Exhibition 'Territories: contemporary Latin American art

The CAAC seeks to dismantle clichés in current Latin American art with 'Territories'

The exhibition, at the Monasterio de La Cartuja until September 1, offers a selection of more than two thousand works created by more than 50 contemporary artists that make up the private collection of patron Jorge M. Pérez
The Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art (CAAC), in a bid to bring Latin American culture closer to the Spanish public, will offer from this until next September 1 the exhibition 'Territories: Latin American contemporary art in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection', a selection of works by more than 50 contemporary Latin American artists with which he proposes a route that challenges the monolithic vision of Latin America along the North Claustron and the Outside Chapel.

The exhibition, curated by the new director of the CAAC, Jimena Blázquez Abascal, serves as a presentation of her stage and reviews the collecting work of Jorge M. Pérez (Argentina, 1949), whose name appears in one of the most prestigious art institutions in United States, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM).

'Territorios' offers an itinerary through Pérez's rich collection of Latin American art, which exceeds 2,000 works, through works by artists from different generations and contexts. “Mestizaje, ethnicity, gender, identity, violence, ritual, spirituality, materials and color are common themes and tools that the artists represented in this exhibition use to question, denounce, claim and turn into expression their analysis of time in the who live from a place where authenticity and honesty prevail,” explains the curator.

Thus, all these aspects of the universal constitute the axis of 'Territories', structured in essential themes that run through the exhibition transversally, dedicated to the lived space.

'Cartographies of the spirit' explores the diversity of territorial intersections, physical and imaginary borders, the relationship between geography and personal experience, through works by María Nepomuceno, Glenda León, Alexander Apóstol, Juan Manuel Echavarría, Nelson Leirner, Juan Downey , Fernando Bryce and Mateo López. This first chapter is completed by pieces by Moris, Priscilla Monge, Elena Damiani, Nohemí Pérez and Alfredo Jaar.

Issues of gender and identity are grouped in the chapter 'I, me, me, with you', where the works of Ana Segovia, Julio Galán, Hernan Bas, Manuel Solano, Alida Cervantes and Wynnie Mynerva are presented.

The multiculturalism of the territory, postcolonial economic inequalities and the relationship between art, history and memory are issues that the chapter 'Colonialism and the braids of miscegenation' addresses through pieces by Jonathas de Andrade, Claudia Andujar, Maxwell Alexandre, Sandra Gamarra, Claudia Coca , Alice Wagner, Tania Candiani, Antonio Henrique Amaral and Óscar Murillo.
With the section 'The neighbor from the north', the presence of the United States as a dream and nightmare is explored through the works of Graciela Sacco, Marta Minujín, Lester Rodríguez and the Puerto Rican collective Allora & Calzadilla.

The works gathered in 'Other forms of knowledge: the spiritual and the ritual' incorporate the fascinating dialogue between the earthly and the transcendental, as well as the presence of symbols and elements coming from ancestral cosmogonies, whether indigenous or resulting from the African presence in the continent. The trip includes pieces by Leonor Fini, Belkis Ayón, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Daniel Otero Torres, Jesús 'Bubu' Negrón, Firelei Báez and José Bedia.

'Memory and resistance' analyzes the involvement of contemporary Latin American artists in the sociopolitical conversation. Gathered here are works of testimony and denunciation by Teresa Margolles, Doris Salcedo, María Teresa Hincapié, the Los Carpinteros collective (Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodríguez); Ana Mendieta, Tania Bruguera, Óscar Muñoz, Arjan Martins, Felipe Ehrenberg, Teresa Burga, Marcelo Brodsky and Fernando Bryce.

The chapter 'The legacy of abstraction' takes place between the North Claustron and the Outside Chapel, dedicated to two movements that emerged in Latin America in the middle of the last century, whose influence still survives: chromatic abstraction and kinetic art. The works with color by Sandú Darié, Ana Sacerdote, Loló Soldevilla or Waldo Balart, are gathered together with works by Regina Aprijaskis, Rubela Dávila, Beatriz Olano and Jaime Tarazona.

Finally, the kinetic art that emerged between the 1950s and 1960s is present thanks to two essential figures in the development of this current, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Julio Le Parc; a legacy that reactivates the work of Lucia Koch today. 'Territorios' has the collaboration of Alhambra.