Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas
El Museo del Barrio, New York’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural institution, is pleased to announce its groundbreaking exhibition Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960 – 2000, which will be on view from January 30 through June 8, 2008. “Arte no es vida” surveys, for the first time ever, the vast array of performative actions created over the last half century by Latino artists in the United States and by artists working in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America. Curated by Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs at El Museo del Barrio, Arte ≠ Vida is the recipient of a prestigious 2006 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.
Through a rich and lively presentation of photographs, video, texts, ephemera, props, and artworks that reference canonical works, the exhibition represents a landmark within the documentation of action art. Arte ≠ Vida expands standard descriptions of “performance art,” revealing how work created by Caribbean, Latino and Latin American artists is often not only dramatized but politicized. An accompanying exhibition catalogue will serve as the first comprehensive resource publication to address this segment of the field of performative art. “El Museo del Barrio has a great history of conceiving and presenting exhibitions that advance deeper understanding of Caribbean and Latin American art and culture,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, Director of El Museo del Barrio. “This project furthers our mission by bringing the Latin American contributions within performative art to a larger audience, and within a historical context, it is particularly resonant for us as it includes the work of El Museo’s founding director,
Raphael Montañez Ortiz, a leading action artist well before the museum’s founding in 1969.”
Many of the works included in Arte ≠ Vida have subtle or overt political contexts and content: military dictatorships, civil wars, disappearances, invasions, brutality, censorship, civil rights struggles, immigration issues, discrimination, and economic woes have troubled the artists’ homelands continuously over the past four decades and therefore have infiltrated their consciousness. According to curator Deborah Cullen, “the exhibition title challenges the commonplace idea that art is equivalent to life, and life is art. What is proposed through these many works is that while art affirms and celebrates life with a regenerative force, and sharpens and provokes our critical senses, artistic actions which address inequalities and conflict are not equivalent to real life endured under actual repression.”
Over 75 artists and collectives are represented in Arte ≠ Vida, including ASCO, Tania Bruguera, CADA, Lygia Clark, Papo Colo, Juan Downey, Rafael Ferrer, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Alberto Greco, Alfredo Jaar, Tony Labat, Ana Mendieta, Marta Minujin, Raphael Montañez-Ortiz, Hélio Oiticica, Tunga and contemporary practitioners including Francis Alÿs, Coco Fusco, Regina José Galindo, Teresa Margolles and Santiago Sierra. The exhibition is arranged in four major sections, in which each decade is represented by several specific themes that often cross national boundaries. 1960-1970 looks at select precursors, signaling, destructivism and neoconcretismo; 1970-1980 considers political protest, class struggle, happenings, land/body relationships and border crossing; 1980-1990 focuses upon anti-dictatorship protest and dreamscapes; and 1990-2000 references the Quincentenary, multiculturalism, postmodernism and endurance. An additional section highlights interventions that artists have carried out on television over the past 20 years. In these chronological, thematic groupings, viewers will be able
to explore the interconnections among various artists’ actions as well as the surges of activities triggered by specific events in certain countries.
A forthcoming bilingual English-Spanish resource publication will supplement Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960 – 2000. It will provide a chronological overview, and will allow both established and emerging voices to address each of the ten regions represented in the exhibition in depth. Published by El Museo del Barrio and distributed by D.A.P., the volume will also include a detailed chronology, brief artist’s biographies and a bibliography, and will be available in May 2008.
A full range of free public programming will be offered along with the exhibition at El Museo del Barrio. Visual arts events will include a performance by Nao Bustamante in March, a panel on actions by Chilean artists with Eugene Dittborn, Alfredo Jaar and Lotty Rosenfeld, among others on April 9, and a symposium with Coco Fusco, Roselee Goldberg and Diana Taylor. Featured among other spring programs at El Museo will be free Saturday gallery tours offered in English and Spanish, family art workshops, a film series highlighting recent films from Latin America, spoken word events and readings by authors including Mario Vargas Llosa.
Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960 – 2000 is made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award and by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust. Exhibition programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. Media sponsorship has been provided by Univision 41 / Telefutura 68. In-kind support for the opening reception is provided by Rums of Puerto Rico and ACE Party Rental.
