Exhibition: _Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today_ at the Guggenheim Museum, New York

Organized by Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America, the exhibition features contemporary works by 37 artists and collaborative duos from 16 countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico (United States), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Following its presentation in New York, Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today will travel to two additional venues.

Featuring nearly 50 works including installations, mixed-media works, paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and works on paper, Under the Same Sun surveys the most significant contemporary art practices in Latin America today. This presentation is the second of three exhibitions that form part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. The artworks in the exhibition, along with others acquired as part of the initiative, will become part of the Guggenheim's permanent collection under the auspices of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Purchase Fund.

Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, stated: “The Guggenheim has a long history of engagement with Latin American art, beginning with The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Painting in the 1960s, an exhibition organized by former Guggenheim Director Thomas Messer in 1964. With Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative adds to our growing collection of contemporary Latin American art and provides the opportunity to engage visitors in meaningful dialogue about the many variations of identity and culture in Latin America.”

“The Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative helps provide a holistic view of some of the world's most dynamic and fast-changing regions,” says CEO, UBS Wealth Management Jürg Zeltner. “With this collaboration we align a global, cultural perspective with our experience in the emerging markets.”

“Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today” is organized by Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America. Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and Joan Young, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, provide curatorial oversight for the entire initiative.

“The Guggenheim UBS MAP Initiative gives us the opportunity to redraw cultural and artistic maps, to remove boundaries, and to create new relationships between different artistic centers,” León de la Barra stated. “The term peripheries no longer applies; we’ve learned to recognize that what’s happening elsewhere is as important as what’s happening in what used to be the centers. The more aware we are, and the more in dialogue we are with what’s happening, the more we will learn as artists, as people, and as communities, and the more we will be able to create new ways of thinking.”

The exhibition examines the diversity of today’s creative responses to complex shared realities, which have been influenced by colonial and modern histories, repressive governments, economic crises, and social inequality, as well as by concurrent periods of regional economic wealth, development, and progress. Despite financial growth and increased stability in most of the continent over the past decade, it remains divided by social and ethnic differences and marked by political and economic shifts. León de la Barra’s exhibition presents artistic responses to the past and present that are inscribed within these contexts, and explores the possibility of the construction of alternative futures.

The artists in the exhibition are: • Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1974, Philadelphia/b. 1971, Havana; live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico) • Carlos Amorales (b. 1970, Mexico City; lives and works in Mexico City) • Armando Andrade Tudela (b. 1975, Lima; lives and works in St. Etienne, France)• Alexander Apóstol (b. 1969, Caracas; lives and works in Madrid) • Tania Bruguera (b. 1968, Havana; lives and works in New York) • Luis Camnitzer (b. 1937, Lübeck, Germany; lives and works in New York)• Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975, Mexico City; lives and works in Berlin) • Alejandro Cesarco (b. 1975, Montevideo; lives and works in New York) • Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker (b. 1966, Atlanta, Georgia/b. 1975, Quito, Ecuador; live and work in Panama City)• Adriano Costa (b. 1975, São Paulo; lives and works in São Paulo) • Minerva Cuevas (b. 1975, Mexico City; lives and works in Mexico City)• Jonathas de Andrade (b. 1982, Maceió, Brazil; lives and works in Recife, Brazil) • Wilson Díaz (b. 1963, Pitalito, Colombia; lives and works in Cali, Colombia) • Juan Downey (b. 1940, Santiago, Chile; d. 1993, New York) • Regina José Galindo (b. 1974, Guatemala City; lives and works in Antigua, Guatemala)• Mario García Torres (b. 1975, Monclova, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City) • Dominique González-Foerster (b. 1965, Strasbourg, France; lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro) • Tamar Guimarães (b. 1967, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; lives and works in Copenhagen) • Federico Herrero (b. 1978, San José, Costa Rica; lives and works in San José, Costa Rica) • Alfredo Jaar (b. 1956, Santiago, Chile; lives and works in New York) • Claudia Joskowicz (b. 1968, Santa Cruz, Bolivia; lives and works in New York and Santa Cruz, Bolivia) • Runo Lagomarsino (b. 1977, Malmö, Sweden; lives and works in São Paulo)• David Lamelas (b. 1946, Buenos Aires; lives and works in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Paris) • Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves (b. 1967, Los Angeles/b. 1963, Bogotá; lives and works in Lima) • Marta Minujín (b. 1943, Buenos Aires; lives and works in Buenos Aires) • Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá; lives and works in New York) • Iván Navarro (b. 1972, Santiago, Chile; lives and works in New York)• Rivane Neuenschwander (b. 1967, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; lives and works in London) • Gabriel Orozco (b. 1962, Jalapa, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City, New York and Paris) • Amalia Pica (b. 1978, Neuquén, Argentina; lives and works in London) • Wilfredo Prieto (b. 1978, Sancti Spíritus, Cuba; lives and works in Barcelona) • Paul Ramírez Jonas (b. 1965, Pomona, California; lives and works in New York)• Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (b. 1972, San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico) • Gabriel Sierra (b. 1975, San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia; lives and works in Bogotá) • Javier Téllez (b. 1969, Valencia, Venezuela; lives and works in New York) • Erika Verzutti (b. 1971, São Paulo; lives and works in São Paulo) • Carla Zaccagnini (b. 1973, Buenos Aires, lives and works in São Paulo)

The artworks in “Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today” are organized according to the following themes:

• Conceptualism and its Legacies includes works by pioneering Latin American Conceptualists who were active in the U.S. during the 1970s and ’80s, many of whom are still working today. These figures infiltrated and questioned the artistic and political mainstream, attempting to intervene in social reality and propose a narrative in marked contrast to that of the North American and European Minimalist and Conceptualist artists, whose works are often rooted in ideas of autonomy and immateriality.

• Tropicologies acknowledges the effects that climate, nature, and location have on cultural production, but argues that being “tropical” goes beyond weather and geography. Works in this section also re-evaluate the knowledge of native Amerindian cultures, reactivating their aesthetics and symbolisms.

• Political Activism addresses social and political context, and confronts the ways in which Latin American artists have steered aesthetics toward denunciation and dissent, protesting against foreign political and economic influences, dictatorial political regimes, and the violence of the drug trade.

• Modernism and its Failures questions the disjunction between modernity’s ideals and its imperfect realities, and includes work by artists dealing with the legacy of modernism today.

• Participation/Emancipation examines the possibilities of participation through art. Works will invite visitors to understand art as a participatory experience, not only as an object of contemplation.

Launched in April 2012, the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative is a multi-year collaboration that charts contemporary art practice in three geographic regions—South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa—and encompasses curatorial residencies, international touring exhibitions, audience-driven education programming, and acquisitions for the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. All works have been newly acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection under the auspices of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Purchase Fund. The initiative builds upon and reflects the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s distinguished history of internationalism and significantly increases the Guggenheim’s holdings of art from these dynamic communities.

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