HAPPENINGS
Left, ‘Corazón destrozado’ (‘Destroyed heart’) by Delia Cancela. Collection of Mauro Herlitzka. Photo via Brooklyn Museum.
Right, ‘Colchón’ (‘Mattress’) by Marta Minujín. Collection of Jorge and Marion Helft. Photo via Brooklyn Museum.
30
The Radical Women
Excluded From Art History
“Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985,” a
new, large-scale exhibition that opens at the Brooklyn
Museum April 13, “will shift our understanding
of the history of art in this period,” says Catherine J.
Morris, the Senior Curator of the museum’s Elizabeth
A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
A bold claim to be sure, but not unjustified. The
show features 123 Latin American women artists
from 15 countries, many of whom are largely
unknown —although a few, such as the Brazilian artist
Lygia Clark, Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, and Venezuelan
artist Marisol might be familiar — but were
unified in their demand to “present, understand, and
talk about their life experiences in new ways and
through new mediums,” Morris says. The diversity
not just of artists but of the different kinds of work
presented is impressive.
The 25 year period the show captures was a deliberate
choice, because it “encompasses the politically
fraught period of dictatorships and social upheaval in
Latin America, which was happening simultaneously
with the development of significant new approaches
to art making,” Morris says.
“Radical Women” began at the Hammer Museum in
Los Angeles in 2017, where it was curated by Cecilia
Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta, who, in the catalog
for the exhibition, talk about the six years of research
that went into tracking down this work. But now that
the show exists, the work has only just begun.
“There are innumerable artists in the exhibition
who deserve monographic, internationally touring
exhibitions about their work,” Morris says. There
are countries that are not presented in the exhibition,
and more connections to be made, especially
between contemporary Latin American women artists
and their predecessors. “A myriad of possible
ideas come to mind.” —C.H.