For my intervention I organized a creative Tertulia which in Spanish means a gathering with artistic connotations, I invited people from different backgrounds all within the creative sector. The idea was to talk about Latin American art and literature to see what people from different nationalities here in the UK knew about these topics.
I created a poster illustrating the event at what would be talked about. (See below)
It started as a social gathering with people having a drink some food and talking with each other, when most of the guests had arrived I began with a small talk that I had prepared about Latin American art and artists, I also prepared a presentation with visual aid that I passed around so people could see some of the paintings and people I was talking about. Then went on to talk about Latin American literature where I ended up reading some poetry by two great Latin American writers Mario Benedetti and Octavio Paz. (See below for text read in event)
Thank you so much to all of you for coming! I’m so excited to share with all of you a little bit about Latin America and to hear what all of you already know about my region’s arts and literature.
Disclaimer: I am in no way an art historian or expert I have just been cursed with this terrible thing called curiosity and admiration for that which we call the arts. Also, I will mainly be talking about the XX and XXI centuries.
Latin America as you surely know includes all the countries located from Mexico down on the American contintent. For this reason it would be completely impossible for anyone to be able to accurately describe the myriad of voices and visions of the artists from this location in a simple way.
However, there are a few common elements that we see appear within the different creative pieces from Latin American artists, as well as similar behaviours, patterns and perspectives that allow as to then generalize it as “from Latin America”.
Anyway, so I’m going to give the most brief overview I can for you to get a generalized idea of what can be identified as Latin American art, literature and film. What are the common threads that unite these creatives? And, what are the main issues faced by creatives wanting to develop their creative practice here.
I would like to quote a text from “Veo” an Argentinian magazine which describes how LA is generally viewed: “We are seen as this exotic territory, folkloric and innocent, of constant revolutions and social agitations, with political instability that distracts us from thinking about our own utopias. However, reality demonstrates that in this vast territory different cultures coexist, each of them with singular characteristics, they merge together without becoming a singular identity.”
Historically Latin America has been known for two main artistic movements: magical realism which has elements of popular traditions in an attempt to reclaim them from the forced oblivion imposed by the colonizers. We see symbols belonging pre-colombian, Afro-American, Amerindian mythologies as well as religious and mystical figures, represented metaphorically. This movement is not to be confused with surrealism which tries to portray a dream world that results absurd or illogical, magical realism shows the common daily life with fantastical elements. Demonstrating the magical side of simply existing.
And the other movement can be seen clearly represented in Mexican muralism, a completely revolutionary movement in which art took the streets; it’s art at the service of education, to create social class consciousness, a medium of social transformation. Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and José Alfaro Siqueiros are the main artists belonging to this movement. In their murals we can see clear influence of pre-hispanic art as well as expressionism and realism from Germany which greatly influenced these painters.
The Latin American artists that are more well known mostly had the opportunity to travel around the world, to the US, Europe even Africa, and many of their works are influenced by that which they came in contact with. Also, this gave them the opportunity of making connections with other creative circles around the world which most likely contributed to their works becoming more well-known than others.
I’m pretty sure most of you have heard at least one of these names: Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Rufino Tamayo, Siqueiros,
But there’s also other artists whose names didn’t become household names but hold an important place in the Latin America’s art history. For example, one of my personal favorites Wilfredo Lam who is originally Cuban and in whose paintings, we see a clear Picasso influence mixed with his own Caribbean culture.
Luz Donoso from Chile, Tony Capellán from Dominican Republic, Lygia Clark, Brazil, Margarita Azurdia, Guatemala,
Tied in very closely to painting is literature and also very hard to define as a whole. Once again, we see some similar topics behind the captivating prose and poems of these Latin American writers. Social injustice, political instability, and social class and economic issues and Mestizaje cultural which is the mixture of indigenous and European elements. Magical realism plays a protagonist role in the literature brought to life by Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel. The Latin American boom was a defining moment in literature not only for this region but it became a world phenomenon, starting in the 60s and officially ending in the 70s, however these authors kept on writing until they died most of them in the XXI century.
Some interesting elements related to the boom author’s texts are for example that time isn’t linear, usually they use different perspectives and neologisms (which is the creation of new words or phrases).
I cannot move on from literature without mentioning Octavio Paz who is probably one of the most if not the most influential Mexican writer. As Latin America itself Octavio Paz’s poetry is impossible to describe as one, he tackled as many topics as genres. He looked out into the world instead of staying within he’s own context. Through his poetry you are able to experience beautiful imagery, explore an era of worrying about the social issues, an existential moment where you reflect on loneliness and lack of communication, and question time through his self-denominated spacial poetry which could almost be described as metaphysical.
I would now like to share some of my favorite poetry.
Thank you all so much for listening, first of all does anyone have any questions or thoughts?
When I finished I asked my guests what they thought about what I had just talked about: What was your idea previously of Latin American art and literature? What had you guys heard before? Did what I share today make you curious to learn more? Did it change something in your perception? What would you want to see more about?
“A thing that would be interesting in the future would be to invite different artists and hear from them”.
When I asked if they would like to do a gathering like this where they talked about their cultures the general answer was “Yes, but with relevance.”
After talking for a while about these topics people started to feel very comfortable and talked about their own cultures and the art and literature in their countries, as well as their own creative endeavors and we decided to start sharing. It was amazing how people started to sing traditional songs from their countries, recite poems in their own languages and then translated them to English, share their own writings and take over the playlist to share music. It became a multicultural sharing gathering where everyone felt safe and comfortable enough to share things that they might’ve not in other instances. Overall, I felt very satisfied with the result.