Miguel A. López is a writer, researcher, and independent curator based in Lima, Peru. He is the curator of the traveling retrospective exhibition “Cecilia Vicuña. Seehearing the Enlightened Failure” that will open at the Museo del Banco de la República, Bogotá, in February 2022.
1
THE LEGALIZATION OF ABORTION IN ARGENTINA AND MEXICO
Last September, after huge feminist campaigns and street actions all across the country, Mexico’s Supreme Court of the Justice of the Nation voted to decriminalize abortion. The landmark ruling followed a similar victory in Argentina (the pope’s native country) ten months earlier. These two decisions represent a turning point in Latin America, a largely Catholic region that has some of the world’s most restrictive laws against terminating pregnancies. The massive proliferation of the green handkerchief—a symbol of the right to abortion—speaks clearly to how aesthetics are defining the struggles for self-determination now gaining momentum in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
2
“THE DIRTY SOUTH: CONTEMPORARY ART, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND THE SONIC IMPULSE” (THE VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, RICHMOND; CURATED BY VALERIE CASSEL OLIVER)
This is the first international exhibition that I visited after getting the vaccine, having abstained from travel for almost a year, and it felt like fresh water to my body and soul. The show proposed a sensational revision of the impact of Black sonic culture on the creative practices of the African American South. By setting a wide range of art and craft forms in dialogue with musical expressions, the selection not only reframed the lineages of American modernism and its visual traditions but also addressed joy, loss, and rage in the changing experience of Black communities during the past century.
3
THE ZAPATISTAS’ “JOURNEY FOR LIFE” GLOBAL TOUR
This year, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation launched a “Journey for Life” campaign, advocating across the world for autonomous governance and participatory democracy as weapons against capitalist oppression. Announced as a kind of reverse “invasion,” a delegation of Zapatistas sailed to Spain in late June to kick off the tour. The first member to disembark, Marijose, a nonbinary individual, promptly changed the name of Europe to “Slumil K’ajxemk’op” (Tzotzil for “Insubmissive Land”), reminding us of a long history of solidarity and rebellion and Indigenous forms of communal politics.
4
IDA APPLEBROOG (MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA, MADRID; CURATED BY SOLEDAD LIAÑO)
More than five decades of Applebroog’s work was gorgeously displayed in “Marginalias,” her most extensive retrospective to date, which unfortunately didn’t travel. I loved every room. The show presented an extraordinary exploration of violence, gender, and power from a vibrant feminist position, including such poignant moments as her series of drawings produced at San Diego’s Mercy Hospital in 1969–70 and her impressive installation at the 1993 Whitney Biennial.
5
RON ATHEY (INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES; CURATED BY AMELIA JONES)
Eschewing a chronological narrative, this retrospective of the iconic performance artist Ron Athey intertwined queer activism, religion, music, film, and theater to present a transgressive body of work that has since the 1980s challenged the norms and conventions of the art world. The show included costumes, props, and extensive archival material that underlined affective networks and collaborations developed across four decades. In addition to the exhibition, my personal highlight was the unexpected dazzling night of cumbia and sound experiments with Athey, Bruce LaBruce, and Daniela Lieja Quintanar, among other artists and colleagues, at Betalevel in the heart of Chinatown—my first real party in a year!
6
FRESTAS—TRIENNIAL OF ARTS THIRD EDITION: “THE RIVER IS A SERPENT” (SESC SOROCABA, BRAZIL; CURATED BY BEATRIZ LEMOS, DIANE LIMA, AND THIAGO DE PAULA SOUZA)
Since its creation in 2014, Frestas—Triennial of Arts has been one of Brazil’s most refreshing art events. Somewhat reformulated because of the Covid-19 pandemic, “The River Is a Serpent” now comprises fifty-three artists and collectives from all over the globe as well as a strong public program of conversations, workshops, and an educational course in community-building, economy, listening, and self-care. The show’s exploration of how bodies can produce new tools and technologies to reorganize power structures and create alternative worlds out of this world is a piercing response to the times we are living in.
On view through January 30, 2022.
7
SANDRA GAMARRA HESHIKI (ALCALÁ 31, MADRID; CURATED BY AGUSTÍN PÉREZ-RUBIO)
Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra Heshiki addresses the bicentennial celebrations of independence in Latin America with a sharp, critical revision of the role of painting in the Spanish colonial enterprise. “Good Government” includes new works by Gamarra Heshiki in dialogue with historical caste paintings from the eighteenth century and new productions by contemporary Andean artists like Sixto Seguil Dorregaray and Primitivo and Valeriana Evanán. Two days before the opening, Madrid’s right-wing municipal government censored the words racism, restitution, extractivism, and neocolonial from the curatorial text. It’s a telling gesture of a terrifying ultraconservative agenda that seeks to reclaim white-hero narratives of colonization and to reject Indigenous movements, which Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of the Community of Madrid, recently denounced as a new form of “communism.”
On view through January 16, 2022.
8
“¡PRINTING THE REVOLUTION! THE RISE AND IMPACT OF CHICANO GRAPHICS, 1965 TO NOW” (SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC; CURATED BY E. CARMEN RAMOS AND CLAUDIA ZAPATA)
This exhibition touched me. It gathered some of the most powerful graphic pieces of a broad international network that includes Latinx, Chicanx, and Latin American artists and activists, connecting contemporary printmaking with the early social activism around civil-rights, labor, antiwar, Indigenous, and feminist and LGBTQI+ movements. At the entrance, Oree Originol’s ongoing collection of digital portraits of victims of police brutality, Justice for Our Lives, 2014–, hung in front of Amado M. Peña Jr.’s screen print Aquellos que han muerto (Those Who Have Died), 1975, which depicts a young man with a fresh bullet wound to the head. Together, the two works made a strong statement about the visual impact of Chicanx graphics and their enduring legacy as a site of political resistance and the quest for social justice.
9
“INVENTAR A LA INTEMPERIE. DESOBEDIENCIAS SEXUALES E IMAGINACIÓN POLÍTICA EN EL ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO” (INVENTING OUTDOORS. SEXUAL DISOBEDIENCES AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN CONTEMPORARY ART) (PARQUE DE LA MEMORIA, BUENOS AIRES; CURATED BY FERNANDO DAVIS, FERMÍN ACOSTA, MINA BEVACQUA, AND NICOLÁS CUELLO)
“Inventar a la intemperie” is the result of collaborative research into the intersections of contemporary art, politics, and queer struggles in Argentina from the 1960s to the present. The show spans iconic and overlooked artworks to visual forms developed by social movements and civil society, creating a dialogue among artists such as Marta Minujín and Fernanda Laguna and ’70s-era flyers and leaflets from the Homosexual Liberation Front and the Argentinean Feminist Union. The project is accompanied by a website that assembles a collective memory of queer resistance.
On view through December 12, 2021.
10
“KHIPUS: OUR HISTORY IN KNOTS” (MUSEO DE ARTE DE LIMA, PERU; CURATED BY CECILIA PARDO WITH JULIO RUCABADO) This exhibition was delayed and paused more than once because of the devastating effect of the pandemic in Peru, but when it did open, it presented a fantastic selection of quipus, the knotted-string devices that have been used for accounting and narration since the pre-Hispanic era. While the tools were banned from public use in 1583 during the Spanish Conquest, this show gathered some of the most important surviving examples alongside documentary sources providing insight into both early and current use in Andean communities. Also included were three-dimensional and performative works by Jorge Eduardo Eielson and Cecilia Vicuña, two contemporary artists who have been unraveling the political meanings of the quipu since the 1960s.