Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this artist statement, Bibiana Suarez discusses how her work reflects her search for self-identification and the problems of living between two cultures—that of Puerto Rico and the United States—as a self-imposed exile. Suarez also describes [...]

This text is a section of the catalogue to the exhibition of photography that accompanied the Simposio de Justicia Restaurativa y Paz en Colombia held in Cali in 2005. In it, art critic and curator María Iovino introduces the work of Colombian [...]

In this text, Amalia Mesa-Bains introduces an exhibition of Chicano art with an account of Chicano cultural history, and a description of how the works of art in the show relate to several themes. She organizes her account of Chicano cultural history [...]

In this essay, the writer Magda Portal applauds the official rehabilitation of Túpac Amaru, the indigenous harbinger of Peruvian independence, as a national icon to represent the first phase of the self-styled Gobierno Revolucionario de las Fuerzas [...]

This is the brochure for Carros de guerra [War Carts], the exhibition of work by Rodrigo Facundo at the Galería Cuarto Nivel, which was organized as part of Fotología 3 (2004), Tercer Festival Internacional de Fotografía de Bogotá [Third [...]

Doris Salcedo gave this lecture in 2003 at the National Museum in Colombia. She discusses three of the projects she presented in the1990s in Colombia, Holland, Turkey, and Germany: Atrabiliarios [Defiant] (2), Un acto de memoria [An Act of Memory], [...]

The catalogue for the exhibition, Otras miradas = Other Glances (2004) includes the historian Carmen María Jaramillo’s interview of María Elvira Escallón, which focused on the latter’s series Desde adentro [From Within] (2003) that was [...]

Here Fernando Escobar develops the proposal for his art project De memoria. Nueva fauna y flora. Escobar concretely renders visible the conceptual sphere from which he derives his “participative, collective” research, as he categorizes it, [...]

Entitled “The Dynamic of Violence,” this article by researcher and art critic Olga M. Viso analyzes specific works by Doris Salcedo such as Atrabiliarios [Defiant]and Casa Viuda [The Widowed House], as well as Sin título [Untitled] furniture ( [...]

Alicia Haber was the curator of the 1991 exhibition Charrúas y montes criollos, presenting the contemporary work of Uruguayan artist Rimer Cardillo, who had been residing in New York since 1984. According to the curatorial text, the exhibition [...]

In 1987, critic Patricia Londoño wrote the first contemporary review of the subject of photography in Colombia. The article presents in chronological order and describes the publications, exhibitions, and photographic archives used, salvaged, and [...]

Erika Martínez Cuervo describes and analyzes El puente [The Bridge], the work by Óscar Muñoz, discussing the relationships that link urban experience, memory, the nature of visual portrayals, and the phenomena of modernization and [...]

The text “El tren de los curados” was published in the catalogue of the 40 Salón Nacional de Artistas/11 Salones Regionales de Artistas (2006), in the section “Región Pacífico–7 (Salón) de Octubre 2005.” The article was written by the [...]

The text “En asuntos de ciudad, la estética urbana sí tiene que ver con todo” by architect and urbanist Álvaro Suárez Zúñiga was originally presented at the opening ceremony of Arte para Bogotá (1995), a joint initiative of the Art School [...]

In this essay, Rodrigo Facundo introduced his art project En la punta de la lengua, which took an in-depth look at how countries (for example Colombia) use photographic images in official reports on events, and the role played by memory, both [...]

In this article, Colombian anthropologist Pilar Riaño Alcalá presents the concepts underlying her reflections on the connection between art and social processes, as well as between public art, art in general, and memory in Colombia.  On the basis [...]

This text, which compiles interviews and conversations that took place between art critic and researcher María Iovino and photographer Fernell Franco between 2001 and 2004, is the introduction to the catalogue, Otro Documento. The catalogue was part [...]

In the text “Hacer arte público como memoria colectiva, como metáfora y como acción,” North American artist Suzanne Lacy develops her thesis on the community impact of an artistic strategy. In so doing, she analyzes the definition of “public [...]

Historias, escenas e intervalos: fotografía y video is the title of a theoretical research project undertaken by Juan Fernando Herrán in the framework of his curatorship of the area of photography and video for Proyecto Pentágono, an investigation [...]

In this lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Puerto Rican-born artist Bibiana Suarez presents an overview of her work and considers the role of race and ethnicity in her art. She begins the lecture by explaining her ethnic background and [...]

This text by Eduardo Serrano is the introduction to the book Historia de la fotografía en Colombia (1840-1950). In it, Serrano explains the importance of the publication of this book for the fields of art and history insofar as it recovers the [...]

Using the theoretical framework of “broken memory,” defined by Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones as memory "deliberately denied by political power or broken by official repression or cultural exclusion," Juana N. Goergen analyzes signs and imagery of [...]

In the chapter called “Las huellas de la guerra” [The Scars of War] (2003), the Colombian historian Gonzalo Sánchez G. discusses the “very complex and allusive” relationships involved in the trilogy Guerras, Memoria e Historia [Wars, Memory [...]

The Uruguayan art historian and executive publisher of the magazine Arte en Colombia-Art Nexus, Ivonne Pini wonders, “How should the visual arts address our past?” She points out that the “rupture of modernism” did not happen in Latin America [...]

As the title suggests, this is a record of the conversation between the Colombian historian Gonzalo Sánchez and the artist María Elvira Escallón (who is also Colombian) that was published in the magazine Análisis Político [Political Analysis] in [...]

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 his essay, Victor Zamudio-Taylor addresses the historic loss of cultural memory imposed on mestizos (mixed race people) by the dominant culture throughout the Americas since the time of the conquest by the Spanish and Portuguese. The loss of [...]

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 [...]

In this essay, Amalia Mesa-Bains provides an analysis of the sculptural works by Uruguayan-born artist, Rimer Cardillo. Her analysis insists on the coexistence of multiple meanings, while also attempting to identify the personal, cultural, and [...]

In this artist’s statement, the Cuban-born painter Paul Sierra writes about the meaning of his art as an exploration of myth and memory, and about his search for identity located in the midst of two cultures and in both the past and the present. He [...]