Latin mass

Despite being about the same distance from our shores as the USA, Latin America continues to be a source of mystery for many Australians. Sure, there’s the occasional intrusion into our consciousness, like the film The Motorcycle Diaries or a visit by the Uruguayan football team to Telstra Stadium; but those aside, the land mass south of the Rio Grande remains cloudy in the Australian consciousness.

Well, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney seeks to redress the balance by bringing a touch of Latin America to the Harbour City with a major exhibition featuring some of the most celebrated Latin American artists working today.

The Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America provides a window into contemporary Latin American art and its vast array of histories, cultures and identities. Many of the works reflect the social and political circumstances of particular countries or regions throughout Latin America, while others deal with the past and the way it still plays a role in the present.

It’s the largest exhibition of Latin American art ever staged in Australia, presenting over 120 works by 21 artists including Guillermo Kuitca (Argentina), Doris Salcedo (Colombia), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), Vik Muniz (Brazil), María Fernanda Cardoso (Colombia/Australia), Nicola Costantino (Argentina) and Dario Escobar (Guatemala).

Curated by Sebastián López, formerly Director of the Gate Foundation, Amsterdam and Curator of the Shanghai Biennale 2004, The Hours draws upon works in the Daros-Latinamerican collection; an esteemed private collection of contemporary art based in Rio de Janeiro. Established in 2000 by Hans-Michael Herzog and Ruth Schmidheiny, the Daros-Latinamerican collection focuses its collecting activities on works by leading contemporary artists from Latin America.

Artworks in the exhibition extend beyond the MCA gallery space around the Sydney CBD. An installation of thirty national flags from across the world will be installed on the MCA front lawn. The work by Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto is called Apolitico (Apolitical) 2001 is reminiscent of the flags lining the United Nations and international hotels with a noticeable twist – the artist has replaced the flags’ traditional colours with various shades of grey.

Another work by Alfredo Jaar (A Logo for America, 1987-2003) will be shown on video screens opposite the Sydney train station platforms of Town Hall and Wynyard. The title for the exhibition, The Hours, is derived from the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges. Sebastián López explains this provides “a reading of the Daros-Latinamerican Collection from the perspective of time. It enables us to transverse different levels, spaces and times of varying intensity, with the mornings, siestas, afternoons and evenings that we find in the production of contemporary Latin American artists.”

Sebastián López explains: “Time, in Borges, is alteration and disintegration, and it percolates the interstices of whatever object and circumstances it encounters. Borges speaks of uprooting and exile as a dimension of time… In his work he has brought the materialisation of time in the night, inhabited by blindness and opacity. He goes in and out of history and has used its extension as an exercise permitting him to inhabit different real and possible worlds at the same time.”

“Borges has been characterised as the writer of circular time, but not repetitious in arriving back at the same point, rather the occurrence of similar but not identical events.

“Weaving a web of references and arguments with locality, history, personalities and cultural traditions, his reflections on time contain thoughts, histories and experiences that can be described as an authentically Latin American experience of time and history,” says Mr Lopez.

The Hours was first presented in late 2005 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. The exhibition runs at the MCA until 2 September 2007.

David Edwards

Send us your feedback on this article or anything else in The Blurb

Advertise with us | About us |Our privacy policy

The Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America

Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art, Circular Quay, Sydney
Dates: 21 June – 2 September 2007
Cost: Free

Click on the images for a larger view

Subscribe
to our monthly e-newsletter

Check us out on

Subscribe to our blog to keep
up to date on the latest news and reviews
at The Blurb