Art decolonization process begins

Spain begins its process of decolonization of art with its pavilion at the Venice Biennale

The Peruvian Sandra Gamarra is the first artist not born in Spanish territory to represent the country in the oldest international exhibition of contemporary art in the world with the project 'Pinacoteca migrante'

Times of change are inevitable. For the first time in 60 editions, an artist not born in Spain, the Peruvian Sandra Gamarra, will represent the country at the Venice Biennale. She will do so with the project Pinacoteca migrante, which questions colonial narratives and historical modes of representation, as announced this Wednesday. The presentation of the work comes after the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, announced, on January 22, a review process of the collections of state museums to "overcome a colonial framework", although he did not offer more details at that time. They were not coordinated actions, but rather symptoms that Spain is joining a movement that involves the entire West and that began years ago with other European countries and the United States.

“I will not forget one of my first visits to the Archaeological Museum. After having seen the rooms dedicated to four continents, I asked the guard which floor Europe was on and he replied that that was history and belonged to other museums," Gamarra, who has lived for more than 20 years, recalled in a press conference. in Spain. With Pinacoteca migrante she will transform the Spanish pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale - which will be held from April 20 to November 24 - into a space to reread the Spanish pictorial heritage (Murillo, Zurbarán or even Velázquez) and make silenced cultures visible. “Decolonization begins with ending the hierarchies of cultures, which place some above others. That is the beginning and from that place you can begin to rewrite those relationships at all levels, not just the cultural level,” the 52-year-old from Lima told this newspaper.

Gamarra, who was already at the 2009 Venice Biennale in the pavilion of the Italian-Latin American Institute, takes as a starting point paintings, from the time of the Empire to the Enlightenment, in which reference is made to the territories that were part of Spain, but they carry with them a “monolithic notion that was based on the destruction of other forms of social organization.” Through six rooms or sections she will explore the classic genres of the arts: engraving, portrait, landscape... with interventions and reinterpretations that will analyze the biased representations between colonizers and colonized, in addition to offering a historical context that is linked to the present. .

“Our vision of art tends to isolate the artistic object from its surroundings, and in that separation a lot of information is lost. The very idea that art has to lead you to contemplation is a paradigm that we can break, because that same state of contemplation is dependent on labor, on extraction, on an entire structure. All that information must be permeable and porous in museums.”

The rooms that make up Pinacoteca migrante are titled: Tierra Virgen, about paintings of Spanish landscapes, but also from Latin America, the Philippines and North Africa; Cabinet of Extinction, which links colonialism with extractivism; Cabinet of Illustrated Racism, a story about how anthropology and science were used as a tool of racial discrimination; Mestizo masks, on the portrait of settlers; Altarpiece of Dying Nature, which will relate the still life to the construction of opulence and treasures; and Migrant Garden, which will recreate monuments about the conquest that are located in the former colonies. In all of them he will combine the plastic arts with quotes from ecofeminist writers or thinkers; modifications of facsimiles of illustrations from real archives or representations of alien or invasive plants, alluding to migration.

The idea, says Gamarra, is to get rid of the “monotheistic bug” that is inside each museum and in which visitors seek “to find the only truth that they believe is true.” The project is being curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio, with a long career in Latin American art as artistic director of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Malba) or as curator of the Chile pavilion at the 2018 Biennial.

“This pavilion shows a current Spain, where I believe that 15% are Latin Americans, a progressive, open Spain that seeks equality,” said Santiago Herrero, director of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for the Development (Aecid), attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. This portfolio is in charge of choosing the representative of Spain in the Biennial through a jury, made up of representatives of institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (Macba) or the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), among others, and that he unanimously chose the Pinacoteca migrante de Gamarra. Herrero remembers that this election had nothing to do with Urtasun's decision (the ruling had already been announced in April 2023), but recognizes that decolonization and the integration of other narratives are a current demand, as shown in the same issue of This year's Biennale: foreigners everywhere.
Regarding the criticism and reactions against the orders to review museum collections – the Valencian vice president Vicente Barrera (Vox) accused Urtasun of being “buying the black legend of Spain” – Gamarra provides another memory: “My school was taken by Spanish nuns. When we already had an awareness and were studying about the conquest, the teacher began to give details of the genocide. There was a moment of awkward silence and we all looked at the nun, who said 'but we brought religion'. It was like a respite for her to think that she would no longer go to hell. Precisely these ideas show hierarchies, 'we brought culture because there was none or it was bad. I have already rewarded you, why do you complain, as if there was nothing to complain?