create a meeting space where the universe of the person being photographed can also be construed as a path of inquiry and personal expression. Messina confesses she is only interested in “those persons who can relate to me and to their own freedom.” | V.G. Belvedere 4, 2010 Photograph 100 x 50 cm 39 3/8 x 19 3/4 in In Laura Messing’s own words, “Deforestation accounts for the devastation of a third of the forests that exist since the appearance of our species on earth. This most important alteration of the earth’s surface was achieved in a time period that, at the scale of the universe, is barely the wink of an eye. This fact, in its own right, bears witness to the tremendous plundering capacity of human beings. During the last four years, more than 2,500,000 acres of forest have been lost in Argentina alone. Argentina, Born 1953 www.lauramessing.com.ar [email protected] Indiscriminate felling of trees and intentional wild fires are wiping out our natural patrimony.” Belvedere is a series of photographs that intends to shed light on diverse forests in the territory of Argentina that bear witness to all that still subsists and all that is on its way to extinction. “I understand art—Messing says—as a way of creating awareness and encouraging a change of behavior with regard to our planet, a change that is vital to future generations.” | V.G. / I.A. 263 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MAURICIO MIRANDA GUTIÉRREZ JORGE MIÑO Argentina, Born 1973 www.jorgeminio.com [email protected] Sin título, (de la serie Formas propias) / Without Title, (from the Proper Froms series), 2009 Digital photograph 150 x 100 cm 59 x 39 3/8 in Con fines de lucro / For Profit, 2010 Performance Costa Rica, Born 1984 [email protected] No: N o 001 001 BONO B ONO 2 2010 01 10 0 C ON NFI FINE ES S CONFINES DE D E LUCRO LUCRO RO CER C ERT E RTIF RT FIC ICA AD ADO DO CERTIFICADO DE D ED EPÓ SITO ÓS DEPÓSITO AP PLAZO LA AZ ZO $7 $ 70 70 00 0.00 $ $7 700 0..00 $ $7 700 00.00 $700. 0.0000 $ $7 700.00 $700 00.00 LUGAR LLU UGAR DE DE E EMISIÓN: MISIÓN: SAN SAN JJOSÉ, OSÉ, COSTA COSTA TA RICA RIIC CA C A FFE EC CH HA: 1 DE DE FEBRERO FFE EBRERO DEL DE D EL 2010 201 10 0 FECHA: LLA AS SU UMA D E:: S E ETECIENTOS D ÓLARES AMERICANOS AMERICAN NO OS SUMA DE: SETECIENTOS DÓLARES POR P OR EL EL D DE DEPÓSITO EPÓ E PÓSI SITO D DE E SETECIENTOS SE S ETECIENTO OS S D DÓLARES ÓLA AR RES A AM AMERICANOS MERIC ME CA ANOS AN OS E EN N LLAS AS A ARCAS RCAS D DE E ““LA LA FFUNDACIÓN” UNDACIÓ UN IÓN” A ONCE MESES DE PRODUCCIÓN PROYECTO O NCE M ESES PLAZO PLAZO A PARTIR PART PA RTIR D E LLA A FFECHA ECHA D DE E EMISIÓN, EMISIÓN, N, FFINANCIARÁ INANCIARÁ LLA AP RODUCCIÓN DEL DEL P ROYEC CTTO DE 2010 QUE EN ““CONFINES CONFINES D E LUCRO” LUCRO” 2 010 Q UE E N SU SU PRIMERA PR P RIMERA EDICIÓN ED E DICIÓN TRABAJARÁ TR RA ABAJ AJARÁ CON CO C ON LA LA CURADORA CURADORA TAMARA TAMA TA AR RA DÍAZ BRINGAS BAJO ELL TTEMA DE CON ARTISTAS VALLECILLOS, ALICIA D ÍAZ B RINGAS B AJO E AJ EMA ““CONFINES CONFIIN NE ES SD E LLUCRO” UCRO” Y C ON O N LLOS OS A RTISTA TAS ((ADÁN ADÁN VA V ALLECILLOS, S, A LICIA ZAMORA, Z AM A MO OR RA, ANGEL ANG A NGEL P PO POYÓN, OYÓN ÓN, D DALIA ALIA C CH CHÉVEZ, HÉ ÉV VE V EZ, JJOAQUÍN OAQUÍN RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUE EZ Z D DEL EL PA P PASO, ASO, M MAURICIO AURICIIO O ESQUIVEL, ESQUIVEL, MIMIAN HSU.). ARTISTAS EFECTUARÁN DE RIGOR RESPALDAR VALOR MI M IMIAN H SU. U ). LOS LOS A RTISTA RT TAS E FEC CTTUARÁN UNA UNA OBRA OB BR RA IINÉDITA NÉDITA TA D ER IGOR Y A R ESPA PALDAR EL EL VA V ALO OR R DE DE LOS BONOS CON OBRA RELACIONADA CON ANTERIOR PRODUCIDA EN SERIE DE CIEN LLO OS B ONOS C ON OTRA OTRA O BRA R ELACIONADA C CO ON LLA AA NTERIOR PERO PERO P RODUCID DA AE NS ER RIIE D EC IE EN N EJEMPLARES. GARANTIZANDOLE UN CONJUNTO E EJ JEMPLARES. G ARANTIZAN ND DOLE A LLOS OS INVERSIONISTAS INVERSIO ON NIIS STA TAS U N EJEMPLAR EJEMPLAR EN EN C ONJ NJUNTO DEL DE ELL CATÁLOGO CAT ATÁL ÁLOG GO O 20 2 010 D E ““CONFINES CONFINES D E LLUCRO” UC U CR RO” O” 2010 DE DE FFirma irma Director Director LA LA FUNDACIÓN FUNDACIÓN Contacto: C ont n actto o: Tels. Tels. +506-2438-1022 Te +506-2438-1022 / +506-8302-3091 +506-83 30 022 3091 Email Email lafundacion.confi[email protected] lafunda dacion.confinesdelucro@gmail. l com At the end of 2000, Jorge Miño began to photograph public buildings covered by scaffolds, in that transitory condition brought about by remodeling and preservation work for as long as it lasts. No matter how complex and mysterious that provisional appearance may be, we can foresee with almost complete accuracy its structural truth, because the external aspect and the meaning of the patrimony of a country tend to remain unchanged. The complex scaffoldings are there to perform a predetermined and precise function. But Miño, in 264 contrast, sees them as “forms in their own right.” He not only uncovers their abstract aesthetic value as compositions made out of lines, planes, and volume, but he also unveils them as metaphors of some form of freedom, of a possibility that something “we have not yet seen” may make itself manifest. These inert structures function in Miño’s images as strange living organisms that, against the unchangeable meaning of a monument, set up the idea of an identity under construction, with room for change and imagination. | V.G. Mauricio Miranda Gutiérrez studied architecture, fine arts, and visual communication at the University of Costa Rica between 2003 and 2006. He also studied behavioral art under Tania Bruguera at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte [Advanced Institute of Art] in 2009. He has shown his work in numerous venues, including the University of Costa Rica (2004); the X Havana Biennial (2009); and the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2010). Although Miranda’s works are rather heterogeneous, a common trait that distinguishes all of them is their neo-conceptual appearance. His main interest is the critique of society from a ludic perspective. His source of inspiration is everyday life, from which he strives to recreate objects, actions, and situations that allow him to question social and individual behaviors and all kinds of institutions, including art itself. | V.G.D. 265 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe PETRONILO MIZA LÓPEZ Guatemala, Born 1964 Petronilo Miza López is a self-taught artist, who has shown his works in several venues, in Maracaibo, Venezuela (2004) and in his native Guatemala: Café Berna, in Quetzaltenango (1999); the Alliance Française, in Antigua (2000); El Rancho Grande Gallery, in Panajachel (2005); and Hotel-Museo Casa Santo Domingo, in Antigua (2005). 266 Sin título / Untitled, 2002 Watercolor on paper 75 x 50 cm 29 1/2 x 19 1/4 in Miza López belongs to a group of artists who reside in the rural area of San Juan Comalapa and have developed an extremely sophisticated body of work—mixing elements of Conceptualism with unique formal traits. Several years ago, artists from San Juan Comalapa such as Juan Fernando, Ángel Poyón, Edgar Calel, and Petronilo Miza López drew attention from curators and art experts, who started including their works in national and international events. These artists have grown to be a staple of contemporary Latin American art, shown in important venues throughout the world. Miza López’s works, with their strongly contemporary language and techniques, are proof of the artificiality of any separation between the art produced in large, globalized cities, and the one coming from rural areas. | V.G.D. McDonalds, (from the Colonial Wall series), 2009 Ink on paper 65 x 65 cm 25 1/2 x 25 1/2 in Apple, (from the Colonial Wall series), 2009 Ink on paper 65 x 65 cm 25 1/2 x 25 1/2 in Louis Vuitton, (from the Colonial Wall series), 2009 Ink on paper 65 x 65 cm 25 1/2 x 25 1/2 in Nike, (from the Colonial Wall series), 2009 Ink on paper 65 x 65 cm 25 1/2 x 25 1/2 in MARCO MOJICA Although at first glance this series of drawings by Marco Mojica may look straight-forward and selfexplanatory, it is worth noting that it has been inspired by Colombian artist David Manzur’s Homenaje a una pared colonial [Homage to a Colonial Wall], a drawing that is part of the permanent collection of the Museo Bolivariano de Arte Contemporáneo [Bolivarian Museum of Contemporary Art], in the coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia. Manzur’s drawing, which depicts several flies resting on a wall, is one in a large series the artist started in the mid ‘70s. Colombia, Born 1976 www.marcomojica.com [email protected] Mojica has reinterpreted the cultural implications of Manzur’s drawing, reformulating the meaning of “colonial” in a country that was first under the rule of Spain and is today dominated by the presence of transnational corporations. The symbols and products of those corporations seem to have the power to define people’s humanity. In Mojica’s series, the short lived, fleeting existence of the flies adds an element of irony to the whole, in reference to a country whose destiny appears to have been for several centuries at the discretion of successive, more powerful players. | F.A. 267 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe NORMAN GABRIEL MORALES Guatemala, Born 1979 www.artelafabrica.com [email protected] Norman Gabriel Morales studied architecture at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala. He also attended a lithography workshop at La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving in Mexico City. He has exhibited his works in four solo shows in different venues in Guatemala, including El Attico Gallery, in 2006 and 2009, and the Metropolitan Cultural Center, in 2007. He has been awarded several honors, including a Glifo de Plata [Silver Glyph] at the Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala (1998); and honorable mention at La Joven Estampa [The Young Engraver], at Casa de las Américas, in Havana (2007). Morales is a co-founder of the Taller Experimental de Gráfica Guatemala [Guatemala 268 Anatomia Comparativa / Comparative Anatomy, 2009 Natural cork and wood 120 x 170 cm 47 1/4 x 66 7/8 in Experimental Graphic Workshop] and a member of the art collective “La Torana,” in which he has worked intensely, participating in numerous exhibitions and winning several group awards. Morales explores silent, uninhabited spaces, practicing an archeology of the human body simultaneously remote and primeval. Many of his works are based on the iconographies of anatomical studies and old book illustrations. His analytical abilities and his sharp synthetic vision are translated into works that make visible the control of reason over emotion. | V.G.A. RONALD MORÁN Hogar, dulce hogar / Home, Sweet Home Installation, objects covered by synthetic fiber Ronald Morán studied fine arts at the National Arts Center (CONART) and applied arts and graphic design at the Dr. José Matías Delgado University, both in El Salvador. He has shown his works in galleries and museums in Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Italy, Mexico, and Uruguay. He has participated in numerous international art exhibitions, including the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (1998, 2000, 2002); the II Prague (2005), the VII Venice (2007), and the IV Beijing (2010) biennials. His works are part of public and private collections in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Italy. Hogar, dulce hogar [Home, Sweet Home] is conceived as an intervention of a physical space that recreates the day-to-day realities in which domestic violence takes place in our societies. Domestic violence is often inflicted using everyday objects, which then become symbols of physical and psychological abuse. Morán covers kitchen utensils, furniture, floors, walls, and ceilings with polyester foam. This material imitates the texture and feel of cotton and swathes objects in an innocuous shade of white that seems to El Salvador, Born 1972 www.ronaldmoran.com [email protected] infuse them with the qualities of simplicity, purity, and extreme softness. Through the play of appearances, the concept of aggression is given an ironic twist. A kitchen, an everyday room in any home, is transformed into a dreamlike environment, but one that evokes the padded cells of mental institutions, where patients with severe illnesses like schizophrenia used to be locked in. | V.G.D. 269 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ALEX MOREL United States - Dominican Republic, Born 1973 www.alexmorel.net [email protected] Alex Morel was born in New York in 1973 of Dominican parents and was raised in both the United States and the Dominican Republic. He graduated from St. John’s University with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1997. He participated in the fulltime program in General Studies in Photography at New York’s International Center of Photography during the academic year 19941995, and obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University in 2001. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1995. In 2002 he received the Eduardo León Jiménez Biennial Award from the Centro León of 270 PILAR MORENO RAYMUNDO Portrait Of Drouvillard #1 (A Large Camp of Displaced Citizens in Port au Prince), 2010 Photograph Digital pigment print on archival paper 109 x 83 cm 43 x 33 in the Dominican Republic. In 2005, the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland presented the first solo survey of his work. Since 2000, Morel has taught visual arts and photography in several institutions of higher education. He has also been a visiting artist-in-residence at several educational and cultural institutions in the United States and abroad. Since the late ‘90s Morel’s work has been examining contemporary life in the Caribbean region. The earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th 2010 left the country in an unprecedented situation where not only lives and infrastructures crumbled, but the psyche of the Haitian people was shaken to the core. At the same time, the earthquake brought together the cooperation of the global community in a rarely seen and promising way. Alex Morel has chronicled all aspect of the quake aftermath. As a theme in Alex Morel’s Haiti photographs, change is present in the completely altered landscape of the city of Port-au-Prince and the dislocations in the lives of its citizens, in the painful and inevitable reconstruction of a country and of countless lives, and in the new hope and possibilities that arise from the dust after the quake. | E.E. Dollna presenta: nos mudamos (moving in/moving out) Casco Viejo / Dollna presents: we are moving (moving in/moving out). Casco Viejo, 2009 Series of three drawings Ink and watercolor on paper 30.5 x 45.8 cm 12 x 18 1/16 in Pilar Moreno Raymundo was originally a clinical psychiatrist who became increasingly interested in art and eventually decided to limit her medical practice and devote herself mainly to painting and drawing. She has shown her works in numerous art galleries throughout Panama and at Spain’s Cultural Center in Guatemala City. Moreno Raymundo’s works are a reflection on the gap between rich and poor that has been widening in Panama in the last few years. Residents of the poorest neighborhoods have been forced to move out of their homes to give way to gigantic developments intended for an elite. In the name of a supposed progress, the country’s natural resources Panama, Born 1966 [email protected] are being sold to hydroelectric power plants and mining companies, with the consequent displacement of many farmers and indigenous communities. The drawings in the series Dollna presenta [Dollna Presents] capture some of the facets of this relocation. The doll Dollna pays an homage of sorts to Donna Conlon, an artist based in Panama, whose work reflects a relentless concern for environmental issues. Through a series of drawings, Dollna presents the two sides of the dislocations produced by big urban developments, showing both the people who are moving in and those who are forced to move out. | V.G.D. 271 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe EDUARD MORENO SÁNCHEZ Colombia, Born 1975 www.colarte.arts.co/colarte/conspintores.asp?idartista=15705 [email protected] Eduard Moreno Sánchez received a master’s degree in fine arts with a major in painting from the National University of Colombia with a major in painting; later he received a scholarship to continue his studies in art history at the Instituto Superior de Arte de Madrid [Madrid Advanced Institute of Art]. He is currently a professor at the School of Fine Arts of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá. The poetic images created by Moreno Sánchez resemble a familiar scene in major Colombian cities: piles of fruits for sale neatly arranged and set up on a sidewalk or displayed in a variety of rudimentary vehicles that violence-displaced families place 272 Abundancia de escasez No. 3 / Abundance of Scarcity No. 3, 2009 Gold leaf and oil on charcoal paper 70 x 150 cm 27 1/2 x 59 in Abundancia de escasez No. 5 / Abundance of Scarcity No. 5, 2009 Gold leaf and oil on charcoal paper 70 x 150 cm 27 1/2 x 59 in at busy street intersections. According to Moreno Sánchez, this scene represents the claim of these families for the land they lost to illegal groups, which is also a claim for justice and dignity, in addition to their right to make a living. The families that have been stripped of their land migrate to the cities in search of food and shelter, which the government seems unable to provide in sufficient quantity. This situation aggravates the problems that already afflict the entire population, including the uncontrolled deterioration of urban public spaces for which city authorities have not yet found any adequate solution. | F.A. RAS MOSERA After shock, (For Haiti), 2010 Acrylic on canvas 122 x 155 cm 48 x 61 in Ras Mosera was born in St. Lucia and lived in Guadeloupe before settling in French St. Martin as a jazz musician and painter. A self-taught artist, Mosera has exhibited since 2001 in the United States, Hawaii, The Netherlands, St. Martin, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, and Curaçao. His artworks are featured in private and public collections in several countries, including the United States, Israel, and France. Stylistically, Mosera’s works belong to the Dadaist, Expressionist, and early Surrealist traditions originated in Europe. In turn, the characters in what the artist himself calls his “humanscapes” are people of African descent. The