THE LATIN AMERICAN LOOK IN ARCO’S “PROFILES” PROGRAM
ARCO continues to consolidate itself as one of the fundamental annual references where to assess, analyze and take the pulse of the proposals that illustrate the strongest trends in contemporary Latin American art. In that bet, the idea of making visible, through specific programs, some of the most relevant proposals through the eyes of experts persists. As far as this year's edition is concerned (let's not forget that the curatorial presence is doubled by the Watamisé program, focused on Amazonian art), the management has entrusted Mexico's Jose Esparza Chong Cuy with the specific elaboration of Profiles | Latin American Art, a journey that advocates for highlighting, with ten names as agents, the diversity of visual options to offer, as the curator himself points out, a “broad panorama of how to identify ourselves as artists and make community, proposing new ways of doing, thinking and living as a whole”.
Entering the spaces reserved for the program, the diversity approach becomes evident, at least technically and visually, with just the first tour. Sertão Negro is the project brought by Brazil's Cerrado Galeria. Created by artist Dalton Paula (Brasilia, Brazil, 1982), it opens the space also to the collaboration of Abraão Veloso, Tor Teixeira, Lucélia Maciel and Genor Sales, in order to obtain an environment with a didactic nuance that allows the definition and transformation of social systems in connivance with local networks of artists. The space of the hall becomes the most different, perhaps because they show up as a collective away from the individuals, and brings the materialization of that objective closer from the textile to the sculptural. Along the same line of purposes, Mariela Scafati (Bahía Blanca, Argentina, 1973) shows in Isla Flotante paintings a sculptural piece and a mural made up of posters of a vindictive nature, whose aesthetics question certain traditional representations and propose new representations.
Barbara Wien proposes Dan Lie (São Paulo, Brazil, 1988) and his work related to nature and sensorial activity. Focused on the active use and with a clear objective of interaction with the viewer of plant smells and textures, Lie proposes a certain refuge, necessary to reflect on the relationship between society, humanity and the natural ecosystem. The German of Puerto Rican origin Chaveli Sifre (Wurzburg, Germany, 1987) advocates similar lines of work in Embajada's proposal, producing a work that vindicates ancestral practices, tarot and senses and that is based on the use of smell and botany to retake a joint universe of science, magic and spirituality.
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Rember Yahuarcani, CRISIS, Perfiles | Arte latinoamericano
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Jota Mombaça, Martins & Montero, Perfiles | Arte latinoamericano
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Ofelia Rodríguez, Instituto de Visión, Perfiles | Arte latinoamericano
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Naufus Ramirez Figueroa, Ultraviolet Projects, Perfiles | Arte latinoamericano
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Lucélia Maziel-Sertão Negro, Cerrado Galeria, Perfiles | Arte latinoamericano
Agrade Camíz (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1988), represented by A Gentil Carioca, proposes a transliteration of architectural elements linked to the urban imaginary of his native city for the creation of his works with which he addresses, from a certain plane of resistance, historical and social dynamics, as well as those concerning aesthetics and the oppression of women. In this thematic insistence on resistance, the thread that vertebrates decolonial and gender practices also welcomes the performative artist and writer Jota Mombaça (Natal, Brazil, 1991), in Martins&Montero, with a proposal that fights for the abolition of the defining parameters of current categories and identities. For her part, fashion designer Barbara Sanchez-Kane (Merida, Mexico, 1986) unfolds in kurimanzutto the bases for the elaboration of a joint visual language between art and fashion that could allow the creation of new codes that embrace diversity and different identities.
Ofelia Rodriguez (Barranquilla, Colombia, 1946) proposes at Instituto de Visión a high certainly interesting in terms of social dynamics. Although her objects and paintings of symbolic character do not cease to look at certain vindication in the questions of stereotypes or cultural practices, her work breathes aesthetics and composition to return to humor and, almost always, to color as part of that own identity. Naufus Ramirez Figueroa (Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1978), protagonist of an upcoming monographic exhibition at the Reina Sofia, approaches almost as an introduction to it an exhibition in Ultraviolet Projects that allows us to understand his work, paintings, installations and sculptures with which he addresses history and its collateral damage and, in a way, advocates the creation of environments to rethink the common and the personal.
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Agrade Camíz_A Gentil Carioca, Perfiles I Arte Latinoamericano
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Barbara Sánchez-Kane, kurimanzutto, Perfiles I Arte latinoamericano
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Dan Lie, Barbara Wien, Cerrado Galeria, Perfiles I Arte Latinoamericano
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Mariela Scafati, Isla Flotante, Perfiles I Arte Latinoamericano
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Chaveli Sifre, Embajada, Perfiles I Arte Latinoamericano
The work that Rember Yahuarcani (Pebas, Peru, 1985) presents in CRISIS takes us back to the narratives of indigenous traditions and the need to revise traditional iconographies. In his use of color, part of this futurism can be glimpsed in the languages expressed, although he does not lose sight of the pictorial importance of the origin. The proposal also reveals the interest of historiography in the construction of the new registers of Latin American art.
Profiles | Latin American Art takes place during ARCO Madrid 2025, from March 5 to 9, at IFEMA's Pavilion 9, Partenón, 5, Madrid (Spain).
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