Event
Art on Lockdown
Virtual
A series of public webinars on challenges facing the artistic freedom realm caused by the pandemic with our local and regional partners. The upcoming events are bilingual (Spanish/English).
The COVID-19 pandemic is particularly affecting vulnerable communities, artists, activists, and human rights defenders, but it also impacts the organizations that support them, further shrinking existing civic and political spaces. In this webinar series, members of the artistic freedom community will discuss the challenges they are facing in their communities, such as ways government responses to the virus are leading to crackdowns on dissent, stifled activism, and other threats to artistic freedom. They will explore new responses and forms of both local and global solidarity to defend artistic freedom in the face of a global pandemic. This will be a crucial forum to raise awareness about the pandemic’s effects on the arts and human rights and to mobilize civil society internationally to find new, innovative ways to defend artists in times of crisis.
ARC’s fall webinars will occur in Spanish, with English interpretation available. To access the English interpretation, you must download the application version of Zoom, which is available for your computer, smartphone, or tablet.
Nuestras disculpas por la falta de acento en la “i”, estamos trabajando en este asunto.
Past Webinars
Art and Visions of the Future in the New COVID-19 “Normality”
Thursday, December 17
1PM (EST)
What are the challenges that artists are facing in the pandemic “new normality,” as this phase has been defined by governments and the media throughout the world? Can the work that artists produce while on lockdown inspire new visions of the future? How are these artworks influenced by the challenges to freedom of expression posed by the condition of lockdown and social distancing? The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply transformed the way in which artists and those defending freedom of expression operate. The current phase of “new normality” is deeply shaped by the social and economic consequences of several months of lockdown––including by episodes of aggression and censorship that artists have experienced in Latin America. Three prominent international artists will analyze the way in which their activities and creative approach have been affected by the pandemic. Through their artworks, they will also provide visions of the future that go beyond the crisis and allow artists and human rights defenders to imagine new possibilities for their practice as creators and human rights defenders.
The event is co-presented with CADAL, el Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), and PEN International, and moderated by ARC’s director, Julie Trébault.
Alejandra Labastida (Ciudad de México, 1979) is associate curator at MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art) museum, where she’s worked since 2008. She holds a B.A degree in Art History from Universidad Iberoamericana as well as an M.A of Art History from UNAM. In 2013 she received the ICI/SAHA Research Award and in 2012 she was the winner of the Akbank Sanat International Curatorial Competition in Istanbul. She was assistant curator at the Mexican Pavilion during the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale and has published in numerous catalogues and art magazines. Her most recent curatorial projects include “Melanie Smith: Farsa y Artificio”; “Playing Innocent”; “Teresa Margolles: Sutura”; “Chto Delat”; “When we thought we had all the answers, life changed the questions” and #Nomecansaré.
Gabriel Orge is a visual artist, photographer, and teacher from the city of Córdoba, Argentina. For twenty years, he has been coordinating the project “Manifiesto Alegría”, aimed at the production and training in contemporary photography. He has received several awards and his work has been exhibited in museums of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Paraguay, Spain, and Canada. His works are part of the collection of the Palais de Glace (Buenos Aires), Emilio Caraffa Museum (Córdoba), Municipal Museum of Genaro Pérez Fine Arts (Córdoba), Rosa Galisteo de Rodriguez Provincial Museum of Fine Arts (Santa Fe), Dionisi Palace Photography Museum (Córdoba), and private collections. One of his best known works is “Apareciendo”, a series of photographic interventions that consist in the projection of the faces of disappeared people in public spaces. Among them, those of Jorge Julio López (with “Appearing López” in the river Ctalamochita, he won the 1st prize at the 2015 National Visual Arts Exhibition), Santiago Maldonado and Andrea López (victim of human trafficking).
Cecilia Noce has worked at CADAL and Freemuse since 2019, where she monitors, surveys, and documents freedom of artistic expression in Latin America. In addition, she directs CADAL’s Cultural Rights activities, which focus on raising visibility of challenges faced by Latin American artists like forced exile, persecution, and censorship. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Buenos Aires and a Master’s in Sociology of Culture from the University of San Martin in Argentina. Since 2007, she has been a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She specializes in cultural studies, with a main focus on documentary film in Southeast Asia and processes of democratization and autocratization. She is currently responsible for research groups on Asia and teaches courses on contemporary Southeast Asia. She is the author of several books and regularly contributes to academic journals and newspapers Latin America. She is the editor of the social studies magazine Asia / Latin America.
