America Latina — 1960-2013

Exhibition

Photography

America Latina
1960-2013

Past: November 19, 2013 → April 6, 2014

The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents « América Latina 1960-2013 », coproduced with the Museo Amparo in Puebla (Mexico).

The exhibition offers a new perspective on Latin American photography from 1960 to today, focusing on the relationship between text and the photographic image. Bringing together more than seventy artists from eleven different countries, it reveals the great diversity of photographic practices by presenting the work of documentary photographers as well as that of contemporary artists who appropriate the medium in different ways. This unique presentation provides the visitor with the opportunity to delve into the history of the region and to rediscover the works of major artists rarely exhibited in Europe.

Latin America : a Fascinating Region

Over centuries, Latin America has fascinated observers as much as it has mystified them; there is a sense of the exotic that derives perhaps from it having once been perceived as a “new world.” Today, while contemporary Latin American culture has received much attention, the historical circumstances surrounding its production are often less widely explored. The exhibition America Latina covers the period from 1960 — the year following the Cuban revolution — to today. In many Latin American countries, this period has been marked by political and economic instability, and has seen a succession of revolutionary movements and repressive military regimes, the emergence of guerilla movements as well as transitions toward democracy. By exploring the interaction between text and image in the art of Latin America over the course of the last fifty years, the exhibition provides a vivid look into this tumultuous period of history through the eyes of the artists.

Pgasparini fondation cartier medium
Paolo Gasparini, El habitat de les hombres…, Caracas, Bello Monte, 1968 © Paolo Gasparini

Photography and Text in a Shifting World

During the era covered by the exhibition, when the climate of political upheaval required an urgent response, many Latin American artists increasingly sought to escape media specificity by bringing text and image together in their work. This new visual approach provided them with an effective tool for expressing themselves and communicating, as photography is a medium that rapidly and realistically records reality while text provides a way of expanding or altering the meaning of the image. Through these formalistic inventions the artists tried to portray the complexity and violence of the world around them and in some cases to sidestep censorship. In the 1980s the Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn created ‘‘airmail paintings’’ which were folded up and sent all over the world, circumventing Chile’s cultural isolation under Pinochet. As for Miguel Rio Branco, a figurehead of Brazilian photography, he has depicted the underclass of a two-tiered society in a highly poetic manner.

M lopez fondation cartier medium
Marcos López, Laza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, série Pop Latino, 1996 C-print — 22 × 30 cm © Marcos López — Collection privée, Buenos Aires

A diversity of artists and practices

America Latina traces this bond between text and image, showing how artists have harnessed the resulting tensions to explore Latin America as a geographical concept. Divided into four sections that reflect these key ideas — Territory, The City, Informing–Resisting, Memory and Identity — the exhibition presents the myriad ways in which Latin American artists have seized new modes of expression, and of reproduction, to explore their reality. Expanding from traditional notions of the photographic print, it thus encompasses a wide range of media including photo-offset printing, silk-screening and collages, as well as film, performance, video, and installation. For example, Brazilian artist Regina Silveira explores stereotypical ideas about Latin America in To Be Continued… (Latin American Puzzle), an enormous mural puzzle that she created out of images appropriated from magazines and tourist guides. Using a more traditional photographic approach, Venezuela’s Paolo Gasparini captures the visual cacophony of signs engendered by rapid urban development. Using a digital printing technique to reproduce images from the popular press, Argentinean artist Juan Carlos Romero graphically denounces the rampant violence in Argentine society in his work entitled Violencia. A video called Bocas de ceniza, by Columbian artist Juan Manuel Echavarría, portrays those who use poetry and song to relate their personal experiences of guerilla-related violence.

E.villanes fondation cartier medium
Eduardo Villanes, Sans titre, série Gloria Evaporada, 1994 Black and white photograph — 12 × 9 cm © Collection de l’artiste, Lima

Discovering remarkable artists

A film commissioned by the Fondation Cartier and realized by the Paraguayan photographer and director Fredi Casco gives a voice to many of the artists presented in the exhibition. Fredi Casco traveled throughout Latin America to interview 30 of the 72 artists included in the exhibition. These exclusive interviews provide revealing portraits of historical value offering rare and personal insight into each artist’s cre- ative process and the context in which he or she works. Including over 500 works, América Latina 1960-2013 highlights kinships in sensibil- ities across generations and countries, reflecting a richness of voices and a diversity of visual languages. It chronicles the vital legacy of Latin American artists, showing how their influence extends beyond their immediate creative circles to an audience outside the continent. A large body of work from Peru, Colombia, Venezue- la, and Paraguay reveals the significance of art scenes that have remained outside mainstream channels, bringing visitors a more complete and dynamic understanding of their influence on the world of contemporary art.

