Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America

by Sophie Halart (Editor), Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra (Editor)

Overview

Sabotage is the deliberate disruption of a dominant system, be it political, military or economic. Yet in recent decades, sabotage has also become an artistic strategy most notably in Latin America. In Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, artists are producing radical, unruly or even iconoclastic work that resists state violence, social conformity and the commodification of art. Sabotage Art reveals how contemporary Latin American artists have resorted to sabotage strategies as a means to bridge the gap between aesthetics and politics. The global status of and market for Latin American art is growing rapidly. This book is essential reading for those who want to understand this new, dissident work, as well as its mystification, co-option and commercialisation within current academic historiographies and art-world curatorial initiatives."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784532253
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/28/2016
Series:	International Library of Modern and Contemporary Art
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sophie Halart is a Visiting Teaching Fellow at the Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago de Chile and a Teaching Fellow at University College London, where she received her PhD on contemporary women artists in the Southern Cone."

Table of Contents

List of Images vii

Notes on Contributors xiii

Acknowledgements xvii

Introduction Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra Sophie Halart 1

Part I Material Sabotage: Ensnaring, Burning, Trespassing

1 Entrap, Engulf, Overwhelm: From Existentialism to Counterculture in the Work of Marta Minujín Catherine Spencer 13

2 Shaman, Thespian, Saboteur; Marcos Kurtycz and the Ritual Poetics of Institutional Profanation Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra 35

3 Pictorial Eviscerations, Emblems and Self-Immolation in Mexico: Dissensus in the Work of Enrique Guzmán and Nahum B. Zenil Erica Segre 58

4 Bureaucratic Sabotage: Knocking at the Door of the 'Big Monster' Zanna Gilbert 84

Part II Cannons and Canons: Explosive vs. Implosive Postures

5 Cogs and Clogs: Sabotage as Noise in Post-1960s Chilean and Argentine Art and Art History Sophie Halart 107

6 Impossible Objects: Gabriel Orozcos Empty Shoe Box and Yielding Stone Natasha Adamou 130

7 El Museo de la Calle: Art, Economy and the Paradoses of Bartering Olga Fernández López 151

8 Stay at Your Own Risk: Disturbing Ideas of Community in Two Projects by Elkin Calderón Carla Macchiavello 168

9 'The Space of Appearance: Performativity and Aesthetics in the Politicization of Mexico's Public Sphere Robin Adele Greeley 188

Notes 214

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

This book is an excellent resource on both neglected and canonized Latin American artists and avant-gardes. The authors introduce a range of valuable new methods for a field now hitting its stride.

Daniel Quiles

Nelly Richard once commented on the difficulty of reading the politics of Latin American contemporary art abroad without reducing the works to a testimonial function or, alternatively, stripping them of their incisive concreteness. This wonderful collection speaks to the emergence of a critical discourse on Latin American art that manages to hold form and politics not just in the balance but to read one through the other: a truly groundbreaking achievement.” —Jens Andermann, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland

“Sabotage Art provides a welcome shift of emphasis amidst perennial redefinitions of “political art” in Latin America. Framing sabotage as a “positional choice with regard to the institution” allows Halart, Polgovsky Ezcurra and their collaborators to critically interrogate the longstanding association of Latin American art with struggle or “adversity” for both historical case studies and the market delirium over “contemporary art”. This book makes for an excellent teaching resource on overlooked artists such as Paulo Bruscky, Enrique Guzman, Marcos Kurtycz, and Edgardo Antonio Vigo, offers fresh examinations of canonized avant-gardes in Argentina and Chile, and considers recent participatory projects in Bogotá and Mexico City. Yet it is most valuable in the sum total of its discrete chapters, which together demonstrate a range of new methods for a field now hitting its stride.” —Daniel Quiles, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Theory & Criticism, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

From the Publisher