Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

On the occasion of the exhibition La casa de todos nosotros: Antonio Martorell y sus amigos [A House for Us All: Antonio Martorell and Friends] held at El Museo del Barrio in 1992, Puerto Rican curator Susana Torruella Leval analyzes Antonio [...]

The document includes an image that is part of Marcelo Pombo's installation in the collective exhibition La Conquista (Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural Recoleta, March 1992). Organized for the Fifth Centennial of the Discovery of America, it includes a [...]

In this essay, Ron Kovatch explores how issues of relocation, assimilation, and identity are manifest in the group of sculptures by Raoul Deal presented in the installation Reinventing Jimmy Green. Inspired by his grandfather Eugenio Greco’s [...]

In this document, independent curator, Laura Roulet provides a biographical sketch of Charles Juhasz and Arnaldo Morales—two artists that the author has identified as the third generation of Puerto Rican artists to dedicate their work to [...]

Cesar Trasobares’ essay is broken down into fifteen separate “notes” that describe the exhibited project or the Quinceañera planning process; they are written from the perspective of Rosata Quinceañera, the fictional heroine that is featured [...]

This document, written in 1977 by the Colombian artist Alicia Barney, is a mimeographed copy of the introduction to the installation Diario-objeto [Diary-Object] (1978) shown at the exhibition held at the Extensión Cultural [Cultural Extension] [...]

This article, entitled “Análisis de la obra de Feliza Burstyn” [Analysis of Feliza Burstyn’s Work], was published on September 25, 1974 in the Cali-based newspaper El País. It is one of the responses to art critic and historian Álvaro Medina [...]

In this text, art critic Tadeu Chiarelli presents Apropriações, the show that he organized at the Paço das Artes in São Paulo in 1990. Chiarelli discusses the ties between the art object and the real, and reflects on the role of the former in [...]

Aproximación a una historia del videoarte en Colombia is one of the links on the website http://bitio.net/vac Historia del Videoarte en Colombia, a research project by video artist and professor Gilles Charalambos Bruyère that provides, free of [...]

In this article Pablo Oyarzún provides a critical review of the art produced over the course of three decades. He notes the lack of a tradition that could bear witness to and interpret art production in Chile. From the early twentieth century& [...]

"Art Liberation Movement" is Mario Castillo’s personal manifesto, which appears on the artist’s website. The Chicano/Mexican artist who works from Chicago expresses in this statement his desire to liberate himself from "the aesthetic constraints [...]

In this document, scholar and curator Chon Noriega uses the model of identity articulated by José Martí in order to construct a more accurate understanding of U.S. Latino cultural expression and, more specifically, Latino installation art. He [...]

“Burztyn [sic] above any suspicion” is the title of Marta Traba’s response to an accusation of plagiarism concerning the installation Las Camas [The Beds] by the sculptor Feliza Bursztyn in 1974 at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern [...]

Sônia Salzstein wrote this essay for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of work by Carlos Fajardo that was held at Galeria A. S. Studio in São Paulo in 1997. In it, she discusses the persistence of memory in painting (the medium most [...]

Rodrigo Orrantia’s essay is about En la punta de la lengua (1997), the work that the Colombian artist Rodrigo Facundo installed at the Bogotá Galería Santa Fe Planetarium for the II Premio Luis Caballero (1997). Orrantia’s analysis of the [...]

The Puerto Rican professor and critic Nelson Rivera Rosario discusses three works by Antonio Navia: Espacio-tiempo [Space-Time] (an environment installation involving sculpture, painting, and music); Naves [Vessels] (mobile sculptures); and Ajedrez [...]

Written by Carolina Ponce de León under the title “El salón de la extravagancia,” this document was published in the “Nuestra Época” section of the Bogotá daily newspaper El Espectador, on May 8, 1994. It was written as a criticism of the [...]

In this text, Miguel González provides a brief overview of the life of Colombian artist Elías Heim, placing particular emphasis on his education in Jerusalem (Israel) and Munich (Germany), and his production from 1991 to 1997. González discusses [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

In this essay Pablo Oyarzún, an authority on philosophical matters, discusses Lonquén 10 años (Lonquén 10 Years), the installation by the Chilean artist Gonzalo Díaz, keeping in mind the procedures, relationships, [...]

In this text, Aracy Amaral considers the strong negative responses provoked by a work entitled Etsedrón in the 1975 (XIII) São Paulo Biennial. She argues that this work provoked such responses because of its visceral power and because it is [...]

In this article, the British critic Rod Mengham reviews Doris Salcedo’s installation Neither (2004) in terms of the Colombian artist’s career, identifying significant changes in her work since 2002. Up until that point, Salcedo had produced [...]

“Feliza ‘Baila’ en Cali” [Feliza ‘Dances’ in Cali], is an interview of Feliza Bursztyn by Maritza Uribe de Urdinola conducted in 1979. With precise questions, Urdinola reviews the artist’s work and career from her early, remarkable [...]

This text by art critic Alberto Tassinari provides an overview of Laura Vinci’s art, from her early paintings produced in the late eighties to her participation, in 1997, in the Projeto Arte/Cidade—that is, a decade of work. Tassinari sees Vinci [...]

As part of his curatorial plan for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad (1973–2000: Transfer and Density), Justo Pastor Mellado proposes that museums should reinstate works that, though ignored by the critical discourse of [...]

This essay, “Historias de recolección: bricolage, archivo y biblioteca” [Collection Stories: Bricolage, Archive, and Library], was written by Alberto Madrid on the occasion of the exhibition Chile 100 años de artes visuales [ [...]

