Carlos Motta. Histories for the Future

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents Histories for the Future, an exhibition showcasing works by Carlos Motta, curated by María Elena Ortiz. The exhibition will be on view from July 15, 2016–January 15, 2017. Histories for the Future explores ideas of gender, sexuality, and violence through a series of works cited in Latin America. Including four videos and an installation of 20 miniature sculptures, this exhibition takes the viewer back to the time of the conquest of the Americas (1492–1898), when people were brutally condemned for engaging in non-normative sexual practices such as sodomy, masturbation, and zoophilia. In the videos Deseos (2015) and the Nefandus Trilogy (2013), Motta creates narratives inspired by real-life accounts of people who were persecuted for their sexual orientations. A related sculptural installation titled Towards a Homoerotic Historiography (2014) investigates the relationship between hetero-dominated narratives and alternative sexual expressions. In this exhibition, Motta advocates for a revision of history, attempting to do his part to fill in the blanks left in the official historical record. Relying on strategies both of documentary practice and fiction to create new narratives that reflect the plurality of human sexual identities, Motta also exposes the cartographies of oppression under totalitarian ideologies that do not account or allow for difference. The exhibition is accompanied by a one-day symposium on September 23, 2016, from 11 am to 6 pm, titled "Nefandus: Colonial Sexual Alterity and Histories for the Future," conceptualized by Pablo Bedoya and Carlos Motta. The subject seeks to generate dialogues that will allow us to compare and disseminate the work of US, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian academics and artists who have carried out research on the various ways those societies have been shaped by the experience of colonialism. Among the participants will Anjali R. Arondekar, Associate Professor, Feminist Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz; Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University; Fernanda Molina, Researcher, National Council of Scientific Research, Buenos Aires and Pete Sigal, Professor of History, Duke University, and Senior Editor, Hispanic American Historical Review.