![\"Tania](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tania_Bruguers__Tatlin_5.jpg\")
Tania Bruguera, InstaCitizen – Performa 15. Courtesy Performa<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tania Bruguera, InstaCitizen – Performa 15. Courtesy Performa<\/p>\n
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1968<\/em> Born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1967<\/em> Born in Guatemala City, Guatemala in 1974<\/em> Born in Sancti Sp\u00edritus, Cuba in 1978<\/em> Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1972<\/em> Latin American Artists<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[5266,4576,5267,2956,5268,2544,4584,4052,3462,4792,5269,5270],"class_list":["post-34977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-art-from-latin-america-today","tag-beatriz-santiago-munoz","tag-cuba","tag-damian-ortega","tag-guatemala","tag-mexico","tag-puerto-rico","tag-regina-jose-galindo","tag-south-london-gallery","tag-tania-bruguera","tag-under-the-same-sun","tag-wilfredo-prieto"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nLatin 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.\u00a0The works exhibited have been acquired by the Guggenheim as\u00a0part 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 \u00a0the \u00a0<\/span>Guggenheim\u00a0UBS MAP Global Art Initiative<\/a>. The exhibition “Under the Same Sun”, curated by Pablo Le\u00f3n 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.
\n
\nTo commemorate this comprehensive and unique show we’ve selected the five artists from Latin America to keep on your radar.
\n <\/p>\n![\"Tania](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/F-Tania-Bruguera-900x600.jpg\")
\u201cEl Peso de la Culpa\u201d (The Burden of Guilt), 1997, Tania Bruguera. Image from Literal<\/a>.<\/p>\nTania Bruguera\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m kind of a serpent, I peel off my skin every few years or whatever,\u201d 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.
\nTania Bruguera\u2019s 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 \u201cEl Peso de la Culpa\u201d (The Burden of Guilt), 1997,\u00a0 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\u2019s corpse dangled from her neck. Here, her body represented the denial of freedom throughout Cuban history,\u00a0 a struggle they locally refer to as comer tierra <\/i>(eating dirt).
\nMore recently, Bruguera\u2019s 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.
\n
\n <\/p>\n![\"Damian](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/F-damian-ortega-copy-885x600.jpg\")
“Cosmic Thing”, 2002, Damian Ortega. Image from Influx<\/a><\/p>\nDami\u00e1n Ortega<\/b><\/h2>\n
\nWithout formal art education, Dami\u00e1n 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 \u2014 the artist Ortega considers to be most influential in his career.
\nOrtega\u2019s 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.
\n\u201cCosmic Thing\u201d, 2002 \u2014 his most well-known installation \u2014 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 \u201cthe people\u2019s car\u201d, and then it popularised in virtually the entire world. Through this installation Ortega alludes to the inescapable reach of the global capital.
\n
\n
\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OGGEaVcPKxs<\/p>\nRegina Jos\u00e9 Galindo\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
\nRegina Jos\u00e9 Galindo<\/a> is a self-taught sociopolitical artist who unapologetically confronts the persistent problems she finds in the newly democratised society the government describes as a \u201cnew\u201d 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.
\nGalindo\u2019s most acclaimed work \u201c\u00bfQuien Puede Borrar las Huellas?\u201d (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 Jos\u00e9 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 Efra\u00edn R\u00edos 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\u2019s national conflict.
\nGalindo\u2019s 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.
\n
\n <\/p>\n![\"Wilfredo](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Wilfredo-Prieto-900x563.jpg\")
“Apolitico” (Apolitical), 2001, Wilfredo Prieto. Image from Havana Cultura<\/p>\nWilfredo Prieto<\/b><\/h2>\n
\nWilfredo Prieto\u2019s most important work, \u201cApol\u00edtico\u201d (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.
\nPrieto\u2019s 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.
\n
\n <\/p>\n![\"Beatriz](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/F-Beatriz-Santiago-Mu\u00f1oz_La-Cueva-Negra_Still_2013_lores-900x600.jpg\")
“La Cueva Negra”, 2013, Beatriz Santiago Mu\u00f1oz, 20 min. Image from PAMM’s Website<\/a><\/p>\nBeatriz Santiago Mu\u00f1oz<\/b><\/h2>\n
\nFilm and video maker Beatriz Santiago Mu\u00f1oz<\/a> 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\u2019s desire for truth and the artist\u2019s deep concerns for aesthetic appeal. As a result, she views her primary tool \u2014 the camera \u2014 as a means to showcase what is and exists and what can be or can exist, ie, a fabricated reality.
\nMu\u00f1oz 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 \u201cArchivo\u201d (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.
\n
\n
\nThese artists are currently exhibiting at the South London Gallery<\/a> as part of the “Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today”<\/a> exhibition until 4 September 2016<\/strong> \n
\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"