El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files/The Selected Files 2007 [5th Edition]
El Museo del Barrio, New York’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural institution, will present its fifth edition of El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files from July 25, 2007 through January 6, 2008. El Museo’s Bienal celebrates the experimental, immediate pulse of contemporary art, and supports the work of emerging Latino / Latin American artists based in the New York metropolitan area. The exhibition has been curated by Elvis Fuentes, Associate Curator, El Museo del Barrio, and E. Carmen Ramos, Assistant Curator for Cultural Engagement, The Newark Museum, NJ. In addition, guest curator Rodolfo Kronfle
Chambers (independent curator, Guayaquil, Ecuador), has included in the exhibition a selection of works by five artists from Ecuador, this year’s invited guest country.
Even among the diversity within the works presented in El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007, the curators recognize several recurrent themes that have emerged organically within the exhibition. Some of the artists reference the hyper-reality of contemporary culture of violence and war, often in relation to social perceptions of masculinity. Others explore the public dimension of art and examine issues of labor, immigration, language and identity, frequently documenting the artist’s experience or citing art historical traditions. Resounding another global concern, many of the artists approach the environment and the natural world through landscapes real or imaginary, most especially evident in the selection of work from the five artists from Ecuador.
A 131-page bilingual English-Spanish catalogue will be available upon the inauguration of the bienal on July 24. The exhibition will be accompanied by a range of free public programs including a three-part series of conversations between the curators and artists participating in the show and a panel discussion on November 28 with gallerists and Latino artists to offer insights into the art market. Interviews with the curators and individual artists as well as visits to the galleries during the installation process may be arranged through El Museo’s press office.
List of Participating Artists in El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007:
Alejandro Almanza Pereda (1977; Mexico City, Mexico)
Blanka Amezkua (1971; Mexico City, Mexico)
Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (1972; Caracas, Venezuela)
Saidel Brito (1973; Matanzas, Cuba; lives in Ecuador)*
“Melissa A. Calderón (1974; New York, NY; Puerto Rican)
Pablo Cardoso (1965; Cuenca, Ecuador; lives in Ecuador)*
Liset Castillo (1974; Camagüey, Cuba)
Vidal Centeno (1960; New York, Nuyorican)
Cecile Chong (1964; Guayaquil, Ecuador)
César Cornejo (1966; Lima, Peru)
Pedro Cruz-Castro (1970; Caracas, Venezuela)
Franklin Evans (1967; Reno, NV; Mexican)
exit static (latino & gringo collective)
Fernando Falconí (1980; Guayaquil, Ecuador; lives in Ecuador)*
Andrés García-Peña (1961; Milan, Italy; Colombian)
Florencio Gelabert (1961; Havana, Cuba)
Eduardo Gil (1973; Caracas, Venezuela)
Tamara Kostianovsky (1974; Jerusalem, Israel; raised in Argentina)
Jessica Lagunas (1971; Managua, Nicaragua; raised in Guatemala)
Cristóbal Lehyt (1973; Santiago, Chile)
Shaun El C. Leonardo (1979; Queens, NY; Dominican/Guatemalan)
José Lerma (1971; Seville, Spain; raised in Puerto Rico)
Adriana López Sanfeliu (1976; Barcelona, Spain)
Luis Mallo (1962; Havana, Cuba)
Cecilia Mandrile (1969; Cordoba, Argentina)
Norma Márquez Orozco (1966; Chicago, IL; Guadalajara, Mexico)
Justin Mata (1979; Woodland, CA; Mexican American Chicano)
Iván Monforte (1973; Merida, Yucatan, Mexico)
Alex Morel (1973; New York, NY; Dominican)
Lisette Morel (1974; New York, NY; Dominican)
Andrea Nacach (1975; Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Oscar Oiwa (1965; Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil)
Renzo Ortega (1974; Lima, Peru)
Sebastián Patané Masuelli (1978; San Juan, Argentina)
Javier Piñón (1970; Miami, FL; Cuban)
Maria Teresa Ponce (1974; Quito, Ecuador; lives in Ecuador)*
Dulce Pinzón (1974; Mexico City, Mexico)
Manuela Ribadeneira ( 1966; Quito, Ecuador; lives in England)*
Jesús Rivera (1956; Ciego de Avila, Cuba)
Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas (1962; Cabaiguan, Cuba)
José Ruiz (1975; Lima, Peru)
Reinaldo Sanguino (1973; Caracas, Venezuela)
Analia Segal (Rosario, Argentina)
Courtney Smith (1966; Paris, France; raised in Brazil)
Germán Tagle (1976; Santiago, Chile)
Sandra Valenzuela (1980; Mexico City, Mexico)
Mary A. Valverde (1975, Queens, NY; Guayaquil, Ecuadoran)
William Villalongo (1975; Hollywood, FL; Puerto Rican)
Karin Waisman (1960; Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Katarina Wong (1966; York, PA; Cuban-Chinese)
Augusto Zanela (1967; Quilmes, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
*Indicates artists from El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007 Guest Country, Ecuador. All other artists are currently living and working in the New York metropolitan area.