backgrounds, divided by the horizon line into a sky-blue upper part and a sand-yellow lower part, and his brilliant color palette remind us that the scenes take place in the Caribbean. Located at the intersection of Caribbean, African, and European cultures, Mosera’s work is inspired by issues and values that matter to people worldwide. “I am a keen observer of social conditions and of the natural process,” he has said. “Like good and bad weather, paintings can be pretty nice or disturbing, and it is not good to be always nice, it is not effective.” St Lucia - St Martin, , Born 1955 www.rasmosera.net [email protected] Mosera’s works dedicated to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti express both the trauma of the devastation it brought about and the hope for recovery. This simultaneous presence of trauma and hope is evident in After Shock, with its convergence of partially painted-over newspaper headlines reporting on the earthquake, the figure of the child seeking protection with the woman who holds her head in anguish, the cheerful dog in the foreground, and the child riding a bicycle in the background. | E.G. 273 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KISHAN MUNROE Bahamas, Born 1980 www.kishanmunroe.com [email protected] Born in Nassau, Bahamas, Kishan Munroe graduated with honors from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, United States. His works have been exhibited in the Caribbean and the United States and are held in many public and private collections. Munroe has been the recipient of grants and awards from the Endowment for the Performing Arts of the Bahamas, The Central Bank of the Bahamas, the Nancie Mattice Award from Nashville’s Dangenart Gallery, and the Combined Merit Fellowship at the Savannah College of Art and Design. On August 20, 2008, Munroe embarked on a multi-media expedition for his project entitled The Universal Human Experience. With paintbrush and camera in hand, Munroe planned an ambitious trek 274 LAVAR MUNROE Prelude, 2010 Giclée print on photo paper 48 x 33 cm 19 x 13 in around the world. He planned to gather and tell, through his images, the many and varied stories of human struggles and triumphs he would learn or witness in his journey, in the hope of finding a common ground amid all our differences. About his art more generally, Munroe says: “Inherent to my process is the devotion towards recreating realistic portrayals of individuals close to me, while capturing their respective presence and unique physical characteristics/lineaments”. Those portrayals “are intimate and sentimental perceptions of those I thought I knew.” Munroe is well aware of the complex cultural traditions— West African, African, and European—that converge in him and in his work: “From the classical masters throughout the centuries I adopt their earthy palette and technical style. This overwhelming influence of European traditions on my region allows me to lay claim to it as integral to my expression. I have brought these worlds together, Africa and Europe into dialogue, to invariably develop content and composition, to tell the story not only of Caribbean Diaspora but also of the human experience.” | E.E. Afterlife Under a Blue Moon, 2010 Graphite drawing, digital color and Ultra Chrome K3 ink on velvet paper (ed. 1/1) 102 x 66 cm 40 1/2 x 26 1/4 in Lavar Munroe studied illustration at The Savannah College of Art and Design, in the United States. He has participated in exhibitions of illustration and fine arts in Italy, Ethiopia, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, and the United States. His works are in prominent public and private collections in the Bahamas, Switzerland, and the States. Munroe’s artworks take us to an imaginative colorful and richly patterned world of cosmic settings inhabited by mannerist monsters, a world that reflects the artist’s “layered thoughts, narratives, and messages.” Influenced by the ever-changing technology of making and distributing art, Munroe’s body of work is a creative exploration in combining traditional techniques and today’s digital innovations. He begins by drawing his pictures by hand, then he scans them, and he colors them digitally, using his own original color layering method. Although the digitally processed images can be easily multiplied, Munroe limits his output to a single image, in order to challenge the tradition of printmaking, whose function has always been to provide multiple copies of the same image. The artist has said “My work should stand alone, like a traditional painting or drawing. In my opinion, the notion of multiple copies carries a devaluing Bahamas, Born 1982 www.lavar-munroe.com [email protected] connotation in both a monetary sense and an artistic sense. My decision to explore digital media has more to do with the process of making my art, than with reproducing my individual pieces. I want my work to remain singular, solitary, and infertile.” | E.G. 275 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ARTEMIO NARRO Mexico, Born 1976 [email protected] Artemio Narro has shown his works in several international venues, including the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco (2005); the New Delhi Public Art Festival (2005); and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía [Queen Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art] in Madrid (2005). In the works included in About Change, Narro appropriates the graphic and semiotic structure of mandalas to create a personal order based on elements of his daily surroundings. Latin America has been scourged by a growing wave of violence 276 SACHIYO NISHIMURA Foot, 2009 Digital impression 53 x 53 cm 20 7/8 x 20 7/8 in Colt, 2009 Digital impression 53 x 53 cm 20 7/8 x 20 7/8 in that has spread from the drug-dealing mobs to everyday people’s life. Narro’s mandalas, made of weapons—machetes, AKA-47 rifles, 9mm guns, hand grenades—play the same role as mandalas in Buddhism, but in a new cosmic structure sprung from a well-defined contemporary mythology. These are figures that represent the metaphysical order of a specific society in a specific moment. Upon closer examination, the details intermingled in these mandalas appear as filigrees of a new age, reflecting a spirituality under which even religious proceedings are inflected by violence. | V.G.D. Paisajes Ficción / Fiction Landscapes, 2007 Photograph, C-type print 145 x 105 cm 57 x 41 1/4 in “There are certain spaces in the cities, located both inside and at the outskirts, that have become almost imperceptible to the casual viewer. Even though they are part of most urban circuits around the world, these non-places coexist anonymously, unrelated to any specific local identity, looking quite similar to one another,” says Sachiyo Nishimura. Against the indifference or the ease with which we have become accustomed to perceiving the city in our daily journeyings, Sachiyo Nishimura aspires to rescue in her photographs the city as Calvino saw it, as “a tight wrapping of signs.” In Nishimura’s images, spaces—particularly those ostensibly devoid of interest—acquire relief. This is not achieved by the usual operations of artistic capture, which turns its objects into something that surprises the viewer by means of unusual focusing angles or distances. Nishimura subjects her images to a process of analytic fragmentation and re-constitution, similar to that of a scientific experiment. “On this kind of landscape, my work proposes a recomposition of the photographic images, using diverse graphic-manipulation operations that are based on arbitrary mathematical formulae of my own design. Then I extend the recomposed images Chile, Born 1978 www.snishimura.com [email protected] in a photomontage that sets out a reconstruction of the urban space.” Simple elements (wires, rail tracks, towers, highways) form intricate, repetitive webs. Initially, geometry seems to be the product of an automatic register, devoid of all human presence, but in fact Nishimura’s photographic works are like musical scores: they articulate a definite sense of rhythm and a particular sensibility. Nishimura argues that this new, more complex version of the city is more significant than the mimetic representation of the real referent. Although fictional, her cityscapes show spaces that are not transformed by an evasive imagination but pierced by an inquisitive look. Thus, these fictions also become a form of knowledge. | V.G. 277 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe NIKOLAI NOEL Trinidad and Tobago, Born 1976 www.nikolainoelprojects.blogspot.com [email protected] Nikolai Noel studied graphic design at the John Donaldson Technical Institute in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and visual arts at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus. He has worked on video and animation. Since 2002, he has participated in collective and solo shows, presenting his paintings and graphic works as well as his installations and public art project. Noel’s paintings and drawings represented in About Change are inspired by 18th century history and imagery. Several of them feature FrançoisDominique Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803), the leader of the Haitian Revolution. In Toussaint et 278 LEANDRO NUÑEZ Toussaint et George, 2010 Graphite, linseed oil, acrylic on wood 25.4 x 20.32 cm 10 x 8 in George (2010), Toussaint’s portrait, his face painted with a coarse granular paste-like mixture of graphite powder and linseed oil, appears next to the portrait of George Washington (1732-1799). The two images are separated by a straight vertical line that serves as a border between two different-looking backgrounds, a structure that prompts us to consider that the independence of Haiti from French colonial rule (1791-1804) took place in the same period as the independence of the United States from Great Britain (1776). This may invite us, in turn, to take a broader, and deeper, look at the history of the New World. Noel has described his recent work as “a quest to conflate and collapse New World history into a fantastic mythology that might deny much of our concepts of identity or reaffirm and intensify them. It is a very solemn personal investigation of my feelings toward my past.” | E.G. / I.A. Espacio Cambiario / Exchange Space, 2008 Artificial life 70 x 70 x 90 cm 27 5/8 x 27 5/8 x 35 3/8 in From the start, Leandro Nuñez’s training and work have combined artistic languages and technical disciplines such as systems engineering. He is one of the few Argentine artists who have understood that true electronic art does not imply merely an art created with electronic means but requires an artist capable of reflecting on the conditions of our present technologized world. As French curator Nicholas Bourriaud remarked, “Art forces us to become aware of the modes of production and the human relations brought about by the techniques of the time.” Leandro Nuñez creates systems of artificial life, often from robotic entities whose behavior can be influenced by spectators’ intervention. His installations seduce by their technical virtuosity and bring about a ludic pleasure in the viewer. But they usually deal with charged issues, like political violence in Argentine history or, in the case of Espacio Cambiario [Exchange Space], the relation between the behavior of the financial market and the innate aggressiveness of certain animal species. In Nuñez’s works, we must pay attention not only to the meaning of the subject being represented, Argentina, Born 1975 www.leonunez.com.ar [email protected] but also to the sense that emanates from the technical procedures used. For art there are no neutral materials. “In most of my works I use free, low-tech software. This decision—explains the artist— addresses the difference in technology distribution between first world countries and the countries of Latin America." | V.G. 279 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JORGE OQUELI Honduras, Born 1974 [email protected] Jorge Oqueli graduated from the National School of Fine Arts of Honduras in 1994. He also studied at the National School of Fine Arts and the Escuela Casa del Artista [Artist School House] in San José, Costa Rica. He is currently studying philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. His work has been shown in numerous collective exhibitions, among them Unión utópica: Primera muestra de arte virtual centroamericano [Utopian Union: First Exhibition of Central American Virtual Art], Santo Domingo Gallery, Managua; the Contemporary Museum of Art and Design (MADC), Costa Rica (2007); Anthology of Visual Arts of Honduras, National Gallery of Art, Tegucigalpa (2006 y 2007); Bloque de Nieve. Artistas hondureños del 280 CHARO OQUET Kung fu, 2008 Photograph 50 x 40 cm 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in siglo XXI [Block of Snow, Honduran Artists of the 21st Century], MADC, Costa Rica (2006), and Centro: Artistas centroamericanos [Center: Central American Artists], Gráfica Gallery, San José, Costa Rica (2007). According to Oqueli, the core of his work is the idea of embracing change as hope, as a promise of life: “Though we may not have enough evidence that we are building ‘a better world for all,’ we refuse to accept misfortune as our destiny. Even in the remotest corners of the planet, every person aspires to be free and fulfilled; we all want to leave behind a worthy memory, an honorable legacy, a path we would not be ashamed for others to retrace. We seek to enrich the meaning of what it is to be human.” In 2004, Oqueli’s work won the Single Award of the Salón Nacional de Pintura [National Painting Exhibition], Honduran Institute of Inter American Culture. Since 2007 he has organized and participated in different projects of public art in his country. | V.G.D. From the Seduction series, 2004-2009 Mixed media collage and acrylic on canvas 101 x 76 cm 40 x 30 in Charo Oquet holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Florida International University. Today she is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist. She has received several fellowships, including the Florida State Artists Fellowship, the Florida Consortium 2005 Visual and Media Artist Fellowship, and the Creative Capital Grants. She has exhibited in multiple solo and group shows, and her works are represented in museum collections in the United States and abroad. Having lived in eight cities and four countries, Oquet produces work influenced by experiences that one could define as nomadic. This background allows her to create what she calls “hybrid expressions of space/place and individual/community.” Oquet examines ideas of movement and travel through the lens of a native of the Caribbean interested in popular culture. According to Oquet, the intention of her work “is to express my spirituality, the feeling Dominican Republic, Born 1952 www.charooquet.com [email protected] of collectivity, the unity of reality and of all beings in society.” After years of working as a painter, she has recently devoted herself to working with new media and installations. | A.O. 281 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe PAULA OTEGUI ANDREA OSTERA Argentina, Born 1967 www.andrea-ostera.blogspot.com [email protected] In Andrea Ostera’s own words, “The Typographic Project series emerges precisely when things need to be accounted for, numbered, classified. They demand submission to the strict format of a catalogue with its arbitrary ordering of elements that are invariably beyond us and seem inexhaustible. I undertake, then, taxonomic, minimally sentimental, adventures. I try capricious orderings that are always unstable, always susceptible to a change in their premises, a modification of their criteria. Letters and numbers appear as forms that assign meaning, as useful tools for systematization, highly 282 S.T. (papelitos 3 (slips of paper 3), from the Thypografic Project series / S.T. (slips of paper), 2006 Photograph C-Print 60 x 40 cm 23 5/8 x 15 3/4 in valuable for a collector’s vocation. Unexpectedly, at an imprecise moment, typography reveals itself and loses neutrality. The font abandons the letters and becomes something else: it imposes itself as an artifact; it occupies the foreground of the photographic image with a weight of its own. Images become a typographic repertoire that shuns words and inscribes itself in a language of a different order. Between typography as a sign that names and gives meaning and that of typography as an image, as a signifier devoid of its signified, the work comes and goes, hesitates, transforms itself.” | V.G. A veces me transformo en pájaro / Sometimes I Change into a Bird, 2009 Painting 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in Paula Otegui’s paintings are exuberant. She composes fantastic landscapes with an accumulation of complex and dissimilar elements. She creates the image of a lush and incomprehensible natural world in continued metamorphosis, with territories that emerge out of the free play of the brushstroke and that, even in small scale, seem unfathomable because they have no limits or frontiers to contain them. In those strange spaces, there often are little human figures, immersed in the uncertain course of mutating masses and forces, as if they were inhabitants of an unknown, wild world that knowledge and technology have not yet tamed. In the middle of these landscapes, which do not relate to any known geography, human undertakings appear tiny, scattered, fragmented, and in the end useless and vain. Otegui represents a metaphor of the relation between human culture and a nature distant from the optimism of science and progress, a return, almost, to the mythic original chaos before the divine act of giving it order. Everything there suffers from transience. Each painting resembles the Argentina, Born 1974 www.pabellon4.com [email protected] moment in which a photograph is taken: freed from the circumstantial stillness of the canvas, the pictorial matter and all human works and relations would continue to be in motion, threatened by destruction. These are, at bottom, scenes of a war, of a metaphysical dispute. In Otegui’s paintings the beautiful and the terrible, the decorative and the ferocious, coexist as in the stripes of a tiger. The human figures in Otegui’s paintings are moving, because they appear helpless and ignorant of the world they inhabit. And, as in Baroque painting, the viewer may became one of those figures, swept in by the painting’s hypnotic power. | V.G. 283 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe CLAUDIO PAOLASSO JULIO PANTOJA Argentina, Born 1961 www.juliopantoja.com.ar [email protected] “This work seeks to make visible the Indigenous and Creole women who leave behind their passive domestic lives to struggle against the abuses of the giant agribusinesses that raze jungles and forests in order to plant vast tracts of genetically modified soy, and that expel them and irrevocably change the conditions in which they live and the ecological balance of the land they inhabit,” says Julio Pantoja. 