Does it make sense anymore in the global world we live in, to link one’s identity to a specific location? Where, for example, does a place like Latin America begin and end? In the past notions such as tropicalism were developed to define art from a particular region. Now however, according to Gerardo Mosquera, it is time to think about art from Latin America differently.
A certain irritation cannot be ignored when asked to comment on the artistic practice of your homeland. Cuban critic and researcher Rubén de la Nuez refuses to be qualified as marginal or to voluntarily define himself as ‘other’. The tropics are no longer a Latin American fixture, the tropics are everywhere.
Wherever art from Latin America is shown, sooner or later the term tropicalism crops up. Metropolis M asked Roos Gortzak, curator of the exhibition Tropical Abstraction at SMBA (2005), to investigate the origin and history of this originally Brazilian concept, and to take a look at what it means to the young, upcoming generation of artists from Central and South America.
Gabriel Kuri is a Mexican artist based in Mexico City and Brussels and Amalia Pica is from Argentina and is now living in Amsterdam after just completing a residency at the Rijksakademie. Both have a particular position regarding their status as Latin Americans.
