In Daros Latinamerica, it is possible to find contemporary art works by Cildo Meireles, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica from Brazil; by Tania Bruguera and Juan Carlos Alom from Cuba; by Betsabeé Romero, Carlos Amorales, Tersa Margolles and Teresa Serrano from Mexico. The enormous list also includes Luis Camnitzer, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Oscar Muñoz, Alfredo Jaar, Wilfredo Pietro… the most active and renovative creators in current art.
In great exhibitions at international museums, it is common to find that there are artworks on loan from Daros, or that behind their organization there is this cultural heritage which has existed for 12 years now with this name, although its history dates from before.
Contributing to a better understanding of Latin American art outside its borders has been the purpose of Daros Latin American Collection, instituted in the year 2000.
The collection, with headquarters in Zurich, directed by Hans-Michael Herzog, is the widest one in Europe dedicated to contemporary art from Latin America, and with the opening of a venue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drawing near, it reasserts its vocation for spreading the art from that region. It holds more than one thousand three hundred artworks by about 116 artists, and it has as an antecedent the collection Thomas Ammann and Alexander Schmidheiny began to form in the eighties and which Stepahn Schmidheiny continued after their deaths.
It is about a cultural heritage in constant growth, as changeable and diverse as the art produced today in that part of America. The artwork acquisition criteria try not to be linked to the galleries’ market but to the creators themselves, to their social, historical and cultural concerns. There is, with the artworks, the artists and some curators, a research work. In Daros, there are the most interesting proposals of contemporary art from Mexico to South America, with emphasis on the last 25 years, although there are also significant artworks from the sixties and seventies, as well as former pieces, like a Torres García’s from 1938 which is the most ancient one in the Collection. European authors residing in these nations from Latin America also appear in it.
The concept behind the collection is not that of an encyclopedic totality, but the importance on the whole of an artist’s work or on its historical context. It is defined as a fund made up of artworks which can be read at diverse levels, which avoid the passing anecdote, in which medium and content are linked to make sense.
In an old neighborhood in Rio
The next step for Daros Latin American Collection is the opening of a venue in the region itself: it will be in Rio de Janeiro and the inauguration is scheduled for March 23rd, 2013.
Along with Hans-Michael Herzog, Isabella Rosado Nunes as Director General and Eugenio Valdés Figueroa as Director of Art and Education have worked for this project. Casa Daros will be in a building from the 19th century that had been a girls’ orphanage from the Botafogo neighborhood, at 159 General Severiano Street. The edifice was restored with the aim of housing part of the collection and being a cultural center.
In 2006, the project started with the acquisition of the premises, for which about 8 million dollars were paid, and then the restoration began. They have tried to achieve the preservation of as many original details as possible, at the same time that the optimum conditions of temperature and humidity have been generated. The restoration, whose total will be announced at the building’s opening, entailed works on the façade, the ceiling, the floor and the walls.
The building, which has been given the status of Cultural Heritage in Rio de Janeiro, has about 11 thousand square meters, from which near 8 thousand of them have been restored. It will have 11 exhibition halls for the art of different countries and artists from Latin America, and seven halls for the art and education area, taking into account that Casa Daros is interested in placing emphasis on this aspect.
In fact, the Art and Education project started in 2007, with activities like the program Meriadianos, Pictures of Junk, with the participation of artist Vik Muniz, who followed the restoration process of the building, the young artists’ restoration program and the First International Meeting of Educators – Art and Functional Illiteracy.
Daros’ object is to be a space for diffusion and reflection on the excellent contemporary Latin American art production. Based on pedagogue Paulo Freire’s ideas, who assured that “teaching demands listening”, Casa Daros wants to consolidate a pedagogical project where artists and their work are the starting point of all programs, which will cover reflection, experimentation and dialogue. It will offer the audience exhibitions with integrated activities of art, education and communication, as well as workshops and seminars. The building will also have a library, in which there lies a bibliographic cultural heritage made up throughout the years from a vision focused on the artist’s point of view, and which will be mainly destined for art students, professors and researchers, in support of the education and communication programs in Casa Daros.
For the inauguration, it has been given some thought to taking up again an ambitious project by ten Colombian artists: Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, which includes installations, videos, photographs, performances, acoustic works and objects by Doris Salcedo, Fernando Arias, José Alejandro Restrepo, Juan Manuel Echavarría, María Fernanda Cardozo, Miguel Angel Rojas, Nadín Ospina, Oscar Muñoz, Oswaldo Macià and Rosemberg Sandoval. Curated by Hans-Michael Herzog himself, the expo was presented in Switzerland between 2004 and 2005, and it was considered as the most comprehensive show of contemporary art from that country in Europe, besides being seen as a referent of Colombian history and the present time.
More details at http://www.daros-latinamerica.net/
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