The theorist Justo Pastor Mellado outlines his curatorial approach for the exhibition 1973–2000: Transferencia y densidad. He begins by defining concepts such as “curator,” discussing the term’s evolution in Chile and its [...]

The article “Instalaciones: El espacio tomado” [Installations: The Taken Space] (1991), written by the Colombian artist and critic Luis Fernando Valencia, appeared in 1991 in the 12th issue of Arte. Revista de Arte y Cultura [Art. The Magazine of [...]

In this essay, independent curator Laura Roulet maintains that Puerto Rican artists Rafael Ferrer, Antonio Martorell, Papo Colo, Ernesto Pujol, Pepon Osorio, Dahara Rivera, Charles Juhasz, and Arnaldo Morales have advanced the practice of [...]

This essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto was included in the catalogue of the 1987 exhibition, Grotto of the Virgins: Installation by Amalia Mesa-Bains, which was held at the INTAR Latin American Gallery in New York. Ybarra-Frausto discusses the [...]

In the text “Invitación al sacrificio” [An Invitation to Sacrifice], commentator Alejandro Torres discusses the poetic quality of the staging and production in the work of the Mapa Teatro collective directed by Colombian artist Rolf Abderhalden [...]

[This text is] an essay by critic Luis Ángel Duque for the exhibition catalogue Los Ochenta. Panorama de las artes visuales en Venezuela [The Eighties: Panorama of the Visual Arts in Venezuela] (Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, 1990). Divided [...]

In this text, art critic Lisette Lagnado develops the concept “instauração” formulated by Tunga as a means to go beyond terms such as “instalação” and/or “performance,” which he deemed inapplicable. In Lagnado’s view, the word “ [...]

These documents written by Dioscórides Pérez consist of two texts published in the catalogue Tránsito (2001). Both articles serve as a report on the performance La lección de anatomía (2000), presented by the writer himself, working with the Dé [...]

The article reviews the Harte, Pombo, Suárez III exhibition (Buenos Aires: Fundación Banco Patricios, from November 4–27, 1992). It describes the characteristics of the works presented by each one of the artists—Miguel Harte, Marcelo Pombo, and [...]

In this section of the second chapter of her book La transestética postmoderna (Caracas, 2003), Margot Römer provides a chronological overview of the period that spans from the sixties to the late nineties, pointing out the artists, events, and [...]

In the essay “Los nuevos procesos y la representación figurativa” [The New Processes and Figurative Representation], chapter III of the book La desaparición de los límites [The Disappearance of Limits], author Zuleiva Vivas explains the [...]

In October, 2009, artist and researcher Jorge Luis Vaca interviewed sculptor María Consuelo García for a research project entitled “Espacio, Tiempo; Movimiento: Análisis de Tres Prácticas en el Arte Colombiano” carried out for the Bogotá- [...]

This curatorial text by William Niño Araque analyzes the exhibition Max Pedemonte: Muros, templos y ciudadelas (Caracas: Fundación Galería de Arte Nacional, 1994), presenting the work of the sculptor Max Pedemonte. The text is based on an earlier [...]

Olga Marín Arango’s article, “Memorias patrióticas de un voyerista” [Patriotic Memoirs of a Voyeur] was published on November 21, 1997, in the “Cultura/Espectáculos” [Culture and Entertainment] section of the Bogotá newspaper El [...]

In this document, José Alejandro Restrepo ponders the various problems related to the impossibility of accepting an objective interpretation of the nature and culture of Latin America/South America. This meditation starts with the nomenclature given [...]

This interview covers Óscar Muñoz’s career from the early days in Cali in the late sixties until 2004, the time period that is the focus of interest. Muñoz connects his art with his formation as an artist and with what happened in his native [...]

Architect and urban planner, Luis Aponte-Pares, discusses the trends of cities across the nation that have become contested terrains due to the transformation of the urban landscape: from suburbanization to the class and ethnic segregation of [...]

The brochure for de puerta en puerta (door to door), an exhibition curated by Silvia Carman Cubiña of installations by Puerto Rican-born, New York-based artist Pepon Osorio included a biography, a short description of the exhibition, and a write up [...]

These exhibition notes explain RISD’s (Rhode Island School of Art and Design) Art ConText series and artist Pepón Osorio’s work Transboricua. These socially engaged installations originate from his past experiences as a social [...]

In “Pistas para un viaje,” Puerto Rican critic Celedonio Abad discusses the three exhibitions of Martorell’s work held in 1991: the first at La Casa del Libro in San Juan; the second at La Casa del Peón Caminero in Cayey; and the third at the [...]

In the form of a letter, Raoul Deal reflects on how his installation Reinventando a Jimmy Green [Reinventing Jimmy Green]explores issues of migration, consumerism, and identity. Through his work, the artist looks at his process of adaptation upon [...]

This exhibition essay by Julia P. Herzberg discusses twelve Chilean artists working in experimental and avant-garde modalities (from the late 1970s to early 1990s). These artists are lesser known outside Chile because they stayed in the country [...]

This book is about Ronaldo Rego, the visual artist, whose work expresses a symbolic view of Candomblé (the Brazilian animist cult that has remained truest to its African roots) and Umbanda (a syncretic blend of African sources and Catholicism [...]

The first chapter of the article “Rodrigo Callejas o el paisaje como obsesión” [Rodrigo Callejas or Landscape as Obsession] by the Colombian painter and printmaker Alberto González Rodríguez discusses the distinction he makes between [...]