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