Art and Indigenous Rights in Latin America
Thursday, October 22
7:30PM (EST) | Chile/Brazil: 8:30PM | Mexico: 6:30PM
Colonial and post-colonial systems have severely threatened the freedom of expression and rights of Indigenous People for centuries, and since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, these attacks have only grown worse. Indigenous ancestral lands and cultural institutions have been attacked and occupied as hostile state and non-state forces take advantage of the emergency health situation. Everywhere in Latin America, governments have failed to provide indigenous communities with appropriate healthcare services and information about the pandemic, despite being among the most vulnerable groups in a region heavily affected by COVID-19. Indigenous artists in the art sector, who play a key role in supporting cultural preservation and promotion, have been facing especially disproportionate challenges. In this webinar, three prominent Indigenous artists and cultural professionals from Chile, Brazil, and Mexico will discuss how they have resisted these attacks, the various actions and protests currently taking place in their communities, and how arts and culture are playing a decisive role in the struggle for Indigenous people to survive and flourish.
The event is co-presented with PEN International and the Mapuche Museum in Cañete.
This event will occur in Spanish, but interpretation is available on the application version of Zoom, which you can download for computer, smartphone, or tablet.
Juana Paillalef Carinao is originally from the Maquehue territory in Araucania, south of Chile. She holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Bilingual Education from the Universidad San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Following her education, she was awarded the position of Director of the Mapuche Museum of Cañete, where she has worked alongside museum studies specialists to develop a Mapuche museology. She spearheaded a reconstruction and reinterpretation of the history of a conflicted territory and the decolonization of the Museum, which is now a cultural and social hub for Mapuche people in the region. On the fifteenth of July of this year, the museum suffered an arson attack by the Chilean police, as they were repressing a demonstration organized by the local community. This attack was part of a pattern of state violence against Mapuche communities and organizations in the south of Chile that aims to endanger their cultural rights and freedom of expression, which Juana actively defends.
Sara Curruchich is the first Indigenous Guatemalan singer-songwriter to make songs in Spanish and Kaqchikel––her mother tongue––internationally famous. Her voice and messages of love, conscience, respect and defense of life in all its forms are an incredible source of hope. Since she started singing and writing songs in San Juan Comalapa, Sara has taken her message to many corners of her country, performing in rural communities, as well as in theaters and important stages across Guatemala. Her music is in dialogue with various genres such as rock, folk and traditional Mayan kaqchikel music. Her voice resonates not only in the fields of art and music, but in spaces of discussion on society and human rights. Sara is also committed to historical memory. She has played on important stages in South America, Central America, North America and Europe.
Cicerón Aguilar Acevedo is a musician, composer, visual communicator and cultural promoter. He has produced and directed several audiovisual projects, and he has collaborated with national and international journals writing on music traditions from the indigenous communities of Chiapas. He is a founding member of the ethnomusicology network NAPINIACA, and he is the founder of the ethnomusicology congresses of Chiapas, which will now be held in Girona, Catalonia. In coordination with Dr. Israel Moreno, he initiated the creation of a Traditional Music Documentation and Research Center at the University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas (UNICACH). Cicerón coordinated a congress on linguistic rights called “Writing the future in indigenous languages” that PEN International, UNICACH, INALI and UNESCO held in 2019, bringing together 26 countries in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. He is a founding member of PEN Intercultural Chiapas.
Feminist Art and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America
Thursday, November 19
1PM (EST) | Guatemala: 12PM | Bolivia: 2PM | Mexico: 12PM | Paris: 7PM
Though the global COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated all existing inequalities, it has had especially deep effects on gender equality. Across the world, women’s independence has been severely limited by the lockdown, which has highlighted the persistent sexual division of labor and income. This discrepancy is reflected in the art world, where the lockdown has had a profound impact on the activity of female creators and the critical voices of feminist and LGBTQ artists and collectives who have been attacked and silenced in many Latin American countries. Three feminist artists from Guatemala, Bolivia, and Mexico will reflect on the consequences of the current crisis on female and feminist art, highlighting tensions and demands at stake in different countries, and the responses that feminist art has provided to growing gender oppression and inequities.
The event is co-presented with PEN International and Fundación Construir (Bolivia).
Rebeca Lane is a feminist rapper and poet from Guatemala. Rebeca has released three studio albums––Poesía Venenosa (2015), Alma Mestiza (2016), and Obsidiana (2018)––and gone on multiple tours in Latin America, the United States, and Spain. She is the founder of the Somos Guerreras project, aimed at making visible the work of Central American women in hip-hop and providing spaces for training, co-creation and production of events. For this initiative, she has traveled the continent giving talks, workshops and presentations elevating the work of women in hip-hop. In 2019, Rebeca Lane released the single “I Would Like to Forget About Your Name” where she discusses her personal relationship with her country. Her most recent album, Obsidiana, mixes traditional Latin American rhythms and instruments with powerful lyrics and the essence of boom-bap. In the same year, she published her book of poetry Hierba Mala.