In addition to the exhibition of the work of these 51 artists at El Museo del Barrio, Instituto Cervantes New York will host an extension of El Museo’s Bienal in a selection of work by seven of the artists from September 13 through January 6, 2008. This off-site project explores the fragility and fluidity of language, ever appropriately held at this organization whose commitment is rooted in bridging Spanish-speaking audiences worldwide. Instituto Cervantes at Amster Yard is located at 211-215 East 49th Street in Manhattan and has more information available on their website, http://nuevayork.cervantes.es.
Lead support for El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007 has been provided by Altria Group, Inc., the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust, Bloomberg LP, The Greenwall Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, and by Angel Collado Schwarz/Fundación Voz del Centro. Free admission to El Museo’s Bienal and related programs has been made possible by MetLife Foundation. Additional support has been provided by Mary McCaffrey, latincollector, National Endowment for the Arts and El Museo’s Contemporary Art Circle. Exhibition programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. The presentation at Instituto Cervantes has been made possible by BBVA.
The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos)
El Museo del Barrio, New York’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural institution presents The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) from February 23 – June 17, 2007. This traveling exhibition, organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art and curated by Laurel Reuter, brings together visual artists’ responses to the tens of thousands of persons who were kidnapped, tortured, killed and “vanished” in Latin America by repressive rightwing military dictatorships during the late-1950s to the 1980s.
The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) gathers 14 contemporary living artists from seven countries in Central and South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay and Venezuela), all of whose work contends with the horrors and violence stemming from the totalitarian regimes in each of their nations during the mid- to late-20th century. Some of the artists worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The youngest were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. And still others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war. These artists whose work is represented in the exhibition are Marcelo Brodsky, Luis Camnitzer, Arturo Duclos, Juan Manuel Echavarría, Antonio Frasconi, Nicolás Guagnini, Nelson Leirner, Sara Maneiro, Cildo Meireles, Oscar Muñoz, Ivan Navarro, Luis González Palma, Ana Tiscornia and Fernando Traverso. Also included is a collaborative installation Identity/Identidad by a collective of 13 Argentinean artists.
The range of visual languages — drawings, prints, photographs, installations and mixed media –incorporated in The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) frequently employs similar forms to evoke the presence of the missing person or persons. Bodies, faces, personal possessions and names, often methodically compiled and arranged, appear both boldly and subtly throughout the work in the exhibition. “Through their intense visual and emotional impact, these works communicate the unspeakable and reveal the artist’s assumed role of social responsibility towards ending the silence surrounding these extreme cases of human rights violations,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, Director of El Museo del Barrio.
Free public programs for adults, educators and children will be offered in relation to the exhibition and to encourage dialogue among viewers. Scheduled programming includes a series of film screenings, monthly family tours and workshops, an evening of music as a tribute to los desaparecidos on March 23, and an artist panel moderated by Columbia University Professor Andreas Huyssen on May 23. A bilingual illustrated color exhibition catalogue written by Laurel Reuter and Lawrence Weschler and produced by Charta, Italy with funding from The Lannan Foundation will accompany The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos).
Sponsors for The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) are the Otto Bremer Foundation, the Andy
Warhol Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. This exhibition has also been supported in part
by a grant from the Open Society Institute, and by Mahnaz I. and Adam Bartos.