Revuelta(s)

The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain commissioned the Paraguayan artist Fredi Casco, along with director Renate Costa, to travel throughout Latin America from March to August 2013, to meet a selection of the artists and photographers presented in the exhibition América Latina 1960-2013. Making their way from Buenos Aires to Mexico City, from Caracas to Havana, from São Paulo to Lima, the two directors interviewed thirty artists from eight countries, capturing the urban landscape in long sequence shots. Providing a panorama of Latin America from south to north, the film Revuelta(s) — part documentary, part road movie — gives voice to three generations of remarkable artists and offers a revealing portrait of each one of them. A photographic journal of the project, the photographs presented here were taken by Fredi Casco while the film was being shot.

Curators: Ángeles Alonso Espinosa, Hervé Chandès, Alexis Fabry, Isabelle Gaudefroy, Leanne Sacramone et Ilana Shamoon.

  • Les Soirées Nomades — Miguel Rio Branco Meeting Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 8:30 PM

    The painter, photographer, and filmmaker Miguel Rio Branco presents a selection of his films, videos, and video-installations, reviewing his pictorial and poetic work, which is difficult to define due to its labyrinthine dimension. Alexis Fabry, curator of the América Latina 1960-2013 exhibition, introduces the Franco-Brazilian artist’s work. Certain scenes in the films could be offensive to viewers — children under 18 not allowed.

  • Les Soirées Nomades - Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain Les Soirées Nomades — Hommage à Roberto Bolaño & Nicanor Parra Event Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 7 PM

    The Fondation Cartier and the Chilean Embassy have joined forces to present a literary tribute to Roberto Bolaño and Nicanor Parra, two of the most influential authors in Latin American literature.

  • Les Soirées Nomades — Alejandro Jodorowsky Event Monday, November 25, 2013 at 8 PM

    From films to comic books, theater and psychomagic, Alejandro Jodorowsky has produced a vast, multifaceted body of work that is rich in symbolic content. Over the course of the evening he will give one of his famous tarot readings, preceded by a film screening of excerpts from a legendary performance presented in 1965 at the American Center that lasted over 6 hours.

  • Les Soirées Nomades — Fred Forest Meeting Monday, December 2, 2013 at 8 PM

    A review of the prolific career of Fred Forest, a pioneering artist who has explored and co-opted new technologies and media since the 1960s, shaking up traditional values in the contemporary art world. The evening takes the form of a retrospective with a video flashback and discussion between this multimedia artist and the art critic Paul Ardenne.

  • Les Soirées Nomades — Rosângela Rennó, Per Fumum Performance Monday, January 20, 2014 at 8 PM

    The Brazilian artist Rosângela Rennó reconnects with ancient times, when the combustion of plants and tree resin was seen as a sacred offering. During this evening devoted to incense aromas she reactivates our sense of smell — the most primal — in search of our archaic memory.

  • Les Soirées Nomades — Mariano Pensotti, El Paraíso Performance Monday, February 3, 2014 at 8 PM

    In this new project, the Argentine author and director Mariano Pensotti and his set designer Mariana Tirantte attempt to bring to life the unfinished. Texts excerpted from unproduced screenplays are projected onto large-scale models that are reproductions of movie theaters which were never completed.

  • Les Soirées Nomades — Lázaro Valiente Event Monday, March 17, 2014 at 8 PM

    Lázaro Valiente is both a filmmaker and a musician. In this event he revisits his documentary film “La Isla Bonita (Pop as an island)” — a musical road trip through Brazil — with live orchestration and surrounded by musician friends and unusual instruments for composing folk songs imbued with his South American wanderings.

  • Les Soirées Nomades, Revue #12 — Fredi Casco, Sueño de la Razón Performance Monday, March 31, 2014 at 8 PM

    The Paraguayan writer and visual artist Fredi Casco has designed an evening associated with the South American photography review Sueño de la Razón. The program includes a photographic performance and works of video-photography, in the presence of Mexican author Mario Bellatin.

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261, boulevard Raspail

75014 Paris

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Every day except Monday, 11 AM – 8 PM
Late night on Tuesday until 10 PM

Admission fee

Full rate €10,50 — Concessions €7.00