reviews

"It is not due to chance or to a reflection of international good taste that the most powerful visual images and structures in Latin America have been made at the intersection between popular art and surrounding art. Similar intersections occur at crucial points on the line that defines cultural identity. Artists have incorporated materials and objects simply found or expressly made by local communities into their work, in an attempt to approach these cultures that are not theirs.

Oswaldo Viteri, who had studied Anthropology, gathers the small brightly colored rag dolls made by the peasants of Ecuador, and performs with them metaphorical compositions, as in "Ojo de Luz" (plate 13.26). In his "collages" he can also allude, through color and materials, to the pre-Columbian past and colonial clothing. The title "Miscegenation" (Plate 13.25) is the most direct reference to the intercultural currents that can be seen in his work, which, like that of many representatives of the youngest generation of Cuban artists, is completely integrated into the context local and international.

A fundamental concept in artistic resistance to colonialism is that of miscegenation. It is not linked to any particular aesthetic, because it has no normative character, but adapts to anyone who is open to new languages ​​that can work in the Latin American context, defined as a "mixed culture that is bursting in the cracks of dictatorship and colonialism throughout Latin America. "

"ART IN IBEROAMERICA" 1820 - 1980

Dawn Ades

Ministry of Culture, Madrid, 1989