Pandemic teachings of Latin American art

Art Basel attendees observe the pieces on display on December 02, 2020 in Mexico City.Hector Guerrero

Since the economic crisis of 2008 there has perhaps been no worse year than 2020 for the art world, and at the same time, there has been no better year to demonstrate its enormous plasticity to survive the crisis.

With borders closed and the impossibility of importing works from other cities, museums or galleries paid more attention to local art;

Without the possibility of organizing international fairs, artists and gallery owners dedicated more time to collaborative projects with their colleagues;

With fear of physical encounters, museum directors once again re-evaluated their collections and devoted more time to research and new ways of democratizing their knowledge on digital platforms.

It wasn't easy, but it wasn't all losses.

The PAÍS spoke with an artist in Mexico, a gallery owner in Brazil, and the director of MALBA in Buenos Aires to understand how art in the region was defended during the pandemic.

MALBA and the search for the soul of museums

The first week of March, when the pandemic had not yet been declared, the director of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires or MALBA, Gabriela Rangel, went into an anxiety attack.

"Everyone who was in the museum cafeteria spoke different languages, and that gave me panic," recalls the director, aware that the institution was still visited by people from all over the world with or without viruses.

The MALBA was the first center in Buenos Aires that decided to close its doors and "being the museum used to having more public, the museum was left without identity".

Like many others, MALBA had to close or cancel exhibitions that they had been planning for months with other cities, such as one dedicated to the work of the painter Remedios Varo (which lasted only one week, with works imported from Mexico City ) and

Parallel 1 II 3

, which was going to put a gallery in São Paulo in dialogue with one in New York.

With the closing of borders, it became impossible to import works from the big cities, and the dialogue between countries became a dialogue between national museums.

Shortly after the closure of MALBA, RAME - the Argentine Network of Museums and Art Spaces - was born in Argentina, the first collective with dozens of museums in the country that began to hold digital meetings on epidemiology, on possible protocols to reopen, or even on how handle uncertainty.

“The art community grew stronger, and people felt that the museum offered them spiritual sustenance and community structure,” says Rangel.

Something similar happened in Mexico City, where the director of the Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art had to cancel an exhibition with the works of the Venezuelan-American Luchita Hurtado - who could not import from Los Angeles during the pandemic - but managed to organize

Otrxs Mundxs

, an exhibition with more than 40 local artists.

"We were forced to cancel everything but we managed to organize this exhibition in a very short time with artists from Mexico City," Magali Arriola, the director of the Tamayo Museum, told El País.

"It was not pleasant, it was hard, but it has been good to reinvent oneself ... one of the consequences of all this is to be able to strengthen ties with the entire community of artists, some very young and others more established."

Gabriela Rangel at MALBA –like many museums in the region– also had to improve its digital platform to continue entertaining the public, now at home.

"We didn't want to fill the programming page like this was Netflix," says Rangel.

Virtual performances, a cycle of westerns with the film department, or a reunion with the Museum's letter archive that deserved to be dusted off.

“It was better to go local,” says Rangel.

"Leaving the expensive projects and working with the collection and local artists was key."

Half of MALBA's income comes from tickets, and since they are closed for most of the year –they reopened in November- Rangel achieved an austerity plan so that the museum could not only survive without breaking down but even managed to acquire new works by some Latin American artists:

The penis as a working instrument

, by Maris Bustamante, a black and white photograph that mocks phallic envy in Freud's analysis;

and a series of photographs by Argentine Karin Idelson on couches for therapies, for a future exhibition in 2021 on the relationship between art and psychonalysis.

"It has not been easy, but it has not been tragic either," Rangel sums up what these months of pandemic have been for the art of MALBA.

Maritza Morillas and the artists' associations

When the strict measures to stop the pandemic began in March, in one of the subways of Mexico City - the Tacubaya station - some paintings by the artist Maritza Morillas were stalled.

"We have not been able to get almost anything," the artist told El PAÍS, laughing.

The urban exhibition called

Unique Look

had just started there

, and Morillas had included one of his almost premonitory works:

Indómita cepa

, an oil painting from 2011 in which a toilet with a mask and protective suit is in the center.

Morillas had to cancel two solo exhibitions at local galleries.

One of them tried to sell the works virtually, but "obviously nothing was sold," says the artist.

