Notes related to Latin American Art

CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean – and Pinta, an international platform for promoting Latin American art through fairs and artistic circuits across the region, have formalized a strategic alliance aimed at strengthening and promoting Latin American and Ibero-American art worldwide. This collaboration will culminate in a prominent Art Week to be held in Panama City in May 2025, a new initiative designed to position regional culture on the global stage.

The 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale is coming to an end. Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, offered a reflection through art about migration and borders, recurring themes in today's global discussion. Arte al Día was present to cover the 60th International Exhibition, not only to bring the work of more than 300 artists from almost 100 countries, but also to focus on the contribution of Latin American artists to the global scene, whose presence marked a high point in this edition.

The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean is the first exhibition in New York City at Americas Society to center the artistic production of the Asian diaspora in the region from the 1940s to the present. Focusing on postwar and contemporary art, the exhibition showcases the work of thirty artists from fifteen countries working in a range of artistic mediums including painting, sculpture, performance, photography, and video, to shed light into strategies and themes that resonate across a wide array of Asian diasporic practice throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Spanish-Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra Heshiki represents Spain at the Venice Biennale. It is the first time in 60 editions that an artist not born in Spain does so. Her project Pinacoteca migrante (Migrant gallery), questions colonial narratives and historical modes of representation.

Fifteen artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico have been awarded the 2024 Latinx Artist Fellowships by the U.S. Latinx Forum (USLAF), with $50,0000 in unrestricted funding and a year-long program of professional engagement opportunities.

The Art Basel in Basel fair concluded on June 16th, signaling the near end of the market season before summer. Despite the June London auctions (featuring works from antiquity to contemporary art) this year’s London season is notably diminished.

The exhibition in Jordan Schnitzer Mueum of Art Necroarchivos de las Américas: an unrelenting search for justice, examines artistic responses to violence instigated by state regimes across the Americas to disclose censored narratives, argue for the importance of artmaking as an act of memory and witnessing, advocate research, and seek justice.

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) presents the exhibition Threads to the South, curated by Anna Burckhardt Pérez. The group exhibition features works by over twenty artists from ten countries, including videos, photographs, paintings, works on paper, and textiles developed between 1967 and 2023.

Last week's New York auctions, dubbed "Giga Week," saw art sales soar to an impressive $1.4 billion. This significant figure follows numerous sales at bustling art fairs over the past two weeks. While this amount represents a 22% decrease from the same week in 2023, and 55% less from 2022, auction houses performed admirably given the current challenging economic and political climate.

The NY spring season has concluded with the major auctions of Contemporary and Modern art. While the sales have not been a disaster, most lots have sold either below or close to the low estimate, with some last-minute withdrawals. One year ago, the May sales already marked a clear recalibration of prices. Over the past 12 months, the market has continued its slowdown, and this week's sales have confirmed the trend. It is not a brusque fall or a crash, but a slow-motion downward spiral in prices, with very few but exciting surprises.

The Spanish international art fair ARCOmadrid takes place from March 6 to 10 with a great number of Latin American proposals, curatorial projects, galleries and artists.

The Biennale di Venezia’s 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

El Dorado: Myths of Gold is an extensively researched, impeccably installed exhibition featuring one-hundred objects and artworks from the Pre-Columbian period to the 21^st century by sixty artists.

National Gallery Singapore presents Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America, a major exhibition that takes a comparative approach towards the complex histories of art across these two regions.

MIAMI

To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstractions al Espacio 23 celebrates numerous textile-based works from the Pérez collection –many of which have never been publicly exhibited before – and engages these acquisitions as focal points from which to structure creative dialogues with artworks presented in other mediums.

Fundación Juan March presents at its Madrid headquarters Antes de América (Before America), an exhibition that reveals the imprint of ancient American civilizations on modern and contemporary culture.

Within the 225 galleries exhibiting over 800 artists, Latin American galleries mark their presence in the 2023 edition of The Armory Show. From September 8 to 10^th, the New York Art Fair returns for its third year at the Javits Center.

For the second time at the Costa Salguero Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the arteba Foundation held a new edition of its contemporary art fair, where artists, gallery owners, collectors, curators, cultural referents and a massive public attracted by a renewed proposal converged.

Pinta Sud ASU closed its second edition in Asunción, Paraguay, where a proposal of first-class activities was carried out to reflect the avant-garde and eclectic spirit of national and regional art.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art presented a new exhibition, in partnership with the Denver Art Museum. ReVisión: Art in the Americas provides a poignant look into the history of Latin America.

Europe galleries meet Latin American artists at Art Basel: Nohemí Pérez, Ernesto Neto, Carlos Garaicoa, Alejandro Cesarco, Jesús R. Soto, Manuel Solano, Bayrol Jiménez, Paolo Salvador, Dalton Gata, Ad Minoliti, Rafa Silvares and Jorge Méndez Blake.

During Art Basel 2023, US galleries are representing Latin American artists such as Tomás Saraceno, Ernesto Neto, Belkis Ayón, Lucas Arruda, Óscar Murillo and Félix González-Torres.

Art Basel 2023 featured over 200 leading galleries and more than 4000 artists, where Latin-American galleries from Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, among other countries, participated.  

LA ESCUELA__ invites artists, architects, scholars, educators, collectives, and community organizations to collaborate in the creation of artistic projects and research texts that link art and education in Latin America. The deadline to apply is June 15^th, 2023.

MoMA opened Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond, an exhibition that brings together 65 works by Latin American artists who have a special interest in history.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin announces the appointment of Dr. Claudia Zapata as the museum's first Associate Curator of Latino Art.

Gerardo Mosquera is a Cuban-born art historian, critic, and curator. He is recognized for his contributions to the field of Latin American art and has worked extensively in the international art world.

The EFG Latin America Art Award ­–together with ArtNexus– presented Jean Terra, from Anita Schwartz Galeria de Arte from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), as the SP ARTE fair selected artist for its annual acquisition award.

This exhibition at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo de México presents graphic actions in public space carried out by activists and artists at the intersection of art/politics in Latin America.

The 13^th edition of the Mercosul Biennial, anchored in the Trauma, dream and flight tripod and finished last November, had encouraging developments, especially due to the outstanding presence of emerging artists, the strong contact with the public and the resumption of powerful spaces and traditional attractions of the event, such as the Cais do Porto. However, there were problems in the organization of the exhibition, the most serious episode of which was the '(dis)invitation' of names to exhibit works, and a certain frustration with pieces that would have a technological appeal.