The Idea of Latin America

As part of the series of exhibitions entitled Accumulation of Memory, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo ­(CAAC­), presents until June 24 of 2012 the exhibition entitled The Idea of Latin America.

Drawings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations, and murals are included in this collective show curated by Berta Sichel and Juan Antonio Álvarez-Reyes. It includes the participation of the following 17 Spanish and Latin American artists: Michel Auder, Milena Bonilla, Adriana Bustos, Mariana Castillo-Deball, Raimond Chaves and Gilda Mantilla, Chema Cobo, Minerva Cuevas, Juan Downey, Anna Bella Geiger, Federico Guzmán, Alfredo Jaar, Leandro Katz, Marta Minujín, Miguel Ángel Rojas, and Joaquín Torres-García.

Inspired by the book of the same name by Walter D. Mignolo, the exhibition The Idea of Latin America, "attempts to explore, through the ideas proposed in that essay, a geographical and mental concept based on European colonial expansion…" The project was conceived taking into account the spatial and historic context found in "La Cartuja" Monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, in Seville—the place where Christopher Columbus planned his second trip to America and where he was buried; and in the city of Seville itself, the main location for the beginning of the European colony of the Modern Age, and the place from which important commercial and cultural exchanges with America originated.

Several analogies that pertain to traveling, the journey experience, the fusion among cultures, supremacy and colonization; and artistic and cultural appropriations, among other themes, reveal the preoccupations and explorations of the artists—whose works were created between the 1970s and today—that participate in The Idea of Latin America. Additionally, they demonstrate a strong inclination to the conceptual perceptions of Walter D. Mignolo; his proposal about the manner in which the Western world came into existence and the reasons behind Colonization—as a harmful event that was nonetheless historically and politically valid from the get go.

The Idea of Latin America is the last exhibition from the series of exhibitions Accumulation of Memory, a project that included another four exhibitions: Fiona Tan. Point of Departure; Catrina Simão. Off Screen, Film Archives from Mozambique; Maryam Jafri. Colonial Shadows; and Rafael Agredano. Prologues. The project was inaugurated at the end of the month of January of 2012, and will remain open until June 24 of 2012.