Salir del silencio: Arte y política en latinoamérica entre los años 60 y 80

Abstract

This dossier prepared specially for Art Journal belongs to that process and gives some hints indications of the continuity of our research on the intersections between art and politics from the 1960s to the ´80s in Latin America. From the reinvention of the museum as a public space and a possibility for networking brought about by the Brazilian Walter Zanini, to experiences of artistic activism in Argentina that devised new modes of life and creation quite distinct from the gloomy gray normality imposed by state terrorism. From the incursion of feminism and its intertwining with Peruvian conceptualism, to the reconstruction of the tense moment circumstances that critical artists went through in 1989 during in the Cuba's difficult Cuban situation. The four essays gathered here deal with very diverse circumstances that share a common denominator: their obvious absence or invisibility in the canonical tales narratives of that period in art history that circulated up till now. There are various reasons for this gap or poor memory, among which, their radically ephemeral nature, their negligence or their direct refusal of any kind of recording (documentary, photographic, film), their sustained marginality with respect to the dominant positions of the art circuit, and their estranged or outsider condition regarding current stories about the period in question.