Art in Latin America and contemporary cultural identities

First, one must remember Latin America as a territory colonized by two great European nations, Spain and Portugal. These, over four hundred years, imposed their culture on Latin America through a tyrannical and cruel colonization process, which put an end to the great Andean civilizations and ignored the immense cultural wealth of the large population of native peoples of Brazil.

In addition, millions of Africans brought in by the slave market were added to Latin American societies. This fact occurs in the most tropical American regions, ranging from the Caribbean to Brazil. It is in this scenario of ethnic and socio-cultural diversity that the European standard of society is implanted. Thus, like everything else, the history of art in Latin America is inseparable from the history of Europe, on which it has become, in a way, dependent.

One can cite, as an example of the influence of the European pattern, the case of Antônio Francisco Lisboa, O Aleijadinho (1738 - 1814). Son of a Portuguese master builder and architect and an enslaved African, Brazilian born in Minas Gerais, he proved to be an important artist of Baroque and Rococo art in the Americas. Such styles were genuinely reproduced by Aleijadinho, even though he never went to Europe or attended art schools.

Since Latin American art, and soon also Brazilian art, is a product of the artistic desire of the religious, economic and cultural elites in the different historical moments of these nations, artists have always questioned and answered within the aesthetic paradigms inherited from the colonizers. Because this is the cultural standard adopted by the Latin American elites, it is, then, the problem mentioned by the writer Luiz Sérgio de Oliveira: “being a Latin American artist is not enough; it is necessary to go further, it is necessary to cross borders, to be international”.

From the colonialist independence of Latin American nations and the formation of their republics and the advent of the modernist movement that, even having its origins in Europe, brings in its essence the ruptures with conservatism in art and culture. Thus, the first traits that will give rise to a cultural identity and a repositioning of art in Latin America appear. Artists began to position themselves as authors and no longer as simple interpreters of the colonizing aesthetic.

The dependency that was until then absolute becomes relative to the point where Tarsila do Amaral's purism places the European public in front of a language that is both familiar and totally unknown to it. (Dawn Ades, 1997). Likewise, Oscar Niemeyer breaks with the rectilinear rigidity of European modernism in architecture, when, inspired by the curves of the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, he creates the colonnades of the palaces of Brasília and the waves of Pampulha.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, the questioning of what it means to be Latin American has been changing. In the midst of a globalized era and technological rise, borders are diluted and distances are shortened. But even so, the circulation of Latin American art is limited by the dominant system. An example of this are international exhibitions in which, when representing Latin America, they include only a few countries, ignoring the plurality and individuality that exists in each of the 20 countries that comprise it.

The fluidity of the liquid world, referred to by Zygmunt Bauman, hides the excluding system that has been reconfigured. Stereotypes persist about Latin art around the world as something exotic or folkloric, in an attempt to homogenize a multicultural region. Latin countries, then, incorporate the daily function of rewriting their histories through a horizontal perspective. In Brazil, for example, the visual artist Rosana Paulino tackles the investigation of themes previously rarely discussed in the Brazilian art scene, such as gender, identity and black representation.
Given the obstacle to the autonomy of Latin American cultural production, given the power of the dominant conservative elites, means are sought for its democratization and circulation. Therefore, by understanding the historical context in which artistic criteria and standards were established, artists reposition themselves in the face of contemporary production. In this way, the aim is to displace the creative movement so that it spreads to the margins, and no longer to the centres.

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