284 Las madres del monte 2 (Berna) / Mothers of the Forest 2 (Berna), 2007 Photograph 244 x 70 cm 96 x 27 1/2 in As the artist points out, the identity of the Mothers of the Forest is related to the environment. In his images, Pantoja fuses two traditional typologies: the landscape panoramic format, and the background curtain that old portrait artists used in their studios. Besides gathering the voices of these women fighters, Pantoja assigns them the dignity that portraiture confers and that, for a long time, was an exclusive privilege of the wealthy classes. | V.G. La insoportable levedad del ser / The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 2009 Acrylic on wood 143 x 190 cm 56 1/4 x 74 3/4 in Claudio Paolasso graduated in fine arts from the National University of Tucumán, in Argentina, in 1998. He also studied art history and painting at the University of Costa Rica in 1999. He has shown his works in national and international venues, including the University of Costa Rica, in San José (1998); Casas de Lo Matta Hall, in Santiago de Chile (2000); Atzomalli Gallery, in Oaxaca, Mexico (2003); and Allegro Gallery, in Panama (2009, 2010). Argentina-Panama, Born 1976 [email protected] Paolasso’s works draw the viewer’s attention to unlikely scenes that mix domestic interiors with beasts, cars, and other creatures or objects that stress the unreal quality of his settings. His paintings are a true reflection of his persistent desire to blend two different and apparently incompatible worlds: they reveal the coexistence of the rational and the oneiric in everyday life. | V.G.D. 285 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe MICHAEL PARCHMENT Jamaica, Born 1957 [email protected] Michael Parchment is a self-taught artist who actively exhibits, participates, and wins in Jamaican national art competitions. His creative work is inspired by timeless parables from Christian and Rastafarian mythologies, by contemporary events, such as the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York or the Olympic Games in Athens, and by 286 CECILIA PAREDES A New Beginning, 2009 Oil on hardboard 98 x 68 cm 38 x 27 in social issues, such as domestic violence or the spread of HIV. Parchment reflects on philosophical issues and important current events from the perspective of the Afro-Jamaican popular subculture. Among the African cultures that inspire his style, Ethiopian icon painting deserves to be mentioned. At the same time, Parchment’s compositions are highly imaginative, and his imagery is completely original. Parchment often uses relief cutouts: pieces of hardboard are cut in the shapes of what will become figures or objects in his compositions; each piece is painted in one or two colors, after which they are put together, like pieces of a mosaic puzzle, on a solid piece of hardboard that serves as background. Although each piece is painted, the hardboard’s rough texture remains visible under the layer of paint. A New Beginning is a story of redemption told through a reflection on the stories of Genesis, from the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise to the Flood. References to Rastafarian culture are evident in the repeated use of the colors red, yellow, and green and in the representation of Biblical characters as persons of African descent. | E.G. Both Worlds, 2010 Photo performance with body paint Lambda print mounted on aluminum 97 x 100 cm 38 3/8 x 39 3/8 in Born in Lima, Peru, Cecilia Paredes currently divides her time between Philadelphia, in the United States, and San José, in Costa Rica. She has lived away from her country of origin for more than 25 years. It is only natural that the issue of migration should be of particular concern to her. Paredes has shown her work in numerous national and international venues, including the II Sculpture Biennial in Costa Rica (1996), where she was awarded first prize; the Havana Biennial (2000); the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2002), where she was awarded first honorable mention; the Nobel Prize Center in Oslo (2007); the Italo-Latin American Institute in Rome (2009); and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010). Paredes was chosen to represent Costa Rica at the 51st Venice Biennial (2005). She was awarded an artist residency at the Banff Center in Canada (2000) and was an invited artist at the Chemin d’Art Festival in France (2006). Throughout her career, Paredes has focused on topics such as the links between human beings and the natural world and on issues that touch her more intimately, such as migration, displacement, and the difficult process of adapting to new cultural, linguistic, and social surroundings. Besides Peru-Costa Rica www.ceciliaparedes.com [email protected] drawing, she creates performances in which her own body is the prime material. She explains: “I wrap, cover, or paint my body with the same patterns as those of the material with which I am working and thus I ‘re-present’ myself as part of the material’s landscape.” In this kind of performance, Paredes enacts her identification with her surroundings. “My life,” she points out, ”has been described as nomadic. So, maybe this responds also to my need to address the process of constant relocation… In these works, aesthetics and anthropology join together to gather and register the fragments of personal and social memory.” | E.E. 287 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ANDRÉS PASINOVICH Argentina, Born 1978 www.andrespasinovich.com.ar [email protected] Close to the end of his life, Claude Monet created the series of Water Lilies, in which he took impressionist painting to a realm of intriguing, atmospheric expression. Andrés Pasinovich subjects those famous paintings to an alchemical transformation, as if a stream of dark, dense nocturnal water had gone through them. In his black ceramic installation, we can see the traces of this mysterious process, which is “evidence of a physical transformation and the reflection of a transformation of the spirit,” in the artist’s own words. 288 ESTEBAN NORMAN PASTORINO Nenúfares negros / Black Water Lilies, 2008/09 Ceramic, enamel 250 x 250 cm 98 3/8 x 98 3/8 in In an exhibition entitled Formless, curators Rosalind Krauss and Yve Alain Bois gathered a series of works that were contrary to Western art tradition: to the value of form, they opposed the formless presence of matter; to the vertical logic of the image, they opposed the horizontal dimension, where animals and plants belong. Nenúfares negros [Black Water Lilies] is part of this tradition. The dark flowers floating on the floor possess the magic and the beauty of a strange landscape, but they are also disquieting in their apparent unevenness and their indefinite borders, as if a work in progress had been suddenly frozen, and we could discover in it some sparkle of ephemeral splendor. Pasinovich speaks of a “nocturnal liquid essence”: for him, darkness is not the absence of light but a material otherness whose behavior we never completely understand. | V.G. Las Ventas #3 / The Inns #3, 2006 C-print photograph 120 x 80 cm 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in The unity of Esteban Pastorino’s work is not to be found in a given subject or in the expression of a personal style. Each one of his series shows an internal consistency between some kind of technical procedure and some definite visual features. For example, a camera attached to a kite generates aerial views with an arbitrary focusing in which a city looks like a scale model; similarly, when the film is connected to a rotating motor, the results are landscapes of an elongated format in which the vanishing points disappear. Pastorino is not interested in representing a preexisting reality, but in investigating what kind of image results from setting a given optical device into operation. That is, photography is no Argentina, Born 1972 www.estebanpastorinodiaz.com [email protected] longer a mirror but something that mediates and conditions our perceptions. He constructs his own equipment and says—probably tongue in cheek —that sometimes it is not he who makes the photographs but the equipment, that makes them on its own. This artist-inventor often draws from the curious discoveries that emerge at the fringe between science and art, like the chronophotographs of Muybridge and Marey, Edgerton’s infinitesimal exposures, Bragaglia’s photodynamism, the aerial shots of Nadar, Batut, and Lawrence, as well as those moments in which artistic imagination resorted to perspective and optical distortion, as in the works of Kertész or De Chirico. | V.G 289 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe AGUSTÍN PATIÑO Ecuador, Born 1969 [email protected] Agustín Patiño studied architecture at Cuenca State University in Ecuador and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from the Central University of Ecuador in Quito. He had his first solo exhibition in 1981, in his hometown of Cuenca, at the age of fifteen. This was the beginning of a long artistic career that has taken him to many countries around the world. Patiño has won several prizes and awards in Ecuador and the United States. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Chile, and Venezuela. His paintings are held in private and corporate collections in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Patiño currently lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, in the United States. During the last twelve years, Patiño has been working on two series of paintings concerned with Ecuador’s ecosystem: Metrópolis y Orillas [Metropolis and Margins], his most recent work, and Río Amazonas [Amazon River], to which 290 EBONY PATTERSON Enigma del Rio / Enigma of the River, 2004 Oil on cardboard 93 x 202 cm 35 13/16 x 79 1/2 in belongs Enigma del Río [Enigma of the River], the painting included in About Change. “As part of this project,” explains Patiño, “I lived four and half years with my family in the Amazon region of Ecuador known as Amazonia. I painted the jungle, the vegetation, the water, the enormous cascades, the people, the animals, the birds, and the insects of the area that make of Amazonia one of the most unique landscapes in the planet.” Patiño’s ecological curiosity has also taken him to great metropolis like New York, Quito, Madrid, Roma, Lima, Paris and Berlin. “My vision,” says the artist, “is to create paintings and large murals in different parts of the world where conversations can be started about the environment, ecology, and endangered ecosystems.” Patiño has created paintings made with infinite curiosity, full of mystery, magic, and color. They present highly imaginative and meticulously painted jungle scenes that are completely original in their splendor. | F.A. / E.E. Entourage, 2010 Photograph Digital print 306 x 204 cm 80 1/2 x 120 1/2 in Ebony Patterson studied painting at the Edna Manley College of the Visual Arts in Jamaica, where she graduated with honors in 2004. She holds a Master of in Fine Arts in printmaking and drawing from the Sam Fox College of Art and Design of Washington University in St. Louis. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Jamaica and abroad, including the National Biennial in Kingston (2008 and 2010) and Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York (2007). Patterson has held six solo exhibitions, among them Fashion OVA Style – Conversations of Beauty, Gender + the Masculine (2010) at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, California. She is currently an Assistant Professor Jamaica, Born 1981 www.seelinegallery/patterson.com www.artitup.zoomshare.com [email protected] of Painting and Drawing at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Patterson has produced a body of work titled Ganstas, Disciplez + the Doiley Boyz, in which she questions beauty standards in relation to gender, social stereotypes, and race. Part of this group of works is Entourage (2010), a tapestry that explores the practice of skin bleaching in Jamaican society within bling culture, characterized by the use of ostentatious jewelry and accessories. Her works examine bling culture “and its reconstruction of notions of machismo.” According to Patterson, “beauty, gender, body, and the grotesque are in continued dialogues within my work.”| A.O. 291 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KAREN PAZÁN Ecuador, Born 1975 www.karenpazan.blogspot.com [email protected] Born in Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1975, Karen Pazán moved to Colombia in 1985. In 1993 she was the recipient of a Youth Leadership Fellowship awarded by the Restrepo Barco Foundation. In 2001 she started her studies in photography and video at Playa Ancha University in Valparaíso, Chile. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from the University of Chile in 2005. She has shown her work in cultural centers, museums, and galleries in Chile and abroad. She has taught graphic design and multimedia at Chile’s University for the Arts, Sciences, and Communication (UNIACC). 292 MARCEL HENDRICK PINAS Hábito de Memoria / Memory Habit, 2007 Photo collage 61 x 61 cm 24 x 24 in Evoking artisan techniques dating from colonial times, Pazán’s collages highlight certain conventions that have limited the role of women in Latin American society. She uses iconic imagery to question those forms of social behavior that she believes must be changed. According to critic Mario Fonseca, the core of Pazán’s art “is the cultural confrontation between the European social model and that of Indigenous American peoples, which latently persists since the beginning of colonization.” | F.A. / E.E. Kibi wi koni / Preserve Our Knowledge, 2008 Installation: 5000 glass bottles wrapped in fabrics of different colors and pattern Marcel Hendrick Pinas graduated first of his class from the Edna Manley College in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1999. He has received numerous awards as well as international recognition for his artistic and social work in America and Europe, including the prestigious 2010 Young Global Leader Award from the World Economic Forum, in recognition of his activities and impact, which encompass “environmental, cultural, historical, entrepreneurial, leadership, social, and economic aspects.” Born in Suriname’ Marowijne district, Marcel Pinas has dedicated himself to the preservation and celebration of his Maroon cultural heritage. Maroons settlements were first established by runaway slaves in the 16th century. In 1678, the first Maroon communities settled in Suriname, a Dutch colony at the time. Mostly slaughtered by the colonial armies, the Maroons who survived in Jamaica and Suriname developed a distinctive culture rooted in West African and local Indian traditions. In the ‘80s, during Suriname’s civil war, most of the Maroon communities, including those in the Marowijne district, were attacked and forced by the then ruling military regime to flee from their villages or radically change their ways of life. The striking art of Marcel Pinas has succeeded in responding to the plea of his people by capturing international attention and focusing it on the battle to affirm the dignity of the Maroons and of their traditional values and culture. He has also eloquently shown the need to attend to the economic and Suriname, Born 1971 www.marcelpinas.com [email protected] social well being of the Maroon communities, which together with the Amerindians represent the poorest and most marginalized group in Surinamese society. Kibi wi koni [Preserve Our Knowledge] is a vibrant, poetic installation composed of 5,000 bottles, each of them representing one of 5,000 Maroons communities in Suriname. The bottles had once contained traditional Caribbean liquors, like rum, originally produced by slave labor and now symbolically absorbed into each distinctive wrapping. “Marcel’s passion is electrifying,” says Bank curator Marina Galvani. “His mission to make of the Marowijne district the art district of Suriname envisions both contemporary art installations of international stature and community-driven development projects.” Pinas is the perfect artist for a project like About Change, because he uses art “as a means to find creative solutions to social and global problems.” | I.A. 293 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe RAQUEL PODESTÁ Argentina, Born 1953 [email protected] The motifs of Raquel Podestá’s work are inspired in simple things: the love for a piece of tissue, a color, a texture; family memories and heritage; objects of daily use; children’s stories. But in the process, sometimes almost inadvertently, everything ends up touching on the bitter or dark side of domestic life. Textile procedures in Latin American art acquire new meaning when this laborious feminine craft begins to speak of the violence that takes place at home and on the street, at the precise point where the personal becomes political, where the artist’s life—the secrets she embroidered and sewed while hiding in the attic—can become meaningful to others. Some of Podestá’s works have a rather definite referential gesture, like Ajuar de novia [Bride’s 294 MARÍA TERESA PONCE Almácigo / Seedbed, 2010 Object, mixed technique 60 x 100 x 30 cm 23 5/8 x 39 3/8 x 11 3/4 in Trousseau], where cooking utensils are gathered together with dubious looking contraptions that could well be little gallows or instruments of torture, and where Podestá enunciates, in rigorous white, a rather ambiguous wedding vow. Some gigantic hanging pieces have emerged out of the accumulation of objects. We can force ourselves to take a careful look at the rich textures and shades of color, but we can’t escape the stifling effect of these pieces’ overwhelming weight. In these works, Podestá has managed to turn the force of gravity into a palpable sense of confinement. How can we escape, then? Podestá’s most recent works have found their inspiration in old children’s stories. Thus, a green climbing plant goes up a wall in its desire to reach the sky, like Jack’s magic beanstalk. Or the artist replicates on satin pillows the pile of pillows that gave proof of a princess’ unequaled sensibility. Art can promise happy endings, like those of children’s tales, but we must give ourselves time in order for that to happen. That art requires patience is perhaps the most important thing the works of this artist may teach us. | V.G. Mangrove Reforestation, 2007 Photograph 100 x 50 cm 39 3/8 x 19 3/4 in María Teresa Ponce is a photographer and artist based in Quito, Ecuador. Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions, including the Havana Biennial; The S Files at The Museo del Barrio, in New York City; Buenos Aires Photo, in Argentina; New Langton Arts, in San Franciso, California; Valoarte, in Costa Rica; the Cuenca International Art Biennial, in Ecuador; and Canal de Isabel II in Madrid, Spain. Her works are held in several public and private collections, including El Museo del Barrio and the Queens Museum of Art, both in the United States; the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), in Argentina; and the Comercio Foundation in Ecuador. Ecuador, Born 1974 www.basic.mariateresaponce.com [email protected] In the last decade, environmental groups have come to question development projects that appear to be putting Ecuador´s biodiversity at risk. Ponce´s images are intended to document the efforts of volunteers —some of them from foreign countries—to restore areas that have been devastated by the country’s shrimp farming industry. Mangrove Reforestation is part of a series of photographs in which Ponce depicts these volunteers at work replanting mangroves. Her photographs show the environmental degradation in Ecuador as well as a common effort in working on possible solutions. | F.A. / E.E. 295 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ÁNGEL POYÓN CALI ANDREA POSADA ESCOBAR Colombia, Born 1986 www.andreaposada.com [email protected] Andrea Posada Escobar was born in the town of Itaguí, near Medellín, and grew up in a house that has been occupied by five consecutive generations of her family. She spent three years studying illustration and film direction in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has worked briefly as an illustrator in Venezuela and Mexico. She was an artist-inresidence in South Korea in 2009. She is currently working on an editorial project that involves the participation of artists from around the world. 296 La viuda / The Widow, 2009 Marker on wood 50 x 62 cm 19 7/8 x 24 7⁄16 in Posada Escobar likes to improvise when expressing herself, letting her hand flow freely as she traces lines on a surface before trying to conceptualize what she is doing. Behind that free flow, however, is the motivating force of her experience as a Colombian aware of her country’s history. Her images reflect many social scars that seem never to fade away, leaving people with little choice to move on with their lives while the threat of violence is constantly hovering over their heads. | F.A. Estudios del Fracaso Medidos en Tiempo y Espacio / Studies of Failure, Measured in Time and Space, 2008 Alarm clock and drawing Variable dimensions Ángel Poyón Cali has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in numerous national and international venues, including El Attico Gallery, Guatemala (2002); the III Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2003); the Cisneros Foundation, in Miami (2007); the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2008); the Royal College of Art, in London (2009); the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, in San José (2010); and the Pontevedra Art Biennial, Spain (2010). Poyón Cali’s frame of reference is the accelerated transit and massive circulation of people that defines new ways of being and confirms new modalities of solitude and isolation in overcrowded cities. Cities have become metaphors for that fragmentation, for diversity and dispersion. City Guatemala, Born 1976 [email protected] dwellers pass each other by without exchanging so much as a look. Travelers, vagabonds, strollers, pilgrims, immigrants, exiles, expatriates, tourists— all trace their temporal or permanent paths through geographies either hostile or unrecognizable, displaced by alien tongues, by unknown objects and faces. The series entitled Estudios del Fracaso Medidos en Tiempo y Espacio [Studies of Failure, Measured in Time and Space] is a non-sequential narrative of a journey that never reaches its destination. Inspired by Piet Mondrian’s drawings, the series’ images suggest routes traveled in vain. They suggest a broken compass, without north or south, rhyme or reason, which takes us to unsettled, incongruous, and impossible spaces. | V.G.D. 297 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe FERNANDO POYÓN CALI Guatemala, Born 1979 [email protected] Fernando Poyón Cali has exhibited his works in numerous national and international venues, including the Carlos Mérida National Museum of Modern Art, in Guatemala City (2003, 2004); the Moss Kunstforening [Moss Fine Art Society], Norway (2005); the XVI Paiz Art Biennial, Guatemala (2006), where he was awarded an honor- 298 BARBARA PRÉZEAU STEPHENSON 83 libras x 112 $ / 83 pounds x $112, 2007 Mahogany carving Real size able mention; the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2006); the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2008); and the I Biennial of the Americas, in Denver, United States (2010). Poyón’s works are part of several private and public collections, including the Goya Museum of Graphic Arts, in Zaragoza, Spain, and the World Art Museum in Kanagawa, Japan. Fernando Poyón Cali’s media of choice are sculpture and engraving, and, in a lesser degree, photography. He was born in San Juan de Comalapa and is part of a well-known group of Guatemalan artists who live and work in that town. His sculptures and engravings address social, political, and cultural experiences intimately related to the rural world of his native San Juan. In many of his sculptures, Poyón fuses the techniques of the mangas (Japanese comics) with those of wood or stone carving. | V.G.D. Untitled (from the Erzulie series), 2002 Mixed media on plywood 121 x 121 cm 48 x 48 in Barbara Prézeau Stephenson is a visual artist, art historian, and curator active in promoting contemporary art from the Caribbean. She studied visual arts and art history at the University of Ottawa and art history at the Sorbonne, in Paris, while she was also attending the prestigious Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Her research into hieroglyphics led her to Senegal and subsequently to Ecuador, where she documented native cultures. Returning to Haiti in 1995, she co-founded the AfricAmericA Foundation in 1999 and became the director of the Foundation’s Cultural Centre in Port-au-Prince. Prézeau Stephenson works have been exhibited both in Haiti and internationally since 1988. The Erzulie series pays homage to traditional beliefs and graphic systems of Africa and Haiti. In these works, Prézeau Stephenson scorched in the thick layer of wet pigment some shapes reminiscent of veves, the symbols of spirits in Haitian Haiti, Born 1965 www.prezeau.com [email protected] Voodoo. Traditionally, these veves were drawn on the ground or traced with a powdered material by initiates in riturals performed to attract certain spirits. The veve in the shape of a heart is associated with Erzulie, the mythical personification of love and femininity that sometimes appears as a version of the Madonna and child, sometimes as a queen or high priestess, and sometimes as a Siren. | E.G. 299 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe DHIRADJ RAMSAMOEDJ Suriname, Born 1986 www.readytexartgallery.com/dhiradjramsamoedj [email protected] Dhiradj Ramsamoedj graduated with honors from the Nola Hatterman Art Institute in Paramaribo in 2004. In 2009 he spent three months as a guest lecturer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where he found inspiration for his present artistic development. Ramsamoedj started his artistic carrier as an oil painter, with a predilection for a palette of 300 EMILIO CLAUDIO REATO Caribbean Soldier, project drawings, 2010 Installation: textile, metal and concrete 185 x 75 x 80 cm 72 3/4 x 29 1/2 x 31 1/2 in primary dark colors and an interest in depicting the daily life of ordinary Surinamese people. In February-March, 2010, Ramsamoedj participated in Paramaribo Span I, a conversation among artists from Suriname and the Netherlands about contemporary Surinamese art and visual culture. In the exhibition that followed the conversation, Ramsamoedj presented Caribbean Soldier, his first installation. Rooted in his passionate interest in Suriname’s daily life, Caribbean Soldier transcends the limits of Surinamese—or even Caribbean—culture to become a reflection on the nature of Man in a post-industrial society and an invitation to return to an idyllic primitivism. Ramsamoedj has said, “My image of mankind after the industrial revolution is less than positive. … I am perturbed by the growing materialism and selfishness. Knowledge is chosen above emotion, the head overrules the heart. … I depict humans with large heads in which eyes, ears, and mouths are missing.” These figures “symbolically become harmless and are protected against evil.” They come close to the images of prehistoric times, “when man was still uncomplicated and unprejudiced”. | E.E. El Promotor en su Prototipo / The Promoter in His Prototype, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 183 x 196 cm 72 x 77 1/4 in The power of Emilio Claudio Reato’s paintings lies in the mutual presence of two opposite forces: on the one hand, a dispassionate, descriptive technique, in which the brushstroke seems to disregard any personal whim and submit to the detailed representation of something that already exists; on the other hand, the appearance of truly parallel worlds, where people and things seem to be accomplices in a bizarre situation that they are careful not to expose. According to photographer Marcos López, this would be the most accurate definition of magical realism, where, as in a dream, the most implausible events occur as if they were perfectly natural. Reato considers himself a worker, a “poet of real life.” In El Promotor en su Prototipo [The Promoter and His Prototype], for instance, what is that promoter doing, all dressed up, on a summer beach? What is that strange car prototype he is driving? How come none of the bathers on the beach seems surprised? For Reato, these indefinable scenes are not inventions of his mind but expressions of a mythical undercurrent of Argentine culture. According Argentina, Born 1962 www.emilioreato.com.ar [email protected] to him, his paintings are akin to those of the Mexican muralists. Perhaps that beach has something that evokes Mar del Plata, Argentina’s most representative seaside resort, which originally received only the wealthy Buenos Aires elite but in the postwar years was crowded with Peronist trade union workers. Perhaps that rare car prototype summarizes the history of Argentine industry, filled with utopias and failures. | V.G. 301 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KARINA REBATA Peru, Born 1976 www.flickr.com/photos/karina_rebata/ [email protected] Karina Rebata was born in Lima in 1976 and took up photography at the early age of eleven. In 2003 she graduated in development communications from the School of Communication Arts and Sciences of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Her photographic work has been shown in Pasen y vean [Come and See], a photography and multimedia exhibition at the Uruguayan Photo Club of Montevideo (October, 2009), in Fotos al viento [Photos in the Wind], a workshop held at the Uruguayan Photo Club in November of 2009, and at the Porto Alegre International Photography Festival in 2010. 302 Ir y volver 5: sentimiento ambiguo / To Come and Go 5: An Ambiguous Feeling, 2009 Black-and-white analog photograph 23 x 18 cm 9 x 7 in ESTEBAN RIVERO Ir y volver 1: sentimiento ambiguo / To Come and Go 1: An Ambiguous Feeling, 2009 Black-and-white analog photograph 23 x 18 cm 9 x 7 in Ir y volver 2: sentimiento ambiguo / To Come and Go 2: An Ambiguous Felling, 2009 Black-and-white analog photograph 23 x 18 cm 9 x 7 in With a sense of atmosphere and a camera that appears deceptively detached, Karina Rebata photographs specific situations that carry an intense emotional charge, either in themselves or in the stories they seem to convey. Displacement and separation, for whatever reason, are both experiences of loss and opportunities to grow. But farewells evoke only loss. The scenes Rebata chooses and the way she frames them call attention to the displacements and separations that are one of the most enduring problems in the life of Latin American people today. | F.A. Las nuevas aventuras de Batboy / The New Adventures of Batboy, 2009 Acrylic, silkscreen on canvas 100 x 100 cm 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in “My work is about the figure of the North American superhero displaced—in a tragicomic way— to Argentina’s everyday reality: a kind of homemade heroism.” Esteban Rivero transforms icons of North American comics—ideal figures of perfection and bravery—into heroes who create their uniforms with bed sheets and diving masks for want of budget, lack of official support, and absence of sponsors. In the colorful and optimistic visual language of comics and advertising design, the artist generates an ironic investment. His vision is loaded with humor, and also with tenderness. As Argentine cartoonist Enrique Alcatena remarked, Rivero’s characters are “affectionately convincing.” Not for a moment, he adds, we doubt the courage of this eccentric pantheon of local supermen. Somehow, Rivero exudes survival instinct in his work: the kind of strength with which Argentine society—especially its more unprotected population Argentina, Born 1979 www.estebanrivero.com.ar [email protected] group—has survived and left behind numerous political and economic crises. “To turn obstacles into means,” said Gilles Deleuze, “is the essence of the creative act.” If there were superheroes in Argentina, they would be as Esteban Rivero has conceived them. They would make do with whatever there is at hand in order to fulfill their mission. | V.G. 303 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JOAQUÍN RODRÍGUEZ DEL PASO Costa Rica - Mexico Born 1961, www.joaquinrdelpaso.com ANAHÍ ROITMAN Its a wonderful world, 2006 Oil and enamel 160 x 300 cm 63 x 118 in Mandalas, 2009 Industrial rubber on iron 200 x 300 cm 78.7 x 118.1 in Argentina, Born 1956 www.anahiroitman.com.ar [email protected] [email protected] Joaquín Rodríguez del Paso was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1988 to study in New York at the Pratt Institute, where he graduated in 1991 with a master’s degree in industrial design. He has participated in several art biennials, including Havana in 1994 and 1997; São Paulo in 1998; Lima in 2002; Venice in 2003; and Pontevedra in 2010. His works have been shown in museums and galleries in Germany (1994), the Netherlands (1999), Denmark (2002), the United States (2002), and France (2004). His works are part of the permanent collection of the most important museums in Costa Rica, in addition to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, and the Atlantic Center of Modern Art, Canarias, Spain. Rodríguez del Paso’s work springs from the concept of identity. According to him, our culture is sharply divided between those who are creators of discourse and those who are mere consumers, 304 between a generating, or hegemonic center, and a periphery. This polarization is directly related to the market economy. What does it mean, he asks, to be born and raised in a peripheral economy, and to live within its limits? What does it mean to speak a language considered inferior; to live in a developing country, lately considered as an ecological “paradise”? And lastly, what does it mean to be an artist in such a society? Rodríguez del Paso is particularly interested in the relations of countries like Costa Rica to the hegemonic United States and in the implications of its geographic proximity, the knowledge of its culture, and its influence on Latin American lifestyles and philosophies. These are the questions that inform his artistic universe, questions to which there are no obvious answers but only probing questions and approaches. | V.G.D. Anahí Roitman works with multiple materials. From painting and collage, she moved into researching the possibilities of three-dimensional art, which informs her more recent production—spatial interventions, process art, and installations. The main thread of her work has always been the play between solid, often geometrical, compositional structures and a great freedom in the use of color. Brilliant, vibrant, saturated colors always yield a cheerful, festive tone. Her works convey a sense of harmony yet are, at the same time, playful and scintillating. In 2008, the artist started expanding her universe towards experimentation with a industrial rubber, a new kind of material with great elasticity and a vast range of colors, which allowed her to advance in the dialogue between primary forms and the changing or surprising effect of chance or gravity. In spite of the diversity of supports, Anahí Roitman’s work unfolds from some recurrent concerns of which time is at the center. The circle is one of the forms of time that evokes the myth of eternal return and that, in these hanging pieces, takes the ancestral, magic form of the mandalas. In these works we perceive the force of a geometrical pattern that is repeated in identical structures of wire. We also perceive the diversity in the behavior of the material she uses. Rubber of different colors is arranged in different ways: sometimes piled up and tightly packed, sometimes extended as in a spider web, sometimes stretched as on a loom. This dialectical relation between form and matter bears witness to the conflictive coexistence between our human desire to measure and master time and the wonderful fragility and indeterminacy of our existence. | V.G. 305 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe SHEENA ROSE Barbados, Born 1985 www.sroseart.tumblr.com [email protected] Sheena Rose obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Barbados Community College in 2008. In that same year, she participated in the Sign of the Times exhibition in Barbados. In 2009, she exhibited in Black Diaspora Visual Arts Symposium in Bridgetown, Barbados, in Alice Yard in Trinidad, and in Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2010, she held an artist residency in Cape Town, South Africa. Rose’s art production concentrates primarily on video animations that usually examine the 306 ONEIKA RUSSELL Town, 2008 Digital video Duration: 00:02:44 everyday lives of Barbadian people. She is concerned with daily struggles. “We are always dwelling on something that we need to do,” says Rose. The video entitled Town (2008) documents a day in the life of the artist herself. The setting is a world made of drawings, press clippings, and comics. Only the artist is real in this world of mixed media in motion, of which she says “I was being vulnerable to my own problems and at the same time becoming aware of people’s struggles around me.” | A.O. Porthole (from the Sea series), 2008 Digital video, Duration: 00:03:56 Oneika Russell studied painting at the Edna Manley College of the Visual Arts in Jamaica. She has a Master of Arts in Interactive Media from Goldsmith College at University College of London and is currently a postgraduate researcher at Kyoto Seika University’s Film, Video and Media Arts Department, in Japan. Her video animations are inventions or recreations of images that were part of her life while growing up in Jamaica. She uses both historical and fictional characters (e.g. Pre-Raphaelite heroines) and their stories in scenic landscapes related to Caribbean identity in order to create encounters Jamaica-Japan, Born 1980 www.oneikarussel.net [email protected] between the real and imagined worlds. Russell tells new stories and re-tells old ones about her homeland. In her videos, she creates an autobiographical discourse on the postcolonial Caribbean experience. In the case of Porthole, from The Sea series (2008), she animates her drawing and narrates her own journey from Jamaica to Japan by simulating the view of an observer looking at the video through a pair of binoculars. Russell has significantly said, “I seek to create a new narrative from old stories, which says something about my postcolonial experience and continued understanding of myself through the media.” | A.O. 307 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe KARLA PAULINA SÁNCHEZ BARAJAS CARLOS ALBERTO SALAZAR ARENAS Colombia, Born 1973 www.salazararenas.com [email protected] Carlos Alberto Salazar Arenas was born in Bogotá in 1973. