Curiously inspired by the curatorship of Georges Didi-Huberman forAtlas ¿Como llevar el mundo a cuestas? (Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid), volume Atlas portatil de America Latina. Arte y ficciones errantes, written by art critic, narrator and scriptwriter Graciela Speranza(Buenos Aires, 1957), was among the finalists for 2012 Anagrama de Ensayo Award. With an exhibition style, the author suggests links among artistic proposals, not necessarily following a lineal historiography, so she puts on the map some keys to understand the so-diverse panorama of Latin American art, by blending descriptions and reflections on works created by artists such as Guilllermo Kuitca, Vik Muniz, Adriana Varejao, Francis Alÿs, Tomas Saraceno, Gabriel Orozco, Teresa Margolles, Doris Salcedo or Alfredo Jaar, among others, with those created by writers such as Roberto Bolaño, Mario Bellatin, Marcelo Cohen, Carlos Busqued, Fernando Vallejo or Sergio Chejfec.
Latin America, marked by migration processes that haven’t disappeared in five centuries, is continuously redefined, explored; notions on “the Latin American” in the contemporary society fluctuate between local approaches and global outlooks, and artistic production is part of it.
Artists quoted on the book occupy an outstanding position in the contemporary art global stage, and also try to be spokespersons of an identity that constantly undergoes a formation process, far from the exoticisms used to watch it “from the outside”. In this respect, the author concludes: “Latin American art can define its position in the network of globalized culture without subsuming itself into the global hierarchical sphere that gathers peripheral cultures and annuls tensions, having a network without flexible relations that preserve the relative autonomy of the own sphere and, at the same time, increase tension and the variety of links.”
Source: FIETTA JARQUE. “America Latina, el continente movil”. El País, Sept. 24, 2012
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