Latin America

The Latin American situation is complex because of the immense geographical field and the enormous diversity of cultures and socio-political situations it covers. In the sixties and seventies, many countries in this region suffered a highly unstable political situation, conditioned by US interventionism and the economic interests of multinational companies, as well as the repeated installation of military dictatorships which stifled successive attempts at democratisation. In this context, artists looked for alternative spaces for thought and work which enable them to freely explore art and its processes of creation, transmission and reception.

In Argentina, in 1968 in the exhibition Tucumán Arde, a group of artists including Daniela Carnevale, Roberto Jacoby, Eduardo Favario and León Ferrari denounced the general situation and the labour conflicts of the province of Tucumán. From the headquarters of the Confederación General de Trabajo (CGT), they presented a collection of documents and a counter-information campaign that used the strategies of the media. In 1972, as part of an exhibition that lasted only a few days and was destroyed by the police, Víctor Grippo built a baker’s oven in a public square in Buenos Aires with the artist Jorge Gabarra and the farmer A. Rossi, in which they made bread which they later distributed among the passers-by. The participatory element was also seen as an information exchange, since a leaflet was handed out where the polarisation of Argentinean society between city life and country life was denounced.

A few years later in Santiago de Chile, El Colectivo de Acciones de Arte (CADA) produced a work with similar connotations. Para no morir de hambre en el arte (1979) used milk as a symbolic element to denounce poverty and economic inequality.

In Brazil, in 1970, Cildo Meireles printed messages rejecting the dictatorial Brazilian government, against authoritarianism, on bank notes or Coca-cola bottles, thus turning them into tools for communication beyond any control. "If aesthetics is the foundation of art, politics is the foundation of culture".(1)


(1) Cildo Meireles, "Inserçoes em circuitos ideológicos", catálogo de la exposición Cildo Meireles. Valencia: Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, 1995.


Cecilia Vicuña: http://www.worldofpoetry.org/rs_vicuna.htm
Tucuman arde:Clemente Padin. Art and People: http://www.concentric.net/~lndb/padin/lcptuc.htm
Vídeo script, Tucuman Arde, Queens Museum of Nova York,1999:http://dsc.gc.cuny.edu/arde.html

 

Victor Grippo, construction
of a popular oven for
bread cooking, 1972

 

 

Victor Grippo, construction
of a popular oven for
bread cooking, 1972

 

David Lamelas, analysis of the elements
by wich the massive consumption
on information takes place, 1968,
installation view