Foreword: Nature, Market, Media: Explorations in Latin American Art

In April of 2016, Alex Alberro and I organized a conference called "Global Latin America." We invited young scholars from different disciplines to discuss some of the keywords of the field—and the field itself. The increasing internationalization of the study of Latin American art history and cultural studies has altered the topography of these disciplines in ways that are widely acknowledged but not yet clearly defined. The conference sought to track some of the ways in which these disciplines have become enmeshed in global art history and cultural history. Guiding our conversation were questions such as: How is the emphasis on transnationalism shaping the questions we ask about Latin American art and culture? How has our approach to the objects changed over the years? Where are Latin American art history and cultural studies headed?

The authors included in this issue introduce us to a complex world where art and culture show their constant negotiations not only with subjects, territories, and institutions, but also with flows of capital, political power, and natural forces. In a more disciplinary sense, when they discuss the field of knowledge, they also discuss the place of that field inside academic institutions. Yet this issue is not a map of contemporary reflections on Latin American art and culture. In their diversity, these articles engage in dialogues that go beyond territories, traditions, archives, and identities. They question assumptions traditionally held about art and culture in Latin America as well as further conversations with a variety of fields and topics. Unfortunately, some of the panelists were unable to contribute to this issue. In order to expand the scope of the debate, we have therefore included reviews on some recent books on Latin American art and cultural studies.

Both the conference and this special issue resulted from a growing awareness of a shift in Latin American culture, where the status of aesthetic production has changed radically since the end of the twentieth century. These essays approach this shift from two angles—by considering the new institutional dynamics of these productions in the context of globalization and by analyzing the connection between this change and the new theoretical conditions of production, authorship, archive, media, and technology.

Even though art, literature, and culture have had a strong presence in Latin America throughout modernity, they have at no point achieved total autonomy nor complete institutionalization. Their strength, rather, has resided in the recurrent politicization of their aesthetic function through the various processes of modernization. Far from a minor practice, culture has been central to the definition of national identity (in the nineteenth century), the processes of construction of citizenship (in the early twentieth century), the articulation of avantgarde moments (in the 1920s and 1960s), and the establishment of alternative models of aesthetic and cultural modernization (throughout its history).

In the twenty-first century, however, a different scene has emerged from this rich and complex tradition. If national frameworks were once the fortresses of modernization, the present fluidity of regional and transatlantic connections is giving rise to a new cultural landscape. As a result of economic and cultural globalization, non-hegemonic regions have emerged from integrated but unequal markets as zones of economic and cultural interest, and the dream of a world for all the people has revealed itself to be a nightmare of more segregation through economic, ecological, and political restrictions. Latin American artists have placed themselves within a network of intense exchanges—such as awards, biennials, book fairs, and translations—that consolidate and give form to the new aesthetic paradigms, both following and resisting the current conditions of culture. More notably, however, Latin American artists belong now to a community of artists not necessarily linked to a territory, tradition, or language.

Through this deterritorialization, Latin America has joined the new global movements although the approaches have not been uniform. If some artists have embraced the global art scene, others have retained some of their traditions in order to discuss the current interpellations of their own contexts. In this way, Latin America is not unlike other regions marginalized by economic, political, and cultural hegemonies: their "singularity" serves as...