Tania Bruguera, InstaCitizen – Performa 15. Courtesy Performa
Latin America is a vast and varied cultural entity that has seen tumultuous times and inspired the world with its beauty. From repressive governments to rich cultural and natural diversity, the continent has left a mark in the public consciousness, often by means of their artists. A new show at the South London Gallery highlights works by more than 40 Latin American artists working with mediums and methods including installation, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video. The works exhibited have been acquired by the Guggenheim as part of their collection “Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York Guggenheim UBS MAP Purchase Fund”, 2014, but are now being exhibited at the South London Gallery as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. The exhibition “Under the Same Sun”, curated by Pablo León de la Barra, focuses on works made by artists born after 1968, exploring the various creative responses by artists to complex, shared realities that have been influenced by colonial and modern histories, economic crises, and social inequality, as well as by concurrent periods of regional economic wealth and progress.
To commemorate this comprehensive and unique show we’ve selected the five artists from Latin America to keep on your radar.
“El Peso de la Culpa” (The Burden of Guilt), 1997, Tania Bruguera. Image from Literal.
Tania Bruguera
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1968
“I’m kind of a serpent, I peel off my skin every few years or whatever,” said Tania Bruguera when discussing her sociopolitical practice. The metaphoric description Bruguera uses is based on the fact that she considers it necessary to change focus every time she realises people understand what she does. In her eyes this state of awareness leads to the undermining of her work, which she intends as thought provoking and instructive.
Tania Bruguera’s early work used mainly her own body as a means to challenge established structures of control and power through performance. She performed one of her groundbreaking pieces “El Peso de la Culpa” (The Burden of Guilt), 1997, during this period. The piece was inspired by the legend of a mass suicide of a group of indigenous Cubans who ate large amounts of soil as a form of peaceful resistance against the invading Spanish. The performance, therefore, involved her eating soil for 45 minutes, while a lamb’s corpse dangled from her neck. Here, her body represented the denial of freedom throughout Cuban history, a struggle they locally refer to as comer tierra (eating dirt).
More recently, Bruguera’s practice has shifted from using her own body in intimate performances to arranging large-scale interactive situations in which the audience leads the artwork from an uncontrolled situation presented as A to B , the conclusion of A.
“Cosmic Thing”, 2002, Damian Ortega. Image from Influx
Damián Ortega
Born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1967
Without formal art education, Damián Ortega began his career as a political cartoonist right after interrupting his secondary studies in the ’80s. His work, however, further developed after attending an experimental art course in Mexico City held by Gabriel Orozco — the artist Ortega considers to be most influential in his career.
Ortega’s work nowadays focuses on the dormant poetry found in the mundane objects humans surround themselves with everyday. Through these objects he achieves a great level of social and political complexity, which he uses to transmit a message to his audience. For Ortega, meaning cannot be limited to a single scope, therefore through his artwork he chooses to emphasise how meaning is cultivated from the relationships between multiple things, like the many components used to mass produce cars.
“Cosmic Thing”, 2002 — his most well-known installation — is a perfect example of this approach to art, where the obvious is linked to a non-evident deeper message. In this case, Ortega invites the audience to think about the process by which the Volkswagen Beetle was made, and to reconsider the implications of it. The Beetle originated in Nazi Germany as “the people’s car”, and then it popularised in virtually the entire world. Through this installation Ortega alludes to the inescapable reach of the global capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGGEaVcPKxs
Regina José Galindo
Born in Guatemala City, Guatemala in 1974
Regina José Galindo is a self-taught sociopolitical artist who unapologetically confronts the persistent problems she finds in the newly democratised society the government describes as a “new” Guatemala. In her work, she acknowledges the 36 years of civil war her country has been through, but in order to perpetuate peace and productivity her ultimate goal is to suggest a brighter future through her art.
Galindo’s most acclaimed work “¿Quien Puede Borrar las Huellas?” (Who Can Erase the Traces?), 2003, is perhaps the epitome of what an artist is willing to do in order to disseminate a message. For this project, Galindo walked barefoot for 1 kilometre through the streets of Guatemala City from the Palacio Nacional de La Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad. Throughout the journey Regina José Galindo carried in her hands a container filled with human blood she used to continually dip her feet in. The performance and remaining footprints were meant to show her disappointment and impotency after hearing the news that Efraín Ríos Montt had been allowed to run for presidency against constitutional regulations. Rios Montt went on to become a military dictator who considered responsible for the most destructive and violent period of the country’s national conflict.
Galindo’s work is not for the light-hearted, she does everything she can to stir her viewers, in particular her fellow Guatemalan viewers who have become numb and hopeless after so many years of injustice, fear and violence.
“Apolitico” (Apolitical), 2001, Wilfredo Prieto. Image from Havana Cultura
Wilfredo Prieto
Born in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba in 1978
Wilfredo Prieto’s most important work, “Apolítico” (Apolitical), 2001, incorporates the flags of all the members of the United Nations, but in shades of grey only. The choice to render all the flags monochromatic is linked to an ironic welcoming twist, where the committee is deprived of their oh-so-necessary distinctive colourful flags. Through the deliberate greyscale Prieto suggests a juxtaposition between what the United Nations stands for: cooperation through homogenous unification, and what it really is: a complex unification overpowered by the individualistic nature of the separate nations.
Prieto’s work is sarcastic, brutally satirical and beautifully ironic. He manages to use little materials or objects to portray something that to the naked eye may seem incomplete or shallow, but instead is deliberately broad in humour, thus powerfully critical of the deceiving complex institutions controlling the world. His background has made him knowledgeable of both capitalist and communist cultures, and he uses this information to portray it through his installations which are multidisciplinary in approach.
“La Cueva Negra”, 2013, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, 20 min. Image from PAMM’s Website
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1972
Film and video maker Beatriz Santiago Muñoz approaches her discipline in a simple yet deep manner. As a documentarian she remains sensible and spontaneous, but as an artist she intentionally blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction through her works. Her style incorporates intensive research and observation in order to effectively portray the strained relationship between what is the documentarian’s desire for truth and the artist’s deep concerns for aesthetic appeal. As a result, she views her primary tool — the camera — as a means to showcase what is and exists and what can be or can exist, ie, a fabricated reality.
Muñoz tends to incorporate non-actors into her productions to encourage authenticity in the narrative. Through improvisation that is natural and instinctive rather than fabricated and preconceived, she believes her work is able to capture the essence of history and identity more realistically. Take “Archivo” (Archive), 2001, in which people recreate a series of real occurrences, like the police murder of an infamous killer or the forced eviction of entire families from a squatters village known as Villa Sin Miedo, along with fictional elements.
These artists are currently exhibiting at the South London Gallery as part of the “Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today” exhibition until 4 September 2016