Arco avoids shocks and commits to decolonizing the art market (or tries to)

Whoever looks for the photo of the fair will not find it.

There is no Picasso's burning chapel, no cryogenized Franco, no Pedro Sánchez compared to Stalin, Fidel Castro and Pol Pot, among other coups de effect.

Arco, the great international contemporary art fair, opened its doors this Wednesday in Madrid without the salon controversies that have marked its recent history, confirming a tendency towards reasonableness and sobriety, in substance over form, which perhaps It started with the pandemic.

It is as if the halls of Ifema, the fairground that hosts this major event for the world of art, had never recovered from the months in which they became a field hospital, although no one talks about it anymore, nor does anyone think about it. .

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Perhaps the spectacular already belongs to another time.

Even the experiments with artificial intelligence or NFTs that had stood out in previous editions were conspicuous by their absence, with the exception of the always interesting practices of Joan Fontcuberta (Àngels Barcelona) or Daniel Canogar (Max Estrella).

“In past editions, sometimes it bothered me that those works were talked about and not all the rest.

For the galleries it is not so good either, because sometimes it boils down to a spark without effect,” stated the director of Arco, Maribel López, confirming a desire to reflect the debates of the present.

“The fair does not position itself, but it does reflect what is happening in the art world.

Underlying our work is a question, although it is never verbalized: how relevant for the future can this project be?

This is demonstrated by the growing presence of exposed women (43%, the best percentage in its history), including the claim of names such as Esther Boix (Marc Domènech) or Eulàlia Grau (Mayoral).

And also a brave attempt at the genealogy of LGTBI art in Spain, with José de la Mano's

stand

dedicated to the

queer

sculpture of Rodrigo Muñoz and the homoerotic art of Juan Hidalgo, Costus or Forns Bada, to which is added the recovery of Nazario's work at Bombon Projects.

The subtext is that there are other (art) stories left to tell.

A work by Zé Carlos García on the stand of the Argentine gallery Pasto, this Wednesday at the Arco fair, in Madrid.Samuel Sánchez

Of all these issues, the main one seemed to be decolonization, a fetish word in the sector since the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, announced a “review process” of public collections with the mission of “overcoming the colonial framework.”

Among the 205 galleries selected in this edition, 65% of which are not Spanish (and 38 of them are Latin American), there are many that collect points of view critical of colonialism and its thorny legacy.

Out of political conviction or opportunism?

“It's always a mix of the two,” admitted the Ecuadorian Manuela Moscoso, curator of the

Never the Same

section , dedicated to the great debates in Latin American art, starting with this one.

“This is not a new topic, but art institutions, including this fair, have opened up to it in recent years.

“We want to be a space for intersections and conversations.”

For example, the Argentine gallery Pasto highlights the work of artists such as Iosu Aramburu or Ariel Cusmil, who paint vignettes about a past tinged with oppression, but also with indigenous resistance.

At its side, the Peruvian Crisis exhibits the works of Santiago Yahuarcani, Raul Silva or Gala Berger, which reinterpret the syncretism of viceregal times or the language of today's political protests.

For its part, the Brazilian Almeida & Dale recovers Rubem Valentim, who combined the heritage of concrete art with the iconography of the Candomblé tradition, and the Madrid-based Fernández-Braso exhibits an oil painting by the Cuban Wifredo Lam, one of the first Latins to be integrated into the Western canon dictated by MoMA during the postwar period.

'Kev' (2020), by Elmgreen & Dragset, on the stand of the Helga de Alvear gallery.Samuel Sánchez

They seemed like illustrious ancestors of today's artists, both in the exhibitors of the younger galleries and in the curated section dedicated to the invited region: the Caribbean.

The Peruvian Violeta Quispe (Vigil Gonzales) uses the cedar planks of her culture of origin to ridicule the messages with which the Catholic Church proselytized in the Andean region, while the Guatemalan Moisés Barrios (Extra Galería) reflects the insatiable exploitation American of the banana industry in his country.

For her part, Nohemí Pérez exposes her paintings about the Darién, the jungle between Panama and Colombia that has become a dangerous journey for migrants who want to reach the United States. “The landscape is the first witness to all our crises.

She is almost always a voiceless victim, but there are artists who want to give her the floor,” said her gallery owner, Omayra Alvarado, at the

stand

of the Colombian Institute of Vision.

His work concentrates three trends observed in this Arc: the colonial question, the textile format and a resounding return of landscaping, omnipresent in this edition, perhaps due to the feeling of urgency imposed by the climate crisis.

There are the hysterical still lifes by Niki Maloof (Perrotin), the transformed canvases by Bianca Bondi (Mor Charpentier), the leaves intervened by Javier Ortón (Ana Mas Projects) or a disturbing photograph by Roe Etheridge (Mai 36): a decrepit lamp paper covered in autumn leaves, a perfect metaphor for a planet entering its terminal phase.

A work by Álvaro Urbano, in the Travesía Cuatro exhibitor, this Wednesday at the Ifema fairgrounds, in Madrid.Samuel Sánchez

Spanish art reflects this same concern through the adulterated landscapes of Santiago Giralda (Moisés Pérez de Albéniz), the mutant chrysalises of Teresa Solar, the sheep wool panels of Asunción Molinos Gordo or the artificial nature of Álvaro Urbano (all three last, in Travesía Cuatro).

Meanwhile, in Chantal Crousel's display, which occupies the space left vacant by Juana de Aizpuru with her recent retirement, Allora and Calzadilla exhibit ominous landscapes of the Puerto Rican jungle—the palm trees were planted by the US army to hide their military bases— and several handfuls of hyper-realistic jasmine petals that, when viewed up close, turn out to be plastic.

Something similar happens when walking through the fair: it is inevitable to wonder if all that glitters is gold.

“That Arco welcomes the debate on decolonization and reflects this paradigm shift is positive, because it is a fundamental issue in art and throughout society,” responded Manuel Borja-Villel, former director of the Reina Sofía Museum, who this Wednesday participated in a debate.

“Even so, an art fair, which prioritizes the work for its economic value, has extreme limitations, unless it proposes other ways of collecting.

“It is not enough to question the contents, but also the structures.”

She remembered a famous phrase by Katherine Dunham, the great African-American choreographer, who after a show in which she was applauded, assured her audience that nothing would change until white people got on stage and black people applauded them from the seats.

In Arco the same color predominates as in that stall.

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