From earth comes local and universal art
Nelson Herrera Ysla
The main source of inspiration for the international phenomenon known as the Latin American Literary Boom in the 1960s was the treatment of local aspects. Stories took place in the forests, towns or cities of Latin America. They used idiomatic terms and grammar forms proper of the Spanish spoken in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Cuba. Thanks to that rich treatment of what is local and regional, we obtained universal recognition. The same has happened with the art of our region in the last 20 years. The works that have aroused such interest inside and beyond the continent do not intend to play the role of “the other” or satisfy the market’s expectations. Neither do they intend to “imitate life” in Latin America, but to meditate on it from a more intelligent and committed point of view. In order to achieve this the artist appropriates codes and supports without taking into consideration their origin. He is performing an action of appropriation that is the result of a new attitude in the face of the information flows that emerge from relations between different cultures and nations.
Globalization has allowed the expansion of and the extraction of maximum profits from the concept of appropriation. This concept began to appear in Latin America in the 1920s, particularly in Brazil and Cuba. On the other hand, we must add to this process the phenomenon of migrations that shakes the very concept of identity and national culture and draws new territories on the maps of hegemonic traditional cultures and of those countries that produce migration. As a consequence of this process, we have observed the formation of a new artistic vanguard. I refer to the Latin American space that has emerged in a difficult moment of our history, paradoxically with a strong vocation with regards to what is local or regional. Artists are now determined to impose their specific points of view in the midst of very specific circumstances, perhaps as a response to the disproportionate “internationalisation” of languages. What is local (something more tangible than what is “national” or “typical”) is complemented now with what is regional in works that meditate on our circumstances. This is true from Mexico to Argentina, as if it were a search for a common language in all those countries as was the case with spoken Spanish. In this new vanguard there is greater awareness with regards to the diversity that co-exists in the majority of our countries and the diversity of problems we face. There also exists an urgent need for expression without necessarily proclaiming that this is “Latin American art.” Some of the works in this new vanguard point to the collective memory of Latin America, others to natural dramas, excluded groups, urban degradation, violence, economic dependence; that is to say, to any of the factors operating in this context. Therefore, when we look at these works it is not easy to identify the artist or country they belong to, but we can perhaps recognise their regional origin, the world to which they belong. They are works “produced” in Latin America, by Latin America. Other works work from the point of view of mockery. These represent a certain “trend” found mainly in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba as a reaction to what has been historically legitimised and “exported” since the mid-20th century. Others tend to explore domestic spaces, anxieties, hopes and all that makes us happy or sad and allows us to know what we were and why we are this way, without the need to appeal to the “great” topics.
With a realistic sense of the changes that occurred in the last quarter of a century, there is a general acceptance of the need to consider the plurality of our visual culture in all its dimensions and not only that of the United States, Europe or Japan. Historically (according to my opinion as a Cuban and Latin American), I can say that we always had a broad awareness of the universal. We were raised not only with our national and regional values but also with the values of European and North American culture. The fact that complex civilisations and countless ethnic groups existed on the American continent when the European conquerors arrived allowed us to be better prepared to face any type of influence after the 16th century. In spite of the fact that only certain physical relics of these ancient civilisations and a native population remain today we still have an sufficiently strong social, linguistic, artistic and religious diversity. This diversity has led us to an almost inborn universality that is today a substantial part of our identity. This is why in the 1980s a creative movement developed in Latin America that rescued certain artistic expressions and forms of particular cultural and spiritual significance that are still alive in the day-to-day life of our societies. I refer to works that take into consideration hand-made knitting and pottery, both genuine cultural products of American cultures. They evidence a sense of belonging, a new meaning of the concept of identity and a reaffirmation of cultural projects related to what is local and regional, but also to what is recognizable in other geographical spaces as a common language of the soil, the common heritage of many peoples and cultures. It is nature speaking from the origin of mankind, after many years of silence caused by the technological embezzlement and misinterpreted advances of science that kept us far from our essential sources of knowledge and learning. It is man and the earth again engaging in fruitful dialogues.
Latin America has diverse civilisations linked to clay. Ancient Mayas mentioned it in the fundamental text, the Popol Vuh. Almost 900 years before Christ, pottery had already been developed on the American continent on the banks of the Orinoco River. Later, it spread to a good many of the Caribbean islands. The conquerors brought with them the first potter’s wheels and the first stone and earth kilns. France, England and Holland, through their commercial exchanges with our cities, also contributed to the development of the incipient local and regional industries. Mutual appropriations and interrelations took place and gave rise to a hybridisation process that has survived through to the present day despite of the modern obsession with the artificial substitutes that endanger our traditional links with nature.
Latin America cannot be imagined without clay. That profound relationship is represented in several museums and it is essential to the continent’s heritage as the condor that dominates the heights of The Andes, and the Amazonias. Originally of zoomorphic inspiration, the forms of pottery derived from geometry and abstraction that were complemented with a certain polychromatic character based on natural pigments, with constant search for inspiration in the local nature and the traditions of each region. Several artists on the continent, particularly the Cuban-American Ana Mendieta, embodied this “return to the Earth” in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In recent years this trend has been followed by the creation of the Clay Biennial of America, two first editions of which were held in Caracas with a third in Brazil. Cuba has been celebrating its national Ceramics Biennial since 1985, with the dual aim of rescuing and reviving this form of artistic expression. One may speak of a rebirth of clay in Latin America that today knocks at the doors of artists of different generations and working in diverse media. Photographers, engravers, installation artists and painters are experimenting with the hybridisation of forms, materials and textures as a way of reconstructing our now fragmented cultural heritage, starting out from an unlimited contemporary character that admits no restrictions creativity. Artists look at the past in multiple directions towards which the frontiers of expression bear no prejudices or restrictions. In this way pottery is subjected to alterations that include the human body itself as part of performing plastic actions close to ancestral rites. Pottery is today finding a new dimension and assuming a leading role as in the beginning of our American history. One cannot define a predominant trend in the use of clay in Latin America (although in Cuba there is a greater weight in figuration). Artists make use of the material to parody traditional domestic pottery as well as to incorporate the new communication technologies or create interpretations of animals and human beings, houses, sex and ritual symbols, generally with an anthropological dimension that distinguishes their works on the international scene. Undoubtedly, we may discover in clay works that poetic aura that is immanent of the genuine work of art. Works in clay are a contribution to the much-debated question of the role of art in man’s life and his environment. They are a new, direct reading of history and culture, where the object is at the same time the subject in a present that retains much of the past and amply nourishes our hopes for the future.
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the “Local ceramic traditions and globalisation of contemporary art” conference, 19/20 October 2002, Fortezza del Priamàr, Savona.
Conference proceedings Local ceramic traditions and the globalisation of contemporary art
