The two documents in this section relate to the exhibition Cartographies: 14 Artists from Latin America held at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Manitoba, Canada) in 1993. In “Cartographies,” Brazilian curator and art critic Ivo Mesquita (born 1951) establishes that the key question explored by the exhibition is whether or not the construct of “Latin American art” could in fact adequately describe contemporary art produced in the continent. Furthermore, he considers the newly institutionalized role of the curator of contemporary art. Borrowing from the work of Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik [Cartografia Sentimental, transformações contemporâneas do desejo (Porto Alegre: Editora Sulina/Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Editora, 1989) and Micropolitica: Cartografias do Desejo, Rolnik’s collaboration with Félix Guattari, (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes Ltda., 1985)], Mesquita proposes the concept of metaphorical cartography. He posits this as a productive working method that transcends map-making’s close association with the limitations of geopolitical boundaries, and he grounds his argument in the conceptual territories of desire, sensibility, and knowledge. As a curatorial proposal, Cartographies invokes an imaginary set of maps that delineate the relationships and circuits through which contemporary artists from Latin America—José Bedia and Marta María Pérez Bravo (Cuba), Germán Botero (Colombia) María Fernanda Cardoso (Colombian-born and Sydney-based), Gonzalo Díaz (Chile), Guillermo Kuitca (Argentina), and Alfred Wenemoser (Venezuela), among others—transform outmoded concepts of Latin American Art.
For his part, Rio de Janeiro-based critic and curator Paulo Herkenhoff (born 1949) wittily crafts a useful postmodern narrative in “Incomplete Glossary of Sources of Latin American Art.” Using humor, sarcasm, and irony, Herkenhoff’s glossary of terms and ideas dismantles entrenched stereotypes, defines seminal concepts and historical personages, and makes essential connections relevant to contemporary Latin American art. Cartographies opened in Winnipeg in December of 1993 and travelled to Caracas, Bogotá, Ottawa, New York, and Madrid between 1994 and 1995. These translations by Stephen A. Berg are from the texts’ original publication [Ivo Mesquita, “Cartographies” and Paulo Herkenhoff, “Incomplete Glossary of Sources of Latin American Art,” in Cartographies, Jon Tupper ed., exh. cat. (Winnipeg, Manitoba: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1993), 7–12 and 13–61].