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts of Colombia’s National University and later continued his education at the School of Fine Arts of the city of Valencia, Spain. He has received several distinctions for his works, which have been shown in solo exhibitions in Bogotá and Madrid. A mixture of hype and suspense is evident in Salazar Arenas’ Economía en crisis [Economy in Crisis] inspired by Wall Street´s meltdown of 2008, which brings in turn memories of the Crash of 1929. The economic reversal of the United States 308 Economía en crisis / Economy in Crisis, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 77 x 120 cm 30 1/4 x 47 1/4 in economy is for the artist a crucial event that has changed the dynamics of our time for the entire world, almost to a point of no return. One can only wait and see. At least now, the flaws of globalization, the undisciplined and unethical behavior of financial executives, and their erratic managerial style have affected hundreds of millions of people. They have amply justified the criticism of those who warned about the flaws of the new models of financial transactions when they started being adopted. The crisis has indeed inflicted much damage on a way of life that had promised to be a universal paradigm of progress. | F.A. Niño en bici / Boy on a Bike, 2004 Digital photograph 43 x 28 cm 16 7/8 x 11 in Karla Paulina Sánchez Barajas has a master’s degree in science and culture communications from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente [Western Institute of Advanced Technological Studies], in Guadalajara, Mexico. She has exhibited her work in several group shows in different venues in Mexico and the United States. Her photographs have been featured in numerous Mexican magazines. She works as a documentary screenwriter, photographer, and director. Sánchez Barajas’ photographs included in About Change are part of a series in which she Mexico, Born 1979 [email protected] documents the life and experiences of Mexican children from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Through their smiles and the expression in their eyes, these young faces convey a whole gamut of feeling. Sánchez Barajas tries to use these images to make visible children’s inherent dignity and to defend their rights—especially in the case of children born and raised in poverty, who are forced to work in order to survive. | V.G.D 309 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe RAQUEL SCHWARTZ MARÍA TERESA SÁNCHEZ NAVARRETE Mexico, Born 1978 www.flickr.com/photos/teresasancheznavarrete/ [email protected] María Teresa Sánchez Navarrete studied photography at the Escuela Activa de Fotografía [Active School of Photography] and later obtained a diploma in constructed photography at the Gimnasio de Arte y Cultura [School of Arts and Culture], both in Mexico. She has also attended a workshop on space interventions directed by Adela Goldbard. She has shown her work in several venues in Mexico, including the Faro de Tláhuac [Tláhuac Lighthouse], the Ex Convento del Carmen, the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana [Sor Juana’s Cloister University], and the Centro Nacional de las Artes 310 No lugares, Sin Título 1 /No places, Untitled 1, 2009 Digital photograph 150 x 60 cm 59 x 23 5/8 in [National Arts Center]. Her works have received several awards in Mexico and the Basque Country. Sánchez Navarrete’s work stems from her personal interest in creating a photographic record of the places she walks by every day in the periphery of Mexico City. With a critical eye, she captures a space that is neither a space of identity nor rational or historical. Her intention is to show places that exemplify the concept of “nowhere,” showing landscapes reminiscent of human loneliness as it is experienced today. | V.G.D. ST, 2009 Installation: serpentine cassette tape sculpture 21 x 5 m 69 x 16 ft Trained in ceramics and sculpture at the Santa Barbara City College, California, United States, and in graphic design at the Wizo School of Design, Haifa, Israel, Raquel Schwartz has represented Bolivia at numerous prestigious art exhibitions in Europe and the Americas, among them the Bienal de São Paulo [São Paulo Biennial, Brazil] in 2003 and the Pinta Latin American Modern and Contemporary Art Fair in New York in 2009. In 2006, together with fellow artists Roberto Unterlaedstatter and Sergio Antelo, Schwartz opened in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Kiosko [Kiosk], a contemporary art gallery and artist-in-residence program, run jointly with the Simple graphic design and advertising studio. Schwartz has exhibited internationally and has been recognized in her own right as a successful professional artist. But in consonance with Joseph Beuys’ famous phrase, ‘Creativity isn’t the monopoly of artists,’ she encourages people to expand their concept of art, beyond of the ivory tower of museums and galleries, since “all around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped or created.” Consistent with this credo, Schwartz gave new life to the recording tape that her musician Bolivia, Born 1963 www.bolivianet.com/arte/raquelschwartz/index.html [email protected] husband was going to discard: she used it to weave two very long tablecloths. The painstaking process of tape weaving can be read both as a metaphor of Penelope’s labor, framing ST within the discourse on gender that Schwartz has been powerfully carrying on since her legendary 2002 Cárcel de ilusiones [Prison of Illusions], or as a metaphor of the intricate plurality of voices in Bolivian—indeed Andean—society. In both cases, ST fits perfectly in Schwartz’s body of work, which is an articulate and integrated discourse using a variety of materials and techniques to investigate sociopolitical and gender issues that have an impact on her country and her region. | E.E. 311 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ERIC SCIBOR-RYLSKI France-Mexico, Born 1958 www.scibor-rylski.jimdo.com [email protected] Eric Scibor-Rylski was born in France, where he studied photography and cinema. He has worked as a graphic reporter for news agencies in Germany, England, and France, filing stories from Africa, South America, and Europe. He has taught still photography workshops in England, and has freelanced as a publicity and fashion photographer in Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico, New York, and Paris. He currently lives and works in Mexico. With three other photographers, SciborRylski founded Giveme5, a virtual art gallery, in 2008. His works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in France, Mexico, and Spain. His photographs have been featured in art catalogues and magazines in Mexico and in Europe. 312 FRANCISCO SEPÚLVEDA Juan Carlos & Antonio, from the series Chambre avec vue [Bedroom with a view] 2009 Photograph 24 x 18 cm 9 3/8 x 7 in The photographs that Scibor-Rylski is presenting in About Change are part of a project entitled Chambre avec vue [Bedroom with a View], in which he seeks to create a series of anthropological or social portraits that put reality “on stage.” The images in this project portray the private life of present day Mexicans and are intended to reflect the switching of roles that modern life has produced in Mexican society. Scibor-Rylski decided to do these portraits in the bedroom, where people take refuge, sometimes in solitude, but above all in a journey of introspection. The result is a gaze that wants to capture reality in its most ordinary, everyday expression. He explains: “Chambre avec vue is, inevitably, a document of reality, but it also has to be read as fiction, as much as it is a representation of reality. Thus, reality and fiction perform the same function: to question conventional social roles in modern society. Fiction is visible in the almost surreal presence of the photographed subjects in their most intimate retreat, and in their acceptance of the challenge to expose themselves, allowing their everyday existence to become a theatrical performance of sorts.” | V.G.D. Costumbres / Customs, 2009 Mixed media on canvas 200 x 200 cm 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in A look toward primitive cultures permeated European art all throughout the 20th century, from Picasso to Art Brut [Outsider Art]. That European perspective served as a mirror in which Latin American artists saw and understood that their modern identity had to be forged in the crossbreeding of the imported and the local. Thus emerged figures like that of Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam, internationally celebrated for his syncretic and surreal paintings, populated by masks, totems, magic, and rituals. The life and works of Francisco Sepúlveda are inscribed in that same cultural frame. His trajectory begins in Chile and continues with numerous trips to Mexico, Easter Island, Cuba (where he attended Lam’s art studio), England, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, and France, where he finally settled in the city of Gex. In its motifs as well as in its varied techniques, Sepúlveda’s painting reflects his restive curiosity, nurtured by multiple references. European critics have found in Sepúlveda’s exuberant style a representation of a culture still viewed as unusual and exotic, “a reference to the history of his hometown, where strange characters with masks and animal heads seem to surrender to a ritual that conjures up both heaven and hell” (Bernard Gouttenoire). He has also been praised from the point of view of the well-known myth of the noble savage: “We love his naiveté and spontaneity, similar to that of a pre-Columbian Indian Chile, Born 1977 www.Francisco-Sepulveda.com [email protected] circulating in the urban jungle; we celebrate his return to the primitive, to an original and mythical purity” (Pierre Souchard). Sepúlveda, on his part, expresses his cultural heritage in a personal key. He grew up listening to “phantasmagoric tales from South America that take place among animals and trees, rivers and lagoons.” For him, those tales are not a strategy to represent the world he belongs to but simply a ritual of “daily introspection,” in which he exorcizes his fears and hallucinations. Innocent of the critical interpretations of his work, the artist embraces his background with the same natural attitude with which we pick up and use our native tongue. | V.G. 313 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe GEORGE STRUIKELBLOK CINTHYA SOTO Costa Rica, Born 1969 [email protected] Cinthya Soto studied architecture and fine arts at the National University of Costa Rica. In 1999, she moved to Zurich, where she studied cinema and video. In 2002, she had her first solo show, ArtificioNatura [Artifice-Nature], at Costa Rica’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), where she won the Aquileo Echeverría National Fine Arts Award. She has shown her works in numerous venues, including the V Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2002); the Taipei Fine Arts 314 Torero / Bullfighter, 2009 Analog photograph 122 x 122 cm 48 x 48 in Museum, Taiwan (2002); the First Prague Biennale (2003); and the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007). Cinthya Soto is entirely devoted to analog photography. Torero [Bullfighter] is part of a series entitled Pictografías [Pictographs], in which she seeks to recover the tradition of Costa Rica’s popular painting and to make more flexible the limits between photography and painting. She believes that respect for tradition is an active form of legitimizing and reactivating popular art and culture. | V.G.D. Don't Leave Me, 2009 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in George Struikelblok studied painting and etching at the Nola Hatterman Art Academy in Paramaribo and at the Edna Manley School of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica. During his time in Kingston, he expanded the range of emotions expressed in his paintings, and his art— he recalls—“became more abstract, emotional, and impulsive.” Since 1990, The Nolan Hatterman Art Academy has become Struikelblok’s professional home, where he teaches and has his atelier. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Suriname, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In 2008, Struikelblok completed a prestigious research residency at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten [Royal Academy of Visual Arts] in Amsterdam, Suriname, Born 1973 www.readytexartgallery.com [email protected] Netherlands, where he started to expand his artistic range to include three dimensional art installations in open areas and public spaces. Don’t Leave Me focuses on a central theme in Struikelblok’s work: love and death. His entire production has been inspired by his father’s death and by the meaning of fatherhood in his own experience, early as a son and presently as a father. This central concern has been inflected by a meditation on the relation between life and afterlife. About Don’t Leave Me, the artist has said: “The black upside figure represents my father. The bright colors express the freedom to love him and my joy of being a father myself. The letters represent some kind of communication between us.” | E.E. 315 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LAILA TERRA LUIZ TELLES Brazil, Born 1969 www.luiztelles.com [email protected] A graduate from the School of Communication and Arts at the University of São Paulo in 1993 with a Master of Arts in Visual Arts, Telles has exhibited his works since 1993 at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo [Pinacotheca of the State of São Paulo]. In 1995, he won the Gunther Prize for Painting awarded by the Museum of Contemporary 316 Portrait of Curupira, 2008 Oil and acrylic on canvas 80 x 80 cm 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 in Art of the University of São Paulo. He has also participated in group exhibitions such as FILE (International Electronic Language Festival) at the FIESP Cultural Center and the Salão de Arte Contemporãnea de Ribeirão Preto [Hall of Contemporary Art of Ribeirão Preto], both in São Paulo, in 2008. In his work, Luiz Telles tells a story within a story. He first represents Curupira, the most famous Brazilian indigenous folk character, who is one of the imaginary creatures responsible for protecting flora and fauna. Curupira’s legacy comes from pre-Columbian times. This creature can be recognized as a young man with shiny red hair and feet turned backwards. He is a guardian of forests and hunting who punishes those who destroy nature and rewards those who protect it as he does. | F.R. / E.G. 3 (series of 3), 2010 Screen print 100 x 70 cm 39 3/8 x 27 5/8 in 2 (series of 3), 2010 Screen print 100 x 70 cm 39 3/8 x 27 5/8 in 1 (series of 3), 2010 Screen print 100 x 70 cm 39 3/8 x 27 5/8 in Laila Terra specializes in drawings and engravings. These techniques allow her to apply shapes and colors together, creating a large variety of compositions. Her first work was an installation using metronomes at the Itaú Cultural Institute, in São Paulo, in 2009. She also developed the Poster "Bomba Laranja" (Orange Bomb) for the 7th Mercosul Biennial and has been recently working on a documentary. About the series presented hereTerra says: "Each pictured fragment is the result of a process not yet completed. The series is constructed by the research, questions, and problems posed. This series seeks the solution to problems in an effort to Brazil, Born 1982 [email protected] achieve an idea.” She has been inspired by artists like David Hockney (1937), Edwin Parker (Cy) Twombly (1928), and Zilvinas Kempinas (1969) among others. For her, art exists only outside her comfort zone, "when I feel I've mastered something, that my work is very safe, I stop producing it." For Terra, an artist is a social activist, a barometer of society’s cultural health or sickness. However, hers is not the figurative language of the 20th century social art, but rather it is the quantum language of a cyber and globalized world, a world in a constant process of questioning and measuring the self. | F.R. / E.G. 317 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe PHILLIP THOMAS Jamaica, Born 1980 [email protected] Phillip Thomas holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica, and a Master of Arts in Painting from the New York Academy of Fine Arts. He has participated in numerous group shows, including Under 40 Artists of the Year (2006) in Jamaica, and the 2008 Jamaican National Biennial. He currently lives, works, and teaches in Kingston. 318 ALEJANDRO THORNTON Carousel, 2009 Oil on canvas 198 x 442 cm 78 x 174 in Thomas frequently reproduces “cultural reliquaries,” which he considers artifacts that “represent the cultural tapestry of the Caribbean.” His use of the old world medium of oil on canvas references painters of countries that played a leading role in colonialism (Turner, Ribera, Velásquez). This allows him to trace not only an artistic lineage but also to produce works that can themselves be regarded as “cultural relics.”| A.O. Vain, 2008 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 1/8 x 59 1/8 in “In this series of paintings, says Alejandro Thornton, “I research the changes in the notion of subject as it has been affected by the modifications that in the last twenty years have produced technological developments such as robotics, cloning, virtual reality, and social networks. Without doubt, these advances have deeply altered the concept of subject as we used to conceive it. The way in which we can construct or simulate one or several identities, as we become assiduous inhabitants of the cyberspace, demands that we rethink who we are today and how we are who we are.” Alejandro Thornton’s painting returns to the central motive of traditional portraiture, the human face, but this time, converted into, or reduced to a kind of linear ideogram. On this simplified, universal, anonymous face, the artist superimposes other visual codes: schemes of points, for example, that remind us of infographic systems, structures of pixels, electronic circuits, or some video-games. These are contemporary palimpsests that allude, as the author states, to the end of the “hard identities” Argentina, Born 1970 www.athornton.com.ar [email protected] that used to characterized the modern subject. From flexibilization of labor and migratory currents to genetic manipulation, new technologies and new social conditions of globalization determine new forms of subjectivity. We need to reflect not only upon “who we are,” but also upon “how we are who we are”: AlejandroThornton makes it clear that the question goes beyond a purely “philosophical” definition of our being human in order to enter into the realm of ethics. | V.G. 319 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe FERNANDO TOLEDO RODDNEY TJON POEN GIE Suriname, Born 1962 www.readytexartgallery.com/roddneytjonpoengie [email protected] Roddney Tjo Poen Gie graduated with a degree in painting and drawing from the Academie voor Hoger Kunst en Cultuuronderwijs [Academy of Arts and Culture (AHKCO)], in Paramaribo, in 1994. As many artists who came to professional maturity after the end of the brutal Surinamese civil war between the then military government and the Maroon communities, Tjo Poen Gie concerns himself with the exploration of his own ethnic and cultural heritage, as well as with an artistic 320 Grasshopper, 2010 Painted driftwood 42 x 33 x 31 cm 16 1/2 x 13 x 12 in research that seeks to contribute to the integration of the different ethnic groups of Suriname. Tjo Poen Gie sculptural work includes carving and ceramics, as well as his more recent experimentations with “found objects,” notably driftwood. He has been inspired by the specific shape of pieces of wood that have been washed ashore, each of which he describes as “unique and whimsical, like the Caribbean individual.” With the driftwood he finds, Tjo Poen Gie creates playful sculptures celebrating the lushness and variety of nature in Suriname, whose territory is eighty percent rainforest and savanna. His sculptures also celebrate the richness of Suriname’s multiple cultures, composed of “different people uprooted from all over the world,” who are creating “their own new colorful communities, local cultures, music, and traditions”. Mostly painted in brilliant colors with thick defining black lines, which are characteristic of his paintings, Tjo Poen Gie’s driftwood sculptures are covered with abstract allusions to the characters and symbols of his Chinese and Afro Surinamese mother tongues. They are, in his words, “a celebration of the constant change that shapes the unique and new Caribbean identity.” | E.E. Horizontes sostenibles/ Sustainable Horizons, 2008 Acrylic and charcoal on canvas 134 x 176 cm 53 1/8 x 69 1/4 in Fernando Toledo studied at the School of Fine Arts of Cuenca, Ecuador. Since 1991 he resides in Panama, where he is a professor of painting. Since 1984, his works have been shown in collective and solo exhibitions in Latin America, the United States, and Europe. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including Ecuador’s Second National Prize for Watercolor, in 1998; the National Prize for Painting, awarded by Panama’s National Culture Institute, in 1993; the First Prize in Panama’s Art Biennials, in 1994-1998. In 2003, Toledo was awarded an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Vermont, United States. Panama City, where Toledo currently lives, has experienced an extraordinary real estate development that threatens the necessary balance Ecuador, Born 1962 [email protected] between human “progress” and the natural world. In Horizontes sostenibles [Sustainable Horizons], Toledo documents the rapid pace and anarchic ways in which new buildings have been built in the city. In his images, the artist makes visible “the destruction of public spaces and of the city’s patrimony.” Toledo’s photographs are, in his own words, “a reflection on how a city by the sea, with exuberant natural vegetation, is becoming a ‘beach of cement.’ This is why, in these works, natural landscapes are drawn in charcoal, as a dramatic absence of color.” | F.A. / E.E. 321 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe OMAR TORRES MENDOZA Mexico, Born 1977 www.omartorres.com [email protected] Omar Torres Mendoza has worked in photography since 1990, venturing into different fields such as photojournalism and advertising. A graduate from the Cineteca Nacional de México [National Film Library of Mexico], he has worked with great masters such as Yazu Zuzuca in Japan and Lázaro Blanco in Mexico. His works have been exhibited in four solo shows and more than thirty group shows in galleries and museums in numerous countries, including Mexico, Japan, Italy, the United States, and China. 322 Origami, 2009-2010 Analog photograph Color print 120 x 80 cm 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in During the past few years, Torres Mendoza has worked in the creation of images set in very diverse locations, focusing on everyday objects that are transformed into the protagonists of his art. His photos show common objects or situations thrown into almost magical or phantasmagorical scenarios. They present the unique still frame of a possible story, inviting the viewer to become an active participant who tries to imagine the story’s denouement. | V.G.D. ISAAC EMMANUEL TORRES ORTIZ Todo se derrumbó / Everything Crumbled, 2009 Video Duration: 00:04:50 Isaac Emmanuel Torres Ortiz studied fine arts at the Luis Spota Center for Art Education, in Mexico (19972000), and graduated with a master’s degree in urbanism from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2009. He has shown his works in galleries, museum, and artistic events in Mexico, Germany, and the United States. He has been the founder of several art collectives, including “Chicos de Hoy” [Youths of Today], which he still directs; this collective develops projects for the exhibition and promotion of contemporary art proposals throughout Mexico. Torres Ortiz was awarded an artist residency at the Künstlerhäuser Mexico, Born 1982 [email protected] Worspswede [Artist Studios in Worspswede], Germany, in 2009. Documentary photography and video, installations and graphic arts are Torres Ortiz’s media of choice. His interdisciplinary approach, which incorporates journalism, ethnography, and multiple observation and documentary techniques, gives a distinctive mark to all his pieces, in which he develops visual meditations on some social ad cultural issues that affect people’s lives and deserve to be closely examined, such as architecture, urban development, and the economy, including the circulation of money in all its forms. | V.G.D. 323 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LEILA TSCHOPP Argentina, Born 1978 www.leilatschopp.blogspot.com [email protected] The core of Leila Tschopp’s work is the research on painting as a representation of space. Either on canvas or resorting to other formats such as relief or installation, she makes painting enter in dialogue with other disciplines such as architecture or set design. As is common in postmodern art, Tschopp’s work combines a multitude of heterogeneous references. But this is not a mere way of making exotic iconographic associations: she undertakes an archaeological analysis of the codes of representation that have marked the history of art from Pompeian murals to contemporary architecture. Her work displays an exemplary coexistence of 324 ROBERTO UNTERLADSTAETTER VALDIVIA Sin Titulo / Untitled, 2006 Acrylic on canvas 140 x 190 cm 55 1/8 x 74 4⁄5 in spatial illusionism with the color planimetry that characterizes modern art. It is well known that perspective emerged in the 15th century as a means to attain a rational knowledge of space. In the following centuries, with their religious and economic crises, perspective became a means of deception. Tschopp is well aware of the relation between a historical context and its corresponding codes of space representation. The superimpositions in her paintings bear witness to the complexity of the perceptual experiences that characterize the dwellers of contemporary cities. Tschopp is also interested in the points of encounter and friction among objective information, collective memory, and personal experience. Strongly influenced by the distorted perspectives of De Chirico, Tschopp’s paintings show that space is itself a projection of the seeing subject. Scenography has acquired growing importance in her work. It is worth remembering that Baroque art was essentially theatrical and that, as architect L. Ventura has remarked, a city like Las Vegas is a paramount example of a new architecture: that of a staged city. | V.G. Tengo miedo / I am scared, 2005 Offset poster printing 70 x 30 cm 27 1/2 x 12 in Roberto Unterladstaetter Valdivia studied graphic design and social communications. He has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Bolivia, winning in 2005 and 2008 First Prize at the International Bolivian Biennial of Contemporary Art (category Young Artists) and at the Biennial of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In this series of posters, which were displayed on walls in the streets of Santa Cruz, Roberto Unterladstaetter uses a complex array of urban languages to question the consciousness and appeal to the subconscious of citizens as members of the polis, the city. The artist adopts classic strategies of marketing and advertising to engage the viewer in a public space. He uses the “harmless” format of an advertising poster to camouflage powerful social messages, packaged in a way that does not generate anxiety in the distracted Bolivia, Born 1980 [email protected] bystander. In doing so, he creates ambiguity and subverts the social role of the poster as component of the commercial, institutionalized landscape. These multilayered actions are reminiscent of the détournement tactics used by the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF), which started in San Francisco in the ‘70s and introduced “culture jamming”—a way of altering billboards by changing key words in order to radically change the message. In the Andean context, culture jamming goes beyond the traditional BLF’s anti-corporate objective by bringing up a series of more complex cultural and socio-historical considerations. | E.E. 325 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe JULIO VALDEZ Dominican Republic, Born 1969 www.juliovaldez.com [email protected] Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Julio Valdez studied fine arts illustration at the Altos de Chavón School of Design in La Romana (Dominican Republic), affiliated with Parsons The New School for Design in New York, United States. He also studied printmaking with Robert Blackburn and Kathy Caraccio in New York City. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo shows, including Water Painting (June Kelly Gallery, New York, 2007), Echando Raices (Growing Roots, Gallería Botello, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2002), and Julio Valdez: Transpositions (Toomey-Tourell Fine Art, San Francisco, California, 1998). He has also participated in several group shows such as Artist in the Marketplace, (Bronx Museum of Fine Arts, New York, 1994; Once Artistas de la Facultad [Eleven Artists from the School of Design], La Romana, Dominican Republic, 326 ADÁN VALLECILLO Cayo Levantado III, 2009 Oil on linen 147 x 228 cm 58 x 90 in 1993), and Nuevos Valores del Arte Latinoamericano [New Stars in Latin American Art Brasilia, Brazil, 1980], His work is represented in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, in New York City, in the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Eduardo León Jimenes Cultural Center, in Santiago, Dominican Republic. He currently lives and works in New York City. Valdez has a lengthy trajectory as an artist; his current work is inspired by the creation of a “sense of time not yet defined.” Working with the theme of water along the Caribbean landscape from the vantage point of a Dominican, he suggests that this scenic paradise presents a dichotomy between the freedom of the tourist and the “natural prison” of the land for its natives. Water thus becomes a realm of uncertainty. | A.O. Autopoiesis / Self-Creation, 2008 Installation Variable dimensions Adán Vallecillo graduated in sociology from the National Autonomous University of Honduras in 2010. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Tegucigalpa (1995) and the School of Visual Arts of San Juan, Puerto Rico (2000), where he was awarded a scholarship in 2002 and was appointed as artist in residence in 2007. Vallecillo’s works works have been shown in solo exhibits in Honduras and Belize, and in many collective exhibitions, among them the Sixth Biennial of El Museo del Barrio, New York (2011); the Venice Biennial (2011); the Pontevedra Biennial, España (2010); the First International Caribbean Triennial, Dominican Republic (2010); the Biennial of Visual Arts of Honduras (2010, 2008, 2006); the Tenth Havana Biennial (2009); the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (Nicaragua, 2010; Honduras, 2008; El Salvador, 2006; Nicaragua, 2002); the Seventh International Biennial of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador (2001), and the Fifth Caribbean Biennial, Santo Domingo (2001). Vallecillo considers art as an instrument of knowledge. He is interested in studying the emotional and aesthetic charge that we ascribe to Honduras, Born 1977 [email protected] objects, as he works to enhance symbolically their relations of production, circulation and consumption. Several of his works are based on variations or fusions that seek to create ambiguities and hybridizations by means of irony and humor. This allows him to re-examine the value and implications of the rational control of freedom, needs, and instinctual drives. Vallecillo’s works are part of the permanent collections of Daros Latinamerica, Zurich; the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, New York-Caracas; the Contemporary Museum of Art and Design (MADC) and the TEOR/éTica Foundation, Costa Rica; the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California; the Image Art Factory Foundation, Belize City; the Honduran Institute of Inter American Culture, Tegucigalpa; Saxo Bank, Denmark; as well as many private collections.| V.G.D. 327 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe LINA VARGAS DE LA HOZ Colombia, Born 1984 www.vargasdelahoz.com [email protected] Born in Cartagena in 1984, Lina Vargas De La Hoz is a performance and installation artist who has received several grants to study art in Colombia and Austria. At present, she lives and works in Maryland, United States, and in Austria. The Wien Umzug [Vienna Parade] series documents a performance held in Vienna, photographed by Laura Gebetsroither. De La Hoz's core motivation is her experience as an immigrant, well aware of the questionable aspects of “multiculturalism,” as it is challenged by world economic instability and ideological, cultural, and religious differences. 328 Wien Umzug / Vienna Parade, 2008 Photo series 3 Frames: 28 x 23 cm 11 x 9 in Historically, migration is a phenomenon attached to social transformation spurred by economic progress, but the financial reversal of the developed world is forcing many countries to re-evaluate their need for foreign labor and to re-examine their acceptance of foreigners. Vargas De La Hoz usually places utilitarian objects in spaces that require the human presence to “complete” the art piece. Her works have been exhibited in Colombia, Austria, and Washington, DC. | F.A. FEDERICO VARONE Siéntateteta / Sit-down-udder, 2008 Mixed media 45 x 36 x 36 cm 17 3/4 x 14 1/4 x 14 1/4 in Argentina, Born 1979 www.federicovarone.com.ar [email protected] Federico Varone studied industrial design at the University of Buenos Aires. He has worked in several design studios and agencies and is a member of the Fugamania design group. His areas of work are furniture, products, corporative identity, and packaging design. He focuses on themes of national identity and society, environment and the natural world, and the ways in which both affect the lives of their inhabitants. Varone seeks to engage in a reflective dialogue with those who find themselves looking at one of his designs. In them, objects have a touch of irony that elicits the complicity of viewers and prospective users. In his practice, he never loses sight of the functionality of the products he designs. Varone’s body of work is at the intersection of artisanry and industrial design, both in terms of conception and of production methods. Siéntateteta [Sit-down-udder] is a shortlegged bench for mate drinkers that, in Varone’s own words, “was born as a sculptural object meant to enter our houses bringing with itself the presence of Argentina’s countryside and its culture.” According to the artist, the bench is made out of colors and textures that directly evoke one of the characteristic inhabitants of the Pampas, the Argentine-bred Holstein cow: the bench “is a poetic object seeking humbly to become an icon of something that is part of our national identity.” | E.E. 329 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe BETTINA VAZ GUIMARÃES MORAES Brazil, Born 1961 www.vazguimaraes.com.br [email protected] Born and raised in São Paulo, Bettina Vaz Guimarães had her first solo exhibition in 2003 at Casa de Cultura de Ribeirão Preto [Ribeirão Preto Cultural Center] in São Paulo. Her works have been shown in different venues across Brazil, including the Casa da Cultura da América Latina [Latin America Culture House] in Brasilia; the Programa de Exposições Espaços FUNARTE de Artes Visuais [National Arts Foundation Visual Arts Exhibition Program], in São Paulo; and the Espaço Furnas Cultural [Furnas Cultural Space] in Rio de Janeiro. 