Although economically the pandemic has been a huge crisis for artists - who rarely have a contract with a museum or gallery - several have sought ways to reinvent themselves until the storm passes: a Colombian curator and a Peruvian sculptor in Mexico survive with a delicious new home bakery;

Salvadoran-American artist Guadalupe Maravilla canceled his exhibitions to organize massive donations for the undocumented in New York.

Although artists have had more difficulty selling their works, they have also had other doors open to continue producing new works in collaboration with their colleagues.

In the case of Morillas - who normally survives by selling decorated tableware - she received a call for

Respiro therefore I exist

, a digital exhibition in which almost one hundred artists from Mexico represented the new normal by building creative protective masks.

The Morillas -glass on metal- has a bat in the background.

In addition, many artists, with fewer galleries open to the public, have partnered with each other to redecorate their apartments and turn them into “open studios”: spaces lasting two or three days, transforming a living room or dining room into a gallery, where friends can sell some of his works.

"Culture for many is the least important right now," says Morillo realistically.

"That is why it is important to move, to use our creativity as much as we can to also survive."

In some countries such as Argentina, the artists joined forces to create a tariff that allows them to survive and without depending on the value of their work in the market: they have an established quota if they are invited to participate in talks on networks, and others that force galleries or museums to cover the fees of artists, the transfer of their works, medical insurance, the assembly and disassembly of the exhibition.

Labor costs that seem obvious but have not always been stable sources of income.

"Without

us,

there would be no art institutions, no historians, no critics, no curators, no museums," says the statement of the tariff.

"However, little or nothing is recognized when it comes to remunerating our work."

Argentine Aimé Iglesias Lupkin, who runs a small exhibition space at the Americas Society in New York dedicated to Latin American art, says these fees for her new digital talks have been instrumental in helping the artists they invite.

"We have a small

speakers fee

, which seems silly, but for many artists who are suffering in the midst of the pandemic, the possibility that institutions give that income makes a difference," he says.

Art Basel and the digitization of art galleries

Sales at an art fair can represent more than fifty percent of an art gallery's revenue, but with large fairs canceled in Hong Kong or Miami, most galleries in Latin America rely more on virtual platforms or of local fairs to promote the artists they work with.

Neither experiment has been perfect.

"We sold very little and it was very very bad, I think that this year it is not good to make many movements," gallery owner Thiago Gomide told El País about ArtRio, which was held in Brazil last October, with high costs to participate but few sales.

"In a normal fair I have 50 emails a day, I talk to 80 different people, while in virtual fairs I have, hopefully, 15 emails a day".

Gomide is one of the owners of the Bergamin & Gomide gallery in São Paulo, which normally works with deceased artists, but in this pandemic year they took the opportunity to turn their work around to get to know local artists better.

“I wanted to be more in touch with the artists of my generation, with the local scene, and this change has been pleasant: it has been possible to work more closely with the artists and exchange more ideas with the curators,” says Gomide.

One of those artists is Pedro Caetano, a São Paulo artist who works with elements of popular culture.

Although profits for the gallery did not increase, he explains, costs were also reduced by not being able to travel to international fairs.

"The cost of an online fair is very small, whereas before you have to pay a ticket to Switzerland for four people, hotels, dinners, shipments of works, then you feel more pressure to sell much more," he says.

The international Art Basel fair in Miami that was held a few weeks ago is perhaps the most important for Latin American art.

Since March, it has strengthened its digital platform to attract collectors old and new - with video chatting with the artists or 3D montages of the works.

But the digital fairs also brought a radical change in the transparency of the art market: if before it was established that no one gallery set the prices of their works - out of habit or because it was considered in 'bad taste', giving room for more speculation in the market - digitization has forced gallery owners to put prices on platforms, or at least a range for each work.

"For the older collectors it has been more difficult to relate [to the platforms], but the younger ones love it: there is clearly a generational cut and that opened up many possibilities in the art market", Monica Manzutto told El PAÍS, director of the Mexican gallery Kurimanzutto that recently organized a small physical exhibition with 10 Mexican galleries in parallel to the virtual exhibition of Art Basel Miami, in which local collectors more than international ones were coming and going.

"We are facing a huge transformation in the way art is consumed, distributed and transformed," he says.