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Passing through the United States: an obligation for artistic development?

2022-06-20T18:05:04.161Z


Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. The so-called epicenters of art in the United States have been holding the largest offer of museums, galleries and exhibitions, becoming an obligatory step for those who want to stand out in the artistic field. Is it a pertinent validation or an ideology to question?


Although at first glance one would think that the desire to shelter under the nickname of "art capital" is a stagnant and trivial issue, the truth is that in the field of contemporary art it happens more than curators, gallery owners and artists would dare to to accept.

The equation of course also integrates the private initiative and the official hosts, interested in permeating these discourses in the face of the attractive potential of a city in the world.

Despite the fact that things are happening all over the world, dynamics, exhibitions, discussions and a live evolution within the local art scenes, the truth is that the collective imagination that shines a constant light on the big cities of the United States as a A necessary stop in the career of every artist, regardless of where they come from, it still exists more or less solidly.

For some this is a normalization, for others a sort of uncomfortable game that must be played in the face of positioning, the possibilities it offers and the potential development opportunities it presents, and for many others it is one of the great myths that must be demolished.

True, the undeniable consolidation and hegemony that countries like France, England, Germany or the United States have at the level of cultural capital precedes their consistency and development compared to the rest of the country, also understood from their geopolitical past.

Let us remember how after the Second World War, Paris ceased to be the nerve center of the world's artistic community to give way to the United States, which gradually incorporated its tradition of the cult of personality and entertainment in the fields of art, Jackson Pollock being the architect of abstract expressionism and the figure to follow.

However, today this historical evolution has been questioned more and more, through discussions around the fracturing of the hegemonic, colonizing or paternalistic discourses of the West.

Even a good part of the art that is produced in these epicenters of art is found talking about the reformulations of neighboring concepts such as border, territory, limits, identities, body, hegemony, independence, dissidence, among others.

José María Sesma, a Mexican photographer, recognizes that this positioning does not only attend to the physical place but to the language itself.

She says that despite the fact that there is a live Latin American market between Mexico and Argentina, her second book (abstract and spectral photography) was in English, thus reaching a much larger audience and was selected in a call in France, country where there is still more interest in the photobook.

Sesma acknowledges that in Spanish it is likely that she would not have done so well at her job.

Aspect of MAIA Contemporary Gallery, a Mexican gallery that survived during the pandemic thanks to the purchase and interest of the public in the United States. (Image: courtesy of the gallery).

neither here nor there

There are not a few Hispanic-American artists who change their residence near these artistic centers in order to consolidate their networks of contacts and be able to develop their work in a more strategic way.

The multidisciplinary artist Parch Es, who has been present in the exhibition circuits of Mexico City and Los Angeles, nuances these ideas and lands the contexts in a way that is hardly comparable, placing the discussion in a field of appreciation and circumstantial, dependent on various factors, which influence their final result and appreciation.

“When I was in Los Angeles it was very easy for me to organize an exhibition, a show or a performance.

But it was because I had spent years with a network that made it easier for me: artists, spaces, etc.

not necessarily depending on the city.

In Mexico City I have another condition, I am with the Mexican Art Gallery (GAM) and it represents a particular situation for me.

For example, in Zona Maco (one of the most important art fairs in Latin America) too many people saw my piece, but in a random way”, reflects Parch Es.

For her part, photographer Juliana Alvarado affirms that in her case the discourses surrounding her work have been received differently depending on the place where it has been exhibited.

The artist from Michoacan also speaks to us about the states of validation that the dynamics of contemporary art currently hold and how they are also perceived as different from one pole or another.

“[My work], the public abroad receives it differently.

For example, I have one of my pieces that has circulated a lot, the one from the biennial, Nómbralas, which talks about femicide, it is a piece that when I exhibited it in Mexico did not have the same impact as in other places.

I have exhibited it in Canada, Los Angeles and Tanzania.

I received different comments and I really liked the reception of other places.

In Mexico we know these constructions, which are of desolation, decomposition and political criticism.

But in other places it was stronger because it is an architecture that is very local;

the portrait of the aesthetics of this part of the Mexican desert.

