What is Latin American Art?

As an artist from Argentina living in the United States, I am often confronted with the need to understand the "Latin American sensibility," especially since many of my critics and colleagues refer to this idea when discussing my artwork. I am intrigued by what this notion implies for non-Latin Americans as much as I am interested in understanding the concept as a Latin American myself. I usually wonder if there is such thing as "Latin American art" or if this notion is just a marketing device to sell "exotic" art within the context of international markets. Undeniably, there’s a significant amount of art that is being made in southern countries, but geography is not what validates styles or ideologies…

The art that appears currently in Latin America is, more than ever, a combination of different styles and influences. The development of styles that are "artistic hybrids" has always been what makes this art different from the "purity" conquered by European and American artists. Innovative movements such as the Renaissance, Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism were born in Europe, and later on, in the United States. The leaders of these movements had revolutionary ideas and shared the desire for giving birth to something entirely new that would break with the rules of the past. These revolutionary art movements appeared mainly as the result of a struggle for cultural self-definition. With the exception of the Mexican Muralist movement (that came about together with the Mexican revolution) and very few other small movements, nothing of this sort ever happened in the rest of the Americas.

Instead, the establishment of a pattern that combines tendencies from the outside and adapts them to local realities has been the norm in Latin America since colonization. Formally and conceptually speaking, Latin American art is still and has always been linked to the idea of the Baroque. The Baroque movement with its theatrical light effects, dynamism and enhancement of dramatic states of feeling made a strong and ever-lasting imprint in the Americas during the times of the colonization. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Baroque movement was dominant in Europe and its trespassing to the new land was a natural result of the colonization that took place at that time. However, in this trespassing a process of hybridization occurred: the European aesthetics were transformed and melded with native Indian -and African- elements. These mixed characteristics appeared in every sphere of the culture from food to the arts and architecture, and soon the "Colonial Baroque" became the dominant aesthetic in the new latitudes. The movement appeared to be the first native art movement to see the light in the new continent after colonization. This was a precedent for a continual appropriation that is a derivative form in all Latin American Art. Even today, much of the art that is being made in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina or Chile is the result of a local and witty appropriation from some mainstream art tendency.

However, Latin American art does not appear as a mere imitator of major art movements, but rather as an apparatus that alters and freely transforms already established norms. The eclectic result of this transformation is what makes Latin American art an entity in itself.

There are definitively some elements that are intrinsic to these countries and make their sensibility unique. It is usually said that there is a "sensuality" that strikes when seeing art from the southern countries. As hard as it is to define what this adjective implies, there is an original approach to the notion of the body that differs form the viewpoint embraced by artists coming from countries with protestant traditions. The Catholic background and its focus on the flesh remains somehow present even in contemporary art. In this sense, the worship of a God in a human body, delineates a mentality centered in the physical and this idea is an inevitable accompaniment of Christianity. The Christian God inhabits a body vulnerable to pain, disease and hunger. The human body is the vehicle of belief and in it resides the vividness of His presence. Unlike the Old Testament (in which the statements of the "disembodied" of Jehovah are holly because they exist above the physicality of men), the revision in the New Testament obsessed believers and artists who felt closer to the idea of God because He had a body. Eventually, the repeatedly painted image of Christ on the cross perpetuated a rhythmic sense of hurt, consolidating the relationship between body and belief.

Together with the strength of the religious background, other factors have also pushed the idea of the body in South America. Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica, for instance, developed a type of conceptualism in the late ’60 that involved interactive approaches leading to live actions and audience participation. Unlike their European and American counter-part who were driven to perform as a response to the over-objectification of the Minimal Art movement, in South America this came about as the result of socially oppressing political regimes.

Works like this appeared, defying the restricted liberties available in times of dictators. In this sense, the idea of the body has been developed in South America politically, and especially by its negativity: the body that’s gone, violated, deprived. The work of the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo and Cuban artists Ana Mendieta and Coco Fusco are good examples of this since they speak of the body in a non-literal way. As Coco Fusco puts it in "The Bodies that Weren’t Ours", early in time, the concept and the physicality of the body was stolen from the enslaved population of the Americas. Later on, criminal political regimes in most southern countries pushed some artists to address the topic of the abused and the "disappeared" body. This topic remains present and new approaches to it continue to develop. Today, experiential work as containers of philosophical and political expressions continue to develop. Brazilian Cildo Meireles is a good example of someone who counterbalances a thoughtful sociological message with a seductive environment, focusing on the experience of the viewer. In this sense, the viewer is regarded as a physical being and art is to "attack" his senses.


