Raúl Silva: Latin American Conceptualism Revisited Under the Logic of the Present
Thesis Advisor: Ghalya Saadawi
August 2021
Abstract
This research seeks to critique a specific curatorial discourse that revisits actions, contra cultural projects and artworks developed between the seventies and nineties in Latin America. My interest is to put in evidence the conditions and consequences of such curatorial strategy and to understand the Latin American artistic context as a transition. I propose to explain how some left-cultural projects have diverted the gaze of art on the class struggle and its role in political militancy for a structural change. This was replaced towards a plural and democratic emancipatory agenda and a cooptation and aestheticization of the political past. My hypothesis is that this recent trend in curatorial projects deactivates their political potential and their relationship with history, in addition to hindering the possibility of changing how those left-cultural politics relate with the social sphere.