Helena Chávez Mac Gregor is researcher at the Aesthetic Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds a PhD in Philosophy from UNAM and a Master’s degree in Theory of Contemporary Art from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. From 2009 to 2013 she worked as academic curator at MUAC, where she founded the critical theory program Campus Expandido. She currently teaches at the Postgraduate Course in Art History at UNAM and at the College of Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at UNAM. Among her curatorial projects are: “Al final del trabajo,” by artist Simon Gush, curated together with Virginia Roy (2018); “En la Noche, Relámpagos,” a project developed with Teatro Ojo and Cuauhtémoc Medina (2016); “Teoria del Color,” with Alejandra Labastida and Cuauhtémoc Medina (2014-2015), and “Fetiches críticos: residuos de la economía general,” a project with Espectro Rojo (2010 – 2011). Her first book, “Insistir en la política. Rancière y la revuelta de la Estética,” was published in 2018. Recent publications include “Estamos todos en peligro, una lectura política sobre la obra de Yoshua Okón,” “Pese a todo, aparecer,” “Occupying the Space, the Battle for Politics,” and “Necropolítica, la política como trabajo de muerte.”
Arte en el Encierro
El miércoles, 24 de junio
12 p.m. EDT
En esta primera sesión de “Arte en el Encierro”, tres colectivos artisticos y culturales latinoamericanos reflexionarán sobre la situación de pandemia vivida en diferentes paises, cuáles Chile, Colombia y México, donde el número de contagios está creciendo exponencialmente cada dia, y donde se han tomado medidas en muchos casos ambiguas y criticadas por sectores de la sociedad civil. Más allá de la crisis sanitaria, este evento se enfocará en el análisis de los efectos negativos que esta particular situación está surtiendo hacia la libre expresión artistica y los derechos humanos de activistas y creadores, en paises que registran indices particularmente preocupantes de violación. A través de sus experiencias y perspectivas de trabajo especificas, cada colectivo explorará estrategias para enfrentar la nueva situación de una manera eficaz, repensando el trabajo de artistas y defensores de derechos humanos en un contexto de transformación e incertidumbre, cómo el actual. Con la participación de tres miembros de importantes organizaciones artisticas y culturales latinoamericanas, Octavio Gana, Juana Salgado y Lucila Sandoval. La discusión será presentada por Julie Trebault, Directora de ARC y moderada por Alessandro Zagato, Encargado regional para America Latina de ARC.
Lucila Sandoval es una comunicadora y artista de la ciudad de Guadalajara en México, donde ha participado en diversas colectivas y organizaciones civiles; desde el movimiento estudiantil #YoSoy132, movimientos por los desaparecidos en México, organizaciones en pro del aborto y colectivas feministas, así como procesos de comunicación alrededor de la defensa de la tierra y el agua. Actualmente pertenece a la colectiva interdisciplinaria Hackeo Cultural que trabaja con un método de intervención en las narrativas hegemónicas, a través del análisis del discurso, la creación de redes, e intervenciones artísticas y organización con colectivos en calles y espacios públicos. Su labor tiene que ver con comunicación estratégica, prácticas narrativas, diseño gráfico y análisis de datos; también hace ilustración y graffiti. En este momento es parte un proceso colaborativo internacional, llamado “Hackear la Pandemia”.
Juana Ibanaxca Salgado es una coreógrafa y bailarina intérprete de la Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá, e historiadora de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Realizó sus estudios de Maestria en Danza Movimiento y Terapia (DMT) con una especialización en Tendencias Contemporáneas de la Danza en Argentina. Es codirectora de LA OTRA DANZA, donde desarrolla su trabajo de investigación-creación y activismo con organizaciones sociales y de victimas, artistas y sociedad civil. LA OTRA DANZA es una compañia artistica interdisciplinar interesada en la creación y la invención en paisajes creativos en diálogo. Desarrolla una propuesta de investigación escénica, audiovisual y pedagógica con un fuerte enfoque en el activismo a través del trabajo de memoria histórica. Desde el año 2000, LA OTRA DANZA es dirigida por Juana Salgado y Kalia Ronderos, historiadoras, artistas escénicas y audiovisuales quienes consolidan y producen este proyecto. En 2016 abren su espacio independiente La Otra Guarida que involucra un espacio de entrenamiento para las personas interesadas en el movimiento, activo desde 2010.
Octavio Gana (1983, Santiago de Chile) es un artista, diseñador y poeta. Es codirector de Delight Lab, un estudio de arte y diseño con 11 años de trayectoria, donde desarrolla proyectos con la luz, el espacio, el video y el sonido. Recibió el premio de la audiencia en el Festival de Luz de Moscú en 2014. Ha realizado diversas intervenciones luminicas relacionadas con conflictos medioambientales y sociales, como por ejemplo la secuencia de palabras y preguntas proyectadas sobre el edificio “Telefónica” de Santiago en el contexto del llamado estallido social chileno en Octubre del 2019, la intervención luminica “Zona de Sacrificio” sobre la fumarola de una termoeléctrica en una zona de alta contaminación del litoral central de Chile y la proyección del rostro del comunero mapuche Camilo Catrillanca junto al verso “que su rostro cubra el horizonte” en Plaza Italia (Santiago) al día después de ser asesinado por la policia chilena, y sobre el Congreso Nacional de Valparaiso al año siguiente.
The webinar series is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