330 Sem título/Untitled, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 106 x 138 cm 41 3/4 x 54 1/4 in In her work, Vaz Guimarães amplifies the voice of daily experience by creating objects of intense presence that reaffirm their right to exist through the vibrancy of an intense color palette or through the sheer monumentality of their size. This vitality is also expressed by means of a technique, which she calls “collage,” that consists of adding or removing layers and planes, visually as well as materially, in her compositions. Thus she expresses her view of society as a series of ever changing situations that demand a high level of understanding of the mechanisms and relations that constitute our life. This view is lucid but in no way somber. She looks at the “chaos, excess, wasteful practices, indifference, conflict, and anarchy” of contemporary urban life, moved by a sense of joy and an inexhaustible thirst for exploring the intrinsic poetic quality of common objects. Her paintings are a triumphant celebration of the beauty of daily experience. | F.R. DIEGO VELAZCO Los últimos cines II / The Last Cinemas II, 2000 Black and white photograph (6 x 6 cm film) 70 x 70 cm 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 in Diego Velazco is an Uruguayan photographer with more than 20 years of experience. He has shown his works in international exhibitions, such as Photo Plus New York City and Photo Paris, and has received national and international awards in fine arts and in photojournalism. His works are part of public and private collections in Argentina, Uruguay, Holland, England, and the United States. Velazco’s artistic production is based on traditional photographic work, using 120 mm film to avoid altering reality, which he says “is in itself astonishing.” His works are typically either 6 x 6 cm squares or 6 x 12 cm panoramas. He is obviously interested in recording different aspects of contemporary life and culture, some of them related to the changes brought about by the technological Uruguay, Born 1967 www.diegovelazco.com [email protected] revolution. In his photographic series entitled Los últimos cines [The Last Cinemas], Velazco explores the transformation of movie theaters from the traditional large room with a film projector to smaller rooms with digital equipment in which the “the magic moment of living the movie” gives way to a trivialized sharing of a mere consumer product. | A.O. 331 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ANA CATALINA VICUÑA DOMÍNGUEZ SANTIAGO VELAZCO Uruguay, Born 1976 www.santiagovelazco.com [email protected] Santiago Velazco studied at the Contemporary Art Foundation (FAC) with artists Enrique Badaró and Fernando López Lage. He has shown his works in solo and group exhibitions in Argentina, Spain, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay, including Memorial de America Latina [Latin American Memorial] at Marta Traba Gallery in São Paulo, Brazil (2002); Absorciones [Absorptions] at the headquarters of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Montevideo (2006); and at the X Havana Biennial in Cuba (2009). 332 Oso Skater / Skating Bear, 2009 Acrylic and mixed media on canvas 155 x 200 cm 61 x 78 3/4 in Velazco’s work has been strongly influenced by graphic design, with which he has combined symbols of pop culture, religion, and consumer culture. The contrast between bright and dark colors is a constant element in his works, as are figures alluding to comic characters, movie icons like Boba Fett from Star Wars, and well-known ice-skaters. His figures lie somewhere between graffiti and abstraction. His work can be interpreted as a blending of various images associated with contemporary cultural trends popular among the young. | A.O. ACV 09, 2008 Watercolor 120 x 85 cm 47 1/4 x 33 1/2 in ACV 12, 2008 Watercolor 120 x 85 cm 47 1/4 x 33 1/2 in ACV 12, 2008 Watercolor 120 x 85 cm 47 1/4 x 33 1/2 in According to Gerard Wajcman, 20th century art can be summed up in two objects: Duchamp’s unadorned ready-made urinal, with which he took away from art all claim to be spiritual, and Malevich’s Suprematist works, which reduced painting to a minimal, nonobjective representation, with totally abstract geometric patterns. During the rest of the century, Duchamp outshined Malevich; in the ‘60s even geometry rid itself of metaphysical claims and became instead an instrument to investigate the phenomenology of perception. In the ‘80s, with the “Neo Geo” movement, there took place a kind of renaissance of geometrical painting. The movement was based on the assumption that the idealism of Malevich was Chile, Born 1977 www.anacatalinavicuna.blogspot.com www.galeriapready.cl utterly impossible, because there is no visual sign, no matter how abstract it may be, that is not already contaminated with design, advertising, and cultural emblems. Ana Vicuña is an artist trained in graphic design and certainly well acquainted with Western translations of Zen philosophy and with meditation techniques, and she dedicates her work to upholding that spirituality. To the ascetic limitation of means proposed by Malevich, she adds the mantric ritual, based on the repetition of minimal gestures. Ana Vicuña searches for a perfection that cannot be found in the particular details of empirical reality and that can therefore be attained only as an inner refuge. | V.G. 333 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe VERÓNICA VIDES El Salvador, Born 1970 www.veronicavides.com [email protected] Verónica Vides studied graphic design at Matías Delgado University in El Salvador. In 2000, she was awarded a scholarship to attend La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving in Mexico. She has shown her work in numerous national and international venues, including the Paiz Art Biennial, in El Salvador, in 334 BRUNO VILELA Polillas de hierro / Iron Moths, 2004 Installation of 114 recycled iron pieces of 4 different sizes 2003, where she was awarded first place; the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial, in 2004, where she received an honorable mention, and in 2010; and the Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE) in 2004 and 2010. Her works are featured in the permanent collections of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design and the TEOR/éTica Foundation, both in Costa Rica; the Art Museum of El Salvador; the National Collection of El Salvador; and the Ortiz Gurdián Foundation, in Nicaragua. Vides media of choice are installations of sculptures made of iron, recycled materials, or industrial scraps. The different stylized animal forms that she creates with those materials often serve as metaphors for human attitudes towards others and more generally towards their natural surroundings. Her ravishingly beautiful installations evoke images of mangroves, roots, swarms of insects, nests, eggs. They tend to spread and reproduce in space, mimicking the multiplication of insects, which, in turn, mimics with subtle irony the harmful ways in which we are exploiting and spoiling nature in our planet. | V.G.D. BibbdiBobbdi Boo, chapeuzinho vermelho 3 / BibbdiBobbdi Boo, Little Red Riding Hood 3, 2009 Photograph 110 x 160 cm 43 1/4 x 63 in Two strategies typical of postmodern art are present in Bruno Vilela’s BibbdiBobbdi Boo series. First, this is a staged photography in which the camera, rather than cutting out a fragment of reality through the author’s gaze, registers a scene artificially assembled by him with procedures similar to those of theatrical or film set design. Second, this is an appropriation, with its implied acknowledgment that reality may be composed by things and events but is also shaped by images and narratives. The task of the artist is precisely to resignify those pre-existing signs. Female protagonists of children fairy tales like Red Riding Hood and Snow White are the frame of reference for the BibbdiBobbdi Boo series. Fairy tales have a dramatic character; they are forms that address, elaborate, and eventually assuage children’s fears. Vilela produces significant displacements in these imaginary worlds, divesting them of their expected happy endings and their edifying morals and warnings. Each story is now reduced to isolated scenes in which sinister or potentially dangerous situations are not solved in a narrative unfolding but remain permanently suspended. Another important aspect of Vilela’s work is that he uses the stereotyped figures of fairy tales princesses to deconstruct their implicit models of femininity. In his photographs, these figures become ambiguous. We can no longer tell, for instance, if the blood stains on the dress of Little Red Riding Hood represent her as the victim or as the killer of her aggressor. Alice fallen Brazil, Born 1977 www.brunovilela.com [email protected] down on the steps of a movie theater suggests that Wonderland may not exist on the other side of a looking glass exclusively. Vilela does not try to inquire into the wondrous nature of an alternative universe but into the paradoxical quality of the “real” world we inhabit. | V.G. 335 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe DIEGO VILLALBA Uruguay, Born 1972 www.diegovillalba.com [email protected] Diego Villalba studied in Montevideo under artist Norman Bottrill in 1991 and at the School of Architecture of the University of the Republic (UDELAR) in 1992. He has received the Philips Art Prize for Young Talents from the Municipal Government of Montevideo (2001-2002) and the First Prize at the Salón Leonístico de Artes Plásticas de la Juventud [Lyons Club Exhibition of Young Plastic Artists], National Library of Montevideo (2003). His work has been shown in international exhibitions in Spain, Australia, China, and Uruguay, 336 LEANDRO WAISBORD (TEC) De regreso a Delft / Back in Delft, 2010 Oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm 39 3/8 x 47 1/4 in including Incisiones [Incisions] at La Colmena Gallery, Montevideo (2005); the Latin American Pavilion at the Shanghai Art Fair, China (2007); the Ochre Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (2007); and the Latin American Pavilion at Art Madrid, Spain (2008). Villalba’s artistic output addresses issues of European heritage in the Americas. His travels to Africa, Asia, Europe, the United States, and other parts of South America inform his creative process. These ongoing exchanges inflect his narratives of transatlantic encounters, inspired, in part, by the history of his ancestors, whose traces he has followed across Spain and along Catalonia’s monastic route. His work embraces his own Uruguayan culture as well as the cultures of the places he has visited. | A.O. Cardumen / School of Fish, 2009 Mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 1/8 x 59 1/8 in Following a youth influenced by urban culture, graffiti, and travelling, Leandro Waisbord—also known as TEC—studied graphic design at the University of Buenos Aires. After working at design and motion graphics agencies in Buenos Aires, he joined Gustavo Gagliardo, Pedro Perelman, and Martín Tibabuzo in FASE, a multidisciplinary art/design/music collective group in which he still participates as an active member. Between 2000 and 2005, FASE worked on animation and TV branding projects. After this experience, Waisbord abandoned film and turned his energy towards street art and art exhibitions. The two paintings selected for this exhibition bear witness to this world of reference. Cardumen [School of Fish] seems a fragment of a much larger graffiti mural transported into canvas. Seri Pex Tattoo has two traits that are typical of urban art: its satirical allusions to social realities and its combination of images and texts. In the ‘80s, the importance of street and graffiti art became apparent with figures like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat. This was the culmination of a critique of the academic system of Fine Arts that the avant-gardes had started at the beginning of the 20th century. Against the Argentina, Born 1975 www.tecalbum.com [email protected] notion of “disinterested” art, artists found inspiration in daily objects and utilitarian images (industrial design, advertising). Against the naturalized elitism of bourgeois art, artists found inspiration in popular languages. Against the traditional figure of the individual author, artists undertook the creation of collective works. In the ‘60s, Pop Art incorporated the media as well as mass consumer goods as legitimate means of artistic expression. The fact that, in recent years, art has included the entire gamut of the diverse urban “tribes” or minorities seems to oppose any notion of allegedly universal signs, advocating instead the right to individual difference. | V.G. 337 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe RODOLFO WALSH El Salvador, Born 1965 www.rodolfowalshfotografia.blogspot.com [email protected] Rodolfo Walsh has exhibited his work in museums and galleries in the United States, Spain, Germany, England, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina. He has also participated in numerous exhibitions and festivals, including the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2004); the Latin American Photography Forum (2007); and the InterAmerican Biennial of Video Art (2010). His works have been reviewed in art magazines in Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, and Venezuela. Some of his works were also showcased in the book Mapas abiertos. Fotografía Latinoamericana 1992-2002 [Open Maps. Latin American Photography], published by Lunwerg Editores, Spain (2003). Walsh has recently began working with aspects of the environment through compositions that mix natural elements and artistic interventions. In these works, Walsh offers a reflection on how to 338 RODELL WARNER Natural-intervenciones plásticas (CANGREGOS) / Natural-Plastic Interventions (CRABS), 2009 Video work with ecology without making art become activism. In his delicate photographs, the artificial has become a “natural” part of landscape itself, in a move that is poetic rather than militant. About Natural-Plastic Interventions (CRABS), Walsh has said: “In this video, I present images of hermit crabs moving on the sand together with a text written by Charles Darwin. These crabs do not produce their own shell but adopt dead shells of other sea animals. When they do not find a dead shell of an adequate size, these crabs may use soft plastic refuse left on the shore to protect themselves. Thus, plastic is transformed, becoming part of nature.” | V.G.D. Relief 10, (from the Workers' Portraits series), 2010 Photograph 90 x 120 cm 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 in Rodell Warner is the author of several interactive visual arts projects, some of them collaborative, that explore two opposing but interconnected aspects of human nature: the desire to maintain a degree of privacy and the need to make a statement to the world. In works like Photobooth (a project in which members of the public had a chance to make their erotic self-portraits), Closer (where passersby were asked to pose for the camera looking eye-to-eye to complete strangers) and Cc: Everybody (for which dating personal dating ads were converted to street poster format. Warner has challenged his audiences to experience the difference between remaining anonymous and being publicly exposed. Warner’s Workers’ Portraits feature people who work for Trinidad and Tobago’s Community Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme in the cleaning and maintenance of the country’s public areas. Having met those who do the “cutting, trimming, cleaning, and grooming along the roadways,” Warner was struck by the warrior-like look of the workers with their futuristic Trinidad and Tobago, Born 1986 www.rodellwarner.com [email protected] uniforms and formidable-looking tools. The “costume-like” quality of the workers outfits suggested to Warner that, besides their practical purpose, these rugged protective uniforms function as masks that disguise beyond recognition the personal identity of the people who wear them. | E.G. 339 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe ELENA WEN CHANG Costa Rica, Born1980 www.elenawen.com [email protected] Elena Wen studied illustration at the New York City School of Visual Arts. She explored the narrative aspects of drawing in a series of works that later were rounded in several handmade books which, in turn, were later published in limited editions. Her books grace private collections and are archived in the library collections of institutions such as the San Francisco MOMA, The Getty Research Institute, and Stanford University, among others. Wen still plans to continue creating art books, but these days she divides her time between personal and commercial animation work. She is currently working in Quicktime format videos; her animation, mainly inspired by her 340 TONYA WILES Drop Dead, 2009 Video Variable projection dimensions own drawings, is at its core illustration fueled by craft and a sense of aesthetics. Wen’s works have been showcased by DVD magazines Stash and Smile Faucet and exhibited in