Culturas caribeñas en la era de la personalización estética. Explorando las fronteras de la literalidad visual

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Interview with Terry Smith

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Artistic autonomy in non-autonomous contexts: reframing collective agency and insurgence from Caribbean artist-managed spaces

This article engages the debates on collective agency, autonomy, institutional practices and socially engaged art by comparatively analyzing the activity of two Caribbean artist-managed spaces which emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century: BetaLocal in Puerto Rico and L’Artocarpe in Guadeloupe. Based on fieldwork research and interviews with artists and art audiences, the examination of both projects will be driven by three main objectives: the first has to do with assessing in which ways both initiatives are shaped by their emergence in territories still attached to political and economic bonds. Secondly, I attempt to measure how both collective artistic organizations can approach the material conditions of cultural (re)production and autonomy, confronting the restrictions of Puerto Rican and Guadeloupean cultural and economic policies. Finally, I intend to locate my case study within a global panorama of socially engaged and collaborative artistic practice. From this perspective, I assert that collaborative practices emerging in still dependent contexts constitute a privileged viewpoint in order to examine issues of collective agency, empowerment and alternative futures.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Curating and Cultural Difference in the Iberian Context. From Difference to Self-Reflexivity (and Back Again?)

This article analyzes how curatorial practices deal with coloniality and, in a broader sense, with the legacies of colonialism and imperialism in our postcolonial present. To do so, it approaches the curatorial landscape of the Iberian territories in a moment of a radical geopolitical transformation, marked by the inclusion of Portugal and Spain in the European Union, the critical responses to the commemoration of their imperial past, and the rethinking of their postcolonial, post-dictatorial identity. Frequently framed from the point of view of exceptionalism, in a separated way, this article argues that Iberian postcoloniality can be better understood when approached from a comparative perspective.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

The Boda Moment. Positioning Socially-Engaged Art in Contemporary Uganda

This article examines two socially engaged Ugandan art projects: the Disability Art Project Uganda (DAPU), and Lilian Nabulime’s AIDS sculpture. By analyzing both initiatives, I attempt to characterize a new moment in the relations between artistic practice and social intervention in the Ugandan context. I argue that projects such as DAPU and Nabulime’s are confronting the current Ugandan situation of economic and political transformation, marked by the weight of the informal and the challenge of a nation-based cultural sphere. Finally, I point out some similarities with other African socially-engaged art initiatives.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

On Wanting Images and Shared Responsibilities. Belkis Ramírez’s “De la Misma Madera”

This article will borrow W.J.T. Mitchell ́s iconological analysis in order to examine the work of Dominican artist Belkis Ramírez, whose installations show an interest in challenging the role of the spectator and in propelling her/him to act critically. I will focus here on the installation “De la misma madera”, an artwork awarded the first prize in the 1994 edition of the Dominican Biennial of that year and one of the most recognized installations of contemporary Dominican art. I argue that installations such as De la misma madera exemplify the interest of contemporary Caribbean artists in troubling the position of the spectator as well as in generating a pedagogy of images that can be approached only through experience. By those means, Ramírez challenges a direct adscription of her work to the task of illustrating any specific issue. In this article I explore how this ambivalence generates a concern on expressive freedom and emotive emancipation that transcends passive contemplation and representation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Institutionalism, Public Sphere, and Artistic Agency: A Conversation on 32° East Ugandan Art Trust

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Organization, Engagement, Coloniality. Hangar: Centro de Investigações Artísticas in Lisbon.

This paper analyzes the work of Hangar: Centro de Investigação Artística, the first artist-managed space in Portugal dealing with postcolonial issues and African art. Through an analysis of Hangar´s activities, I aim to critically examine how African art has been displayed and consumed in Portugal, particularly in relation to the production of the country´s contradictory postcolonial image. The emergence of Hangar and the development of long-term relations both with emerging artists born in Africa and with the local Afro-Portuguese community imply, I suggest, a new and more fruitful approach. This collaboration also provides new tools for artists and cultural agents to strengthen their agency against the forces of touristification and commoditization that Lisbon and contemporary art from Portuguese-speaking African countries are respectively experiencing. The text is followed by a short interview with Hangar´ founders and directors Bruno Leitão and Mónica de Miranda.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On Art and Other Trades in Turn of Millennium Cuba: A Conversation with Alexandre Arrechea

This interview seeks to analyse the dynamics of the Cuban cultural context at the end of the millennium. To do so, it examines the work of Alexandre Arrechea, a former member of the collective Los Carpinteros. During the 1980s Cuban art had held an important position as a space for social and political criticism, replacing other spaces and becoming a major centre for discussion in the public sphere. That process changed substantially in the following decade as the country entered the Special Period and with the increasing attention of the international art market on the Cuban art sphere. This interview looks at the decisive years in which Cuban art became appreciated and consumed internationally, recovering the voices of some of the main actors in that process, such as Gerardo Mosquera, Carlos Garaicoa and Sandra Ramos. While the work of Los Carpinteros has been analysed several times, the oeuvre of Arrechea, one of the major creative voices from the Caribbean in the new century, has not received the same focus. The present discussion aims to fill this gap, by looking at his work as a whole and discussing issues related to migration and spectatorship, creativity and representation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Shadowy Presences: Mobility, Labor and Absence in the Work of Dominican Photographer Fausto Ortiz

This article aims to examine the ways in which contemporary art from the Caribbean, and specifically from the Dominican Republic, is analyzing mobility and human trafficking within a transnational context. In this case I will critique the work of the photographer Fausto Ortiz (Santiago de los Caballeros, 1970), who has reflected recently on the consequences of migration and displacement for Dominican cultural politics. Rather than addressing the representation of marginalized sectors and marginal forms of economy in the particular case of the Dominican Republic, I argue that Ortiz’s photographic practice deepens and broadens the debates about race, citizenship and social inequality, forcing his audience to consider those issues as a central part of the everyday. While addressing those issues, this article tries to insert Ortiz’s photographic practice within international debates on mobility, border practices and displacement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio