Territoires - América Latina 1960 - 2013 - Fondation cartier pour l'art contemporain, 2013

Here we discover 12 artists who question the global identity of this subcontinent, national identities, the identity of native minorities as well as newer arrivals, the diversity of the continent and its peoples, the diversity of themes and issues which remain unresolved. We want to share this with visitors. One theme is, "What is Latin America? "What it the relationship between photography and text?" One of the first works is Damiàn Ortega's América, nuevo orden. Through simply deconstructing the word "America" it makes a political statement. Regina Silveira's To Be Continued... (Latin American Puzzle) can never be shown the same way twice because it offers a new syntax to define Latin America, a continent with many possible interpretations. It depends on the viewer. The puzzle is never assembled the same way. Here, we assembled it ourselves. The artist only provides the pieces. Each new word-image association changes the interpretation of this continent, in which some pieces remain black, pieces of history that have not yet been uncovered. We wanted this diversity to be visible in the work's mediums as well as countries and issues. The native populations are part of Latin America as well as the immigrants who arrived much later. It's interesting how Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini approaches the issue. This work is entitled Centena , a reference to the 100 slides that compose the work. He bought these slides at São Paulo flea market. Each slide shows signs in Japanese. In fact, the Japanese community in São Paulo is the second largest in the world. Claudia Andujar is a Swiss-born artist. She's Jewish. Her personal history was marked by Nazism. Most of her family was marked with numbers and massacred in that period. When she came to Brazil, she became very involved in the cause of the Yanomami, committed to helping defend their lands. In the '70s, the construction of a new road through Yanomami land exposed them to many diseases. Entire villages were dying. Claudia was part of a health mission whose aim was to vaccinate the Yanomami. The Yanomami have no ID cards, so their method was to assign a number to each person who'd been vaccinated to keep track of who'd been treated. It was very difficult for Claudia to put numbers on people. The Nazis tattooed numbers on people to exterminate them. To Claudia, it reversed the meaning of "marking" people, for she did it to save their lives. But it's still marking. This work was created by Brazilian artist Anna Bella Geiger to denounce the difficult situation of famine that Brazil suffered under the dictatorship. She traced the outline of Brazil on a slice of white bread and removed a piece to signify the lack of bread, of food, in certain regions, and that's what defines the regions. Chilean artist Elías Adasme created this piece entitled A Chile . He made it in 1979, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. These works involve actions with his body, the relationship between what he calls the "physical" and the "social" body. The "social body" is represented by the nation-states, in this particular case, the state of Chile. He's saying, "In this world, things are upside down." Pinochet was in power, Salvador Allende was murdered. He hangs himself upside down at the Salvador subway station with a map of Chile to denounce this. Another of his actions is to project the map of Chile on his naked back. He stands in a black room. It's a denunciation of the torture and censorship of the population under the Pinochet dictatorship. The last work is quite lovely: It's Esperanza para Chile , or "Hope for Chile." He crosses the word "Chile" off the map and writes it on his body to say, "Chile is not a territory. We are what creates Chile. "It depends on us. We cannot allow "the government in power to decide for us "who we are and how to build our country." He made a poster of four photos and posted it all over the city. He wanted to see how long it'd take before censors removed them. English Translation Lynn MASSEY S O F T I T R A G E C O M