There is a common interest that prevails among historians, critics, and the people to reach a consensus of what ‘Latin American conceptualism’ is in general terms. Not only in the plastic arts we find these attempts to conceive Latin America as a unified culture, “Latin” music and literature are also often overlooked as a broad aesthetic category. It is first necessary to point that Latin American Conceptualism is not–and has never been–an “Art movement” of its own, with a specific set of values and technics respective to a local time-space specificity. The term is rather useful to contextualize the historical motives and conditions that turned conceptual art–once a desperate counter-cultural act of emergency–into a dominant form of discourse in contemporary art in Latin America. Furthermore, most of the art that is subject to critique under the concept of “Latin American Conceptualism” in Academia and the industry is naturally political and critical to the systems of power; it aligns itself in a social utility. Some of the streams of conceptualism–whose artworks won’t be discussed here–have taken completely divergent paths to that of social realism.
While the insistence on consolidating a Latinamerican type of art corresponds for the most part to flattering postcolonial perspectives the West has set on Latin America’s history and populations, there is in fact a material ‘common ground’ in which most of these conceptual artworks were created: the unconformity in the political and the social dimensions of economic, political and military oppression. The ambition to trace the genealogy of Latin American conceptualism as an artistic movement of its own begins then with the premise that most of the conceptual art that brought international attention to Latin America is linked to contexts of oppression. Broadly speaking one can identify that from 1950-70, Latin American populations underwent similar processes of urbanization[i], economic reformism, the growth of mass media, and the clashing political ideologies of liberal capitalism with Marxist-Leninist communism. Within Latin American regimes of violence, conceptual art became a sensible effective resource to counter the hegemonic official rhetorics of modernity and progress.
In this sense, people identify some similarities in the tactics across the continent and in the problems that art addresses. The social interventions and demonstrations that required collective work occurred in Mexico’s by ‘Los Grupos’[ii], in Argentina stands out ‘Tucumán Arde’ in 1968, and later on in Chile’s ‘Escena de Avanzada’ during Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973). Urban interventions in the city’s visual mechanisms and public infrastructure such as boards, counteracting propagandistic symbols scattered around the city and altering street signalization.
This type of interventionist and uncomfortable-ish art has been cataloged by many as Guerrilla Art. In the West, around the 60s activism and art practice were merging strongly and one of the most relevant shapes it took was the Guerrilla Art movements, as it became a situationist and immediate form of protest against the global powers and modern Imperialisms. While I wouldn’t affirm that the interventions held by Tucumán Arde and Grupo Pentagono were thought out in this fashion, it does follow the same logic of immediacy, public visibility, strategic location, low budget, and the disregard for traditional technic-aesthetic canons.
These particular logistics of production are basic to understanding the shift from the modernist vanguards in painting and sculpture –figurative, abstract, concrete art prominently present in the continent[iii]– towards a more idea-based artistic approach. In some way, art needed to be responsive and needed to have the capacity to grow collective sensibility by unconventional means of representation, this means, art needed to detach from its premises of elitist, high-culture and find ground in the popular. The idea required to be liberated from the traditional craftsmanship of fine art as so it can reproduce itself to the masses without depending on financial aid from the sponsoring State.[iv] Art then needed to be relatively quick to produce and clear enough for the interpretation of the general population, i.e. a painting can take a lot of time to make, and its reproduction is thought to weaken the value of its specificity, on the other hand, a print that is meant to circulate across localities is cheaper and easier to produce and can carry out concrete ideas without the need of complex interpretation.
In this sense, a lot of artists opted for the ‘appropriation’ of circulating media by making use of the existing structures of mass communications. Notably in this matter is Grupo Suma in Mexico, who printed on newspapers and official documents stained signs and crude images of the social reality. In the aspect of material circulation of the works of art (ideas), some artists printed (literally) their ideas into the material commodity flux of the market by altering products of everyday use with messages of social and political critique. The point of this was to create a circuit of ideology that does not depend on a centralizing system of control. The market, according to its liberal principles, is supposed to function this way, self regulative and independent of the State’s intervention. The Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles subverts this notion ironically by printing messages in two of the most celebrated commodities, paper bills, and Coca-cola bottles, putting them back in circulation and therefore creating a work of art that mediates itself, and which accomplishes its meaning when the inadvertent audience (that who holds the bottle) is met by a message that turns its ordinary consumption practice into a transgressive individual reflection.[v]
These particular types of artworks were not only expanding the desire to hack the existing infrastructures of monetary and commodity value for the sake of art, but they were also challenging the idealism of what objects can or cannot be considered as art. A matter that, lucky enough for them, is up only for the artists and the institution to decide.
The action of interfering (or not) an object as means to conceive it and present it like a work of art is what is now generally known as the ready-made. Discovered by Duchamp back in the 40’s, highly developed by Latin American conceptual artists in the last period of the XX century. We could say these were the baby steps for what Latin American artists would later evolve the ready-made practice.
This art, meant to “destroy the idealistic separation between the piece and its reality”[vi] , social realism, critique to the system and the local authorities through the recontextualización of ordinary objects became an easy, fashionable way to create value for the audience, the artists, and the Institutions that sponsored these artworks. As the techniques and possibilities of conceptual representation evolved and were accepted in institutions (for example, Mexican Collectives and the Instituto Di Tella in Argentina relations with the American art institutions are known), they become much more challenging and controversial for the public that experiences them.
What we know today as ‘contemporary art’ is the consolidation of various conceptual currents in a post-modernist framework, these work on the idea behind the object, in which this artistic object can be an installation or a ready-made sculpture, it does not matter as long as the idea behind the piece is powerful.