Here we see it very normal but in other places not, it seemed strange and curious to them, "says Alvarado.

Intervention by Cynthia Gutiérrez as part of the Paraphrase of Havoc exhibition, MURA, Guadalajara, 2016. (Image: Miriam Hernández).

A cosmopolitan trap

Rosalba Hernández Vera, gallery manager of MAIA Contemporary recognizes that in the United States there are many more options in terms of networks and contacts around contemporary art, as well as an interest in seeing what is being done on the other side (Latin America), which it also becomes a dialogue and mutual exchange.

This exchange is not exempt from a critical sense and many ambiguous factors worth seeing in detail.

For example, Parch Es points out that in the face of the recent gallery boom in Mexico City (CDMX), much of this dynamism comes from the same foreign audiences in international art cities and from a somewhat careless reading of what is Mexican.

“Compared to the international cities of art there is still a lag and many times the local interest and participation comes from the foreigners themselves.

CDMX has gained relevance in global art circles and that makes it interesting and attractive, but I think there are no new ways of relating to us either, there is still a theme of tourism and exoticism that also play a role.

And it has its advantages and disadvantages, but it implies simplifying it;

The foreigners who come have a disproportionate cultural agency, power and access to information, proportionally it will always be much larger.

“Now, what is Mexican sells a lot in the United States and in the speeches there everything is apparently anti-colonial and that is displaced by influences and exoticization, although it also opens the door in our favor, it is an opportunity that changes depending on the context and the intentions.

I always say that if I weren't from Mexico I would come here, but it is stimulating and being a foreigner has a lot to do with my work, inheritances, identifying yourself as another in a context is very important for me creatively.

Maybe I would go somewhere else, adventure calls me more and not knowing how things are going to be, ”says Parch Es.

It is precisely this mobility that Parches talks about that links in a pertinent way with the reflection of the young curator Paulina Ascencio Fuentes, who locates this millenary dynamic of knowing oneself from the exit of the immediate circles, to nurture and consolidate the artist's work.

This without losing sight of what can be done within dynamics with which she does not agree or in favor of the congruence of creative work itself or, in the case of Ascencio Fuentes, curatorship.

“There is a phrase that I really like from César Paternosto (Argentine painter), which says that he realized that he was Latin American when he arrived in the United States.

In that sense there are discussions that take place with a different language.

The dialogue in CDMX works differently, we also know that all these collections are in the United States (...), all these pieces, and we ask ourselves 'what do we do with that'.

The reappropriation processes are complicated and then in Mexico there are usually no places that can properly guard these pieces.

You have to study them and not leave them there just because they are there;

those channels need to be opened.

In addition, these museums are currently undergoing a review process, they have their own collecting practices, the language they use to catalog and all these reviews need a counterpart to the one they already have,

because if you're going to revise something you've done you always need fresh eyes.

These spaces and dialogues are opening up within the museums”, explains Ascencio Fuentes.

Aliendigenismo, by border artist Guillermo Estrada.

(Image: Chino Lee/courtesy the artist)

Under the gaze of Guillermo Estrada, border historian and artist based in San Diego, California, whose work precisely crosses themes of identity, territory, heritage, appropriation and reappropriation, this dialogue between the United States does not invite or demand a necessity in his career for have a presence in the great art metropolises.

“It seems to me that this does not work for me, really from the artistic point of view where it works for me is in my environment.

When I just got out of school, a teacher said to me, 'Are you going to the big city?'

I said 'And what is that?'

She tells me New York.

I replied, 'And what am I going to do there?

I don't know anyone, what's the point of being there.

For me it is important to be close to the people around me and with whom I communicate.

And there is this idea that to be an artist you have to go: In Baja California, for example, they tell you that where you have to go is to CDMX.

It is a matter of perspective.

On the other hand, in Tecate they tell you that you have to go to Tijuana because the city is very small.

It seems to me that it is a mental game also so that they know you, and I think that it is not true,

that in the end there are projects that return because it is not what they expected;

it is overrated”, considers Estrada.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-06-20

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