movie festivals such as Billyburg Short Film Festival, LA Shorts Fest, and Harvard Square; they have also been shown in New York private galleries as well as in the Costa Rica Biennial (2009) and the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2010). About her work, Wen has said: “Change is at the core of the art I create. In a way, I have merely my medium—animation—to thank for that. The very nature of any narrative form speaks to changes, the twists and turns that any story must take. My animated drawings illustrate ordinary scenarios with a conceptual twist. Most of my hand-drawn animations run under one minute, but they each tell a story, exploring everything from isolation in a bustling city, to a familiar argument between a couple, as well as the inevitability and predictability of death. I strive to present the human experience in a way no one has ever seen but that everyone has felt at some point.” | V.G.D. Nannny nanny boo boo, 2008 Digital print 101 x 151 cm 39 3/4 x 59 1/2 in Barbados, Born 1986 www.tonyawiles.com [email protected] Born in Barbados, Tonya Wiles studied painting at the Wimbledon College of Arts in London, where she graduated with honors. In 2008, she returned to Barbados where she currently works in her studio and is a college tutor. Wiles’ art production focuses on its viewer’s interpretation through an interactive experience. She says that her practice “constantly overlaps between sculpture, painting, and performance,” a mixture of media that enables the spectator to engage with the object. Her works deal with colonialism, which is the main issue addressed in Tongue (2008) and Nannny nanny boo boo (2008). In these pieces, Wiles transforms a porcelain plate certified with the British crown emblem into a mask. This act challenges the historical value of the plate, transforming it into an object of observation for the viewer to look at or play with. | A.O. 341 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe NATALIE WOOD Trinidad and Tobago – Canadá, Born 1965 iamnataliewood.blogspot.com [email protected] HÉCTOR ZAMORA Right On, 2006 Deconstructed cardboard 61 x 46 24 x 18 in Delirio Atópico: Edificio San Victorino / Atopic Delirium: San Victorino Building, 2009 Architectonic intervention with bananas Variable dimensions Mexico, Born 1974. www.lsd.com.mx [email protected] Born in Trinidad, Natalie Wood completed her education in Canada. She received studio training at the Ontario College of Art and Design (1995) and holds a master's degree in arts education from the University of Toronto (2000). She has participated in both national and international exhibitions, art fairs, and film and video festivals in 342 venues such as Toronto’s Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (2007), Artists Project Toronto (2010), Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (2006), and the New York Mix Film and Video Festival (2002). She has shown her works in solo exhibitions in galleries such as A Space Gallery Windows (2009, Toronto, Canada) and Zsa Zsa Gallery (2003, Toronto, Canada). She has also been an artist in residence at the Spadina Museum House in Toronto and at the Caribbean and Contemporary Art Center, in Trinidad. Wood integrates her own historical research on the institutions of slavery and colonialism into her work, focused on resistance in the African Diaspora. She works on cardboard—a material used for transporting items associated with trade—as a metaphor for the Diaspora. Her “deconstructive” process involves, in her own words, “working with corrugated cardboard, which I find is an apt metaphor for my blended subjects. I first whiten the surface layer and then cut or pull off this layer to reveal brown images and hybridized portraits.” Wood is currently producing a body of work that examines the Black Panthers movement. | A.O. Héctor Zamora was born in Mexico City. He currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. His installations and architectural interventions have been presented in galleries, museums, international events, and cities in Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Guatemala, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Spain, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has been the recipient of numerous honors and grants awarded by the Cisneros Foundation in Miami (2006); the PollockKrasner Foundation in New York City (2007); and the São Paulo Biennial Foundation (2010). Zamora’s most significant pieces are the ones he has created in public spaces, often reshaping or modifying the physical characteristics of urban or architectural structures. In Delirio Atópico [Atopic Delirium], he intervened two almost identical modernist corner buildings in downtown Bogotá, Colombia: the Monserrat and the San Victorino. On October 15, 2009, he filled an entire floor in each building from floor to ceiling with thousands of very green bananas. During three weeks, the bananas ripened, spilling out of the window frames as they turned from green to yellow to brown until they became a kind of moldy, strongly smelling landscape. According to Zamora, Delirio atópico is a naïve response to the overwhelming presence of bananas in daily Colombian street life. For him, this installation was a “living painting” that invited viewers to look in a different way at “the skin of buildings,” which became, in this case, canvases on which the bananas painted a changing and ephemeral landscape. In many of his space and architectural interventions Zamora creates, in his own words, “feather-light structures that sometimes float or give an impression of buoyancy, despite the heavy materials used to make them, such as concrete, brick, or stone.” In his appropriations of public spaces, Zamora involves local communities in complex collective undertakings, that highlight aspects of city life that would otherwise be taken for granted and remain invisible. | I.A. 343 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe AUGUSTO ZANELA Argentina, Born 1967 www.augustozanela.com.ar [email protected] In his Anamorfías [Anamorphoses], Augusto Zanela projects a geometric form on a real space and materializes this projection using wood and adhesive tape. The original regular form can only be seen from the exact point where the projection was made, which is also the point of view assigned to the camera. If we go through the work as an “installation,” its geometry disappears and the 344 Anamorfía: Rectángulo / Anamorphosis: Rectangle, 1998 Photographic installation 100 x 140 cm 39 3/8 x 55 in work is reduced to its pure, and apparently arbitrary, materiality: accumulated wood, meters of tape that creep on the wall with no discernible direction. The work makes explicit the conventions involved in any act of perception. In some way, those geometrical figures “are not” in the real space; the camera determines the master focal point from which the optical illusion is achieved. Anamorphosis arose as a mannerist play with distortion in the 16th century, in a Europe shaken by the crisis of the Reformation; it prefigured Baroque art in which perspective ceased to be an instrument of knowledge of the world to become a mechanism of optical deception. The invention of photography inherited, in turn, a new rationalist vision of reality that had made its way into prominence in the middle of the 18th century, clearly set against baroque representation. The work of Zanela proposes a contemporary synthesis of these opposed conceptions in the history of art. | V.G. La Frutera / The Fruit Vendor, 2009 Mixed media on canvas 80 X 110 cm 31 1/2 x 43 1/4 in JORGE ALONSO ZAPATA SÁNCHEZ Jorge Alonso Zapata Sánchez was born in San Vicente de Antioquia, Colombia, in 1965. He studied graphic design at the Medellín Institute of Fine Arts. His works have been shown in several venues in Medellín and Bogotá. In 2008 he had a solo exhibition at the Rafael Uribe Palace of Culture in Medellin. In 2010 he was selected to participate in An Equal Start, a special exhibition organized by the Inter-American Development Bank. Zapata Sánchez is well known in Medellín for the unassuming style with which he documents Colombia, Born 1965 jorgezap.artelista.com [email protected] a way of life that globalization has left at the mercy of volatile external factors, including the economy, which is an important component of social transformation. In the process of coping with the demands of change, new ways of behaving coexist with traditional ones deeply rooted in local communities. At times, such coexistence produces unpredictable and unorthodox behaviors that often defy convention. | F.A. 345 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean DANNY ZAVALETA El Salvador, Born 1981 [email protected] Danny Zavaleta graduated in fine arts, with a major in graphic design, from the University of El Salvador (UES) in 2007. He has shown his works in numerous venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), in San Se busca / Wanted, 2007 Wall intervention Variable dimensions José, Costa Rica, in 2005 and 2007; the Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE), in San Salvador, in 2006; Spain’s Cultural Center, in Ciudad de Mexico, in 2008; and the Bronx River Art Center, in New York, in 2009. He has received several awards, including honorary mention at the III Paiz Art Biennial of El Salvador (2005); the Premio de Arte Joven [Young Art Prize], San Salvador (2005); and honorary mention at the Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2006). His works are part of the permanent collection of the Ortiz Gurdián Foundation, in Nicaragua; the Art Museum of El Salvador (MARTE); and the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), in Long Beach, California. Se busca [Wanted] is a series of three poster-size acrylic portraits of illegal street vendors who sell pirated CDs and DVDs. According to Zavaleta, the series of wall interventions is an ironic comment on the stigmatization of these vendors as if they were dangerous criminals. In their portraits, Zavaleta plays wit the graphic style and typography of the typical Western “Wanted” posters, adding “pirate” eye patches on the vendors’ faces. | V.G.D. As Old as My Soul I by SOLEDAD SALAME (The World Bank Permanent Collection, PN: 462088.1) (detail / detalle) 346 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe INSIDE / OUTSIDE STREET ART AT THE WORLD BANK The World Bank Art Program is including a new form of visual communication—the art of graffiti—in its About Change exhibition series. Such a inclusion has been made possible by the contribution of PRESTO, from Brazil, and TEC, from Argentina, the two artists selected to represent graffiti creation in Latin America. PRESTO and TEC came to Washington to produce two murals to be incorporated to the World Bank Art Collection. Graffiti are, by definition, visual creations that appear on private or public property without permission, but these two artists did not only have the permission, they were honored guests of the World Bank to come and bring the spirit of street art within our walls. This is part of the dialogue About Change aimed to create. PRESTO MARCIO TADEU DA PENHA TEC LEANDRO WAISBORD Brazil Argentina, Born 1975 www.presto-one.blogspot.com www.tecalbum.com www.flickr.com/photos/tectec [email protected] [email protected] Like other artists of his generation, Presto developed his art career as a graffiti creator. He started to paint in the streets in 1996 and is still painting in the streets today. His “mad” characters, which he places in surreal situations, produce a sense of strangeness that captures the attention of people walking in the city. The greatest virtue of Presto’s public works is that they involve people in their imaginary worlds. The strange images in his paintings, with their human scale and delicate features, surprise their viewers and invite them to enter into another dimension. In his years of dedicated work, Presto has created an imaginary world made up of fantastic figures, a sophisticated spray paint technique and a very elaborate calligraphy that is almost abstract. Presto likes São Paulo, the urban chaos and diversity of the human landscape that characterizes the metropolis. Thus, aged screens, weathered wood and rusty metal become the perfect background for his drawings, paintings, and collages. | E.E. After a youth influenced by urban culture, graffiti, travelling and rock bands, Cordoba born Leandro Waisbord—also known as TEC—studied graphic design at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He complemented his studies in design with photography, screen-printing, animation and video. After working in various design and animation agencies in Buenos Aires, he joined the multidisciplinary art group FASE, where he continues to be an active member. Between 2000 and 2005, FASE worked on animation, produced a magazine and developed multiple interventions in public spaces and in exhibitions around the world, including the Berlin Film Festival. After that experience, TEC has focused his energy towards street and public art. He works internationally, traveling around the world and leaving the marks of his personal style in many street walls and public spaces. TEC lives in Buenos Aires. | E.E. 348 Untitled, 2011 - in situ installation by PRESTO Untitled, 2010 - in situ installations by TEC 349 ABOUT CHANGE APENDIX APPENDIX in Latin America and the Caribean EL CAMBIO en América Latina y el Caribe SELECTED WORLD BANK ARTISTS GROUP BY COUNTRY LATIN AMERICA OF ORIGIN AND /CARIBBEAN RESIDENCE MEMBER COUNTRIES ARGENTINA Arturo Aguiar María Lucila Amatista Alejandro Argüelles Hugo Cesar Aveta Gabriel Baggio Leonardo Andrés Battistelli Evelyn Bendjeskov Florencia Blanco Toia Bonino Marcela Leticia Cabutti Guido David Chouela Juan Doffo Mercedes Fidanza Luján Funes Eduardo Gil Fernando Goin Marcelo Grosman Carlos Miguel Imbach Juan Pablo Inzirillo Andrea Juan Cynthia Paola Kampelmacher Alexandra Kehayoglou Patricio Larrambebere Adriana Lestido Nuna Mangiante Gaby Messina Laura Messing Jorge Miño Leandro Nuñez Andrea Ostera Paula Otegui Julio Pantoja Andrés Pasinovich Esteban Norman Pastorino Raquel Podesta Emilio Claudio Reato Esteban Rivero Anahí Roitman Alejandro Thornton Leila Tschopp Federico Varone Leandro (TEC) Waisbord Augusto Zanela BAHAMAS John Cox Blue Curry Kishan Munroe Lavar Munroe 350 BARBADOS Ewan Atkinson Joscelyn Gardner Sheena Rose Tonya Wiles BELIZE Santiago Cal BOLIVIA Gabriela Benítez Ávila Galo Coca Sandra De Berduccy Christie Erika Ewel Raquel Schwartz Roberto Unterladstaetter Valdivia BRAZIL Deolinda Aguiar Paulo Almeida André Alvim Lucas Bambozzi Andréa Barata Daniel Caballero Gabriel Centurion Braga Carla Chaim Adriana Conti Melo Henrique De França Tomaz Dias Viana Mauro Espíndola Kilian Glasner Isabel Gouveia Flávia Junqueira Angulo Julia Kater Fabricio López Fabiano Marques Luiz Telles Laila Terra Bettina Vaz Guimarães Moraes Bruno Vilela CHILE Teresa Aninat Sahli Joan Belmar Cristian Elizalde José Estuardo Marcelo Faúndez Josefina Guilisasti Ignacio Gumucio Consuelo Lewin Sebastián Mahaluf Emilio Marín Catalina Mena Ürményi Sachiyo Nishimura Nicolás Rupcich Francisco Sepúlveda Catalina Swinburn Kufferath Ana Catalina Vicuña Domínguez COLOMBIA Kindi Llajtu-Vicente Álvarez Jacanamijoy Santiago Echeverry Gonzalo Fuenmayor Myriam González Ana González Rojas Ana Paola González Salamanca Alexandra McCormick Marco Mojica Eduard Moreno Sánchez Andrea Posada Escobar Carlos Alberto Salazar Arenas Lina Vargas De La Hoz Jorge Alonso Zapata Sánchez COSTA RICA Oscar Figueroa Chaves Luciano Goizueta Fevrier Roberto Guerrero Miranda José Alberto Hernández Campos Federico Herrero Mimian Hsu John Juric Lucía Madriz Natasha Mclver Mauricio Miranda Gutiérrez Cecilia Paredes Joaquín Rodriguez del Paso Cinthya Soto Elena Wen Chang DOMINICA Pauline Marcelle DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Alain Bañón Pepe Coronado Iliana Emilia García Scherezade Garcia Charo Oquet Julio Valdez Alex Morel ECUADOR Nicky Enright Agustin Patiño Karen Pazán Maria Teresa Ponce Fernando Toledo EL SALVADOR Andrés Asturias Mauricio Edgardo Esquível Karen Estrada Melissa Guevara Walerio Iraheta Jaime Izaguirre Mauricio Kabistán Ronald Morán Verónica Vides Rodolfo Walsh Danny Zavaleta GUATEMALA Edgar Rolando Calel Apen Benvenuto Chavajay González Regina De Batres Jorge Linares Andrea Mármol Bonifacio Maxia Cutzal Erick Adolfo Menchú Vásquez Petronilo Miza López Norman Gabriel Morales Angel Poyón Cali Fernando Poyón Cali GUYANA Roshini Kempadoo Hew Locke HAITI Jean-Ulrick Désert Barbara Prézeau Stephenson HONDURAS Lucy Argueta Jorge Oqueli Adán Vallecillo JAMAICA Charles Campbell Margaret Chen Laura Facey Gerard Hanson Marlon James Michael Parchment Ebony Patterson Oneika Russel Phillip Thomas Alfredo Héctor Márquez Espinoza Karina Rebata MEXICO Guillermo Álvarez Charvel Tania Candiani Del Real Guillaume Corpart Muller Katia Fuentes Héctor Guerrero Skinfill Fran Ilich Bayrol Jiménez Juan Ramón Lemus María del Carmen Linares Radillo Minerva López Artemio Narro Karla Paulina Sánchez Barajas María Teresa Sánchez Navarrete Eric Scibor-Rylski Omar Torres Mendoza Isaac Emmanuel Torres Ortiz Héctor Zamora ST. LUCIA Nadia Huggins Ras Mosera NICARAGUA Allan Argüello Jean Marc Calvet Mauricio Kabistán Rossana Lacayo PANAMA Rodrígo Adames José Manuel Castrellón Donna Conlon Lorena Endara Jonathan Harker Claudio Paolasso Pilar Moreno Raymundo PARAGUAY Eneide Boneu Gabriel Brizuela Santomé PERU Franziska Nidhi-Kumari Anjou Agrawal Jaime Hugo Antillaque Carnero Cesar Cornejo José Manuel Cortez Arce Gilmer Roberto Gómez Delgado Nicolás Lamas ST. KITTS AND NEVES Terry Boddie ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES Holly Bynoe SURINAME Sri Irodikromo Marcel Hendrick Pinas Dhiradj Ramsamoedj George Struikelblok Roddney Tjon Poen Gie TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO La Vaughn Belle Richard Fung Marlon Griffith Abigail Hadeed Jaime Lee Loy Nikolai Noel Rodell Warner Natalie Wood URUGUAY Santiago Aldabalde Simón Altkorn Monti Ana Campanella Muriel Cardoso Ernesto Rizzo Federico Meneses Gerardo Carella Jacqueline Helena Lacasa Igune Gabriel Lema Daniel Machado Cecilia Mattos Diego Velazco Santiago Velazco Diego Villalba VENEZUELA José Antonio (MUU) Blanco Angulo Oly Carolina Díaz Torres Dulce Gómez 351 ABOUT CHANGE in Latin America and the Caribean This publication was printed in the U.S.A. in Febuary 2012. It is set in Whitney, designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. 2,000 copies were printed. 352