The Staging of What We Call Latin American: A Decade of Reflection in Arte en Colombia Magazine (1978-1990)

Abstract

In this article I examine how the relationship between cultural modernity and the artistic avant-garde was configured during the transition from the end of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century in Latin America. An examination of a set of essays that address the idea of Latin American identity reveals how artists and theorists have tried, in different historical periods, to identify the nuances of critical thinking and art production in the region. In a second section, with the aim of delving deeper into the definition of what is Latin American, I carry out a rereading of a series of articles published between 1978 and 1990 in Arte en Colombia magazine that address both the composition of institutional collections and the design of exhibitions, mainly in the United States and Europe. With this methodology I delineate how certain museum narratives deploy experiences of identity that perpetuate —occasionally questionable— understandings of Latin American art. Through their criticism, the writers selected for this analysis react to outdated policies of representation, allowing us to re-elaborate possible ways of retelling artistic reality from the standpoint of Latin America.