Even if the early stages of conceptualism were grounded outdoors from the mediation of public institutions and the State, Conceptualism gained its worldwide legitimacy due to the acceptance and accommodation into Art Institutions (mostly international), the expansion–or the creation–of the ‘Art Industry’ as a global network of Museums, fairs, curators, intellectuals, merchants, and the growing market demand for art sales. We shall not understand Latin Conceptualism out of this context. While it is true that some of the early art was meant to be revolutionary and to “fight against economic dependency”,[vii] because of these artists’ close links with the Western growing international art system, these movements were swallowed as “artistic peripheries” of a specific geopolitical region: Latin America. This consolidates what Joaquín Barriendos suggests as the ‘geoasthetic region’.[viii] In the eyes of the West, Latin America can be understood as a geoasthetic region that produces political art. This art not only sells well, it also fits the strategic plans of museums to incorporate art from all around the world.
The following generation of artists (around the 90s – till today), usually referred to as neo-conceptualist were already designing artwork whose value and function was to be measured in the parameters of international art exhibition. In the case of Mexico, Miguel Calderón, Yoshua Okón[ix], Gabriel Orozco, Cruzvillegas, Teresa Margolles, Lozano-Hemmer, Aldo Chaparro, and so on, are celebrated as leading contemporary artists, not only by fair’s curators but by the Governmental State and its international affairs institutions.[x] This period marks when conceptualism stops being a ‘tactic for thriving on adversity’ and becomes a culturally necessary discourse accommodated by the State.[xi] As of now, Conceptual art remains critical and political, but it has lost, in its majority, its radical drive against the systems of power. If it produces enjoyment (like Orozco) or shame (as Margolles), it stimulates only the emotions of the viewer without threatening any order or making those in power to feel uncomfortable.
The institutional allowance and marketability for Conceptualism and neo-Conceptualism opened up divergent paths for the art practice in which it has become more difficult to trace conceptualism as a single movement. Even if the insistence on understanding Latin America’s cultural productions in a universalistic-homogenous manner prevails, there is not a single substantial ideology that unites these practices across diverse contexts, therefore they better be understood as phenomena, rather than as a movement or a geoaesthetic category.
Notes
[i] Mari Carmen, “Tactics for Thriving on Adversity.” p.58
[ii] Ruben Galllos, “The Mexican Pentagon.” p.167
[iii] Concrete art was particularly dominant in Brazil, in which influenced by modernist ideals of functionality, technological determinism were copped by visual artists, architects and technocrats politicians. This was countered by an emerrging art movement named as ‘Neoconcretism’ lead by Lygia Clark, they broke with idealist premise that form follows function. The main ideological ruptures of this movement are addressed in Lygia’s manifesto ‘We Refuse’, 1966.
[iv] Camnitzer, “Tucumán arde”. p.66
[v] dos Anjos, “Cildo Meireles”. 2017
[vi] As pointed out in the manifesto of Tucumán Arde. Camnitzer, “Tucumán arde”. p.66
[vii] Camnitzer, “Tucumán arde.”
[viii] Joaquín Barriendos, “Geopolitics of Global Art.” p.98, 10
[ix] Calderon and Okón produced the polemic installation ‘A propósito’ in 1997, constructed of stolen stereos in Mexico City. The work of art was later exhibited abroad in “Lifting. Theft in Art” 2007-2008 curated by Atopia Projects. Tania Ragasol “A propósito”.
[x] Biennales and International contests are regularly financed/sponsored by the state. In the case of México, it is by The National Council For Culture And The Arts (CONACULTA), The Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), The National University of Mexico (UNAM), Patronato Del Arte Contemporaneo (PAC) as noted in the official announcements, see for example: e-flux, “Teresa Margolles at 53rd Venice Biennale”, 2009.
[xi] The most noticeable example of this is in recent times is the mega-project of reconstructing the park Chapultepec in Mexico City. Multimillionaire project of urban infrastructure granted to the conceptual artist Gabriel Orozco. Sparkinlg a lot of discontent and debate within the scene. See in cited works Minera, “Chapultepec o el precio de la desolación”, 2021
WORKS CITED
Barriendos, Joaquín. “Geopolitics of Global Art: The Reinvention of Latin America as a Geoaesthetic Region.” In The global art world: audiences, markets, and museums, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009, pp. 98-114.
Camnitzer, Luis. “Tucumán arde: Politics in Art.” In Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007, pp. 60-72.
Dos Angos, Moacir “”Cildo Meireles. Inserciones en Circuitos Ideológicos.” DAROS, 2017. https://www.daros-latinamerica.net/es/ensayo/cildo-meireles-inserciones-en-circuitos-ideol%C3%B3gicos
Gallo, Rubén (2007) “Adventures in collectivism during the 1970’s” In Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (eds.), 165-190, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
Minera, María. “Chapultepec o el precio de la desolación: carta a Gabriel Orozco.” NEXOS, January 2021. https://cultura.nexos.com.mx/chapultepec-o-el-precio-de-la-desolacion-carta-a-gabriel-orozco/
n.d. “Teresa Margolles at 53rd Venice Biennale” e-flux, 2009. https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/38082/teresa-margolles-at-53rd-venice-biennale/
Ragasol, Tania “A Propósito.” CÓDIGO DF. https://www.yoshuaokon.com/assets/02okon_tania46.pdf
Ramírez, Mari Carmen. “Tactics for Thriving on Adversity: Conceptualism in Latin America, 1960-1980.” In Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 53-71.