Art and Social action

Following up the political tone that many of the art productions in South America have been taking in the last decades, some contemporary artists in the south are investigating new paths. Partially due to the immediacy of the social pressure in countries of "The Third World", the development of socially active productions have risen in the last few years. Social action and critical capacity are growing in a time in which aesthetic productions of art are simply not enough. The apparition of RAIN (Rain Artist Initiative Network), an international network to demonstrate that "another type of globalization is possible", expresses a high degree of politicization among young artists in countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. RAIN, was founded three years ago as the result of the gathering of artists from Asia, Africa, North and South America who had been trained at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. These artists shared an interest in developing activities in their native countries that would be a continuation of the experiences started in Holland. RAIN is an international association that collaborates with local institutions, responding to specific needs in each country. In Argentina, a workshop took place in 2001 to analyze the social projection of the artistic investigations carried out by young artists. In Mexico, Diego Gutierrez in collaboration with Dutch artists Kees Hin and Bibo have been developing works of art to be shown public spaces attended by ordinary people (who don’t necessarily have an art education). Brazilian artists, members of this organization, are working on redesigning the arts curricula in art schools, assuming the responsibility of educating future generations of artists.

These "hands-on" and radical positions are pushing the aesthetic space into disappearance and are favoring the development of practices to promote participation and interaction among artists and intellectuals in the core of the social conflict. In this context, traditional standards of beauty and quality are being questioned. In South America, there is a need to focus on achieving and developing new paths for the arts, but mainly for what is called "international art", which seems to have been favoring an international economic system of exclusion.

Some people argue that those countries which have historically promoted "cultural oppression" (disregarding the value of the native art in the Americas) are now funding organizations such as RAIN. They say that the funding to these initiatives is only a new round for cultural colonialism and that this means going backwards in the idea of creating intellectually and financially self-supporting initiatives. They sustain that creating partnerships with financially solid countries is promoting an authoritarian relationship between the North and the South. However, due to the bankruptcy that many Latin American states are facing, the idea of generating financially independent initiatives only enhances fantasy in an unrealistic way. Globalization is happening, and regardless the damage that it has caused to small and emerging economies, there is still a positive side to be found in it. As Tulio de Sagastizabal, one of the artists participating in the international encounters promoted by RAIN, puts it "it’s time to incorporate the real universe of the difference and the otherness. This experimental model should take especial attention and care because it tries to create a bridge that had never been under construction before."


Latin American art: a source of fresh air to International Art?

For a long time now, South American artists have had a bitter taste in their mouths when it comes to the arts and it is no wonder. Many of the insightful and clever works that were born there never had any impact in the development of the "official" Art History. The pattern of appropriation cast a shadow in local productions and the financial and geographic impossibility of participating in the main arena for the arts has been continuously frustrating for generations of artists.

However, the permanent gaze focused in Europe and in the United States seems to be coming to an end. It is true that international associations are being active in countries of the Third World, but the dark side to global economy seems to be running faster: Many of these countries are becoming economically (and therefore culturally) isolated.

In the long term, cultural and economic isolation can only become extremely dangerous and devastating to the entire society (including the arts), but currently this unfavorable situation is forcing artists to look inwards into the very roots of their identity. Despite the economic crisis, artistic productions continue to be born and among artists, isolation and despair is combated with creativity. Somehow miraculously, local tendencies are growing overcoming sorrow, poverty and crime.

Hopefully, this exercise will enhance a sense of identity that would bring new forms of expression to the arts in Latin America. If there was a recovery for these fragile economies, new possibilities to join the international art scene would appear. In that case, Latin American art would be stronger and it would add diversity to an international art world that is thirsty for novelties. In this context, what is to come can be read as an unexpected twist that can bring social solutions at the same time that a much needed refreshment to the international art scene.