Curatorial Practices in Latin America: Challenges and Discourses in the Age of Global Neoliberalism

Since the 1990s, Latin American art has drastically increased its international visibility, paralleling the emergence of postcolonial discourses in the so-called globalized art world. More recently, the ambitious Pacific Standard Time initiative organized in 2017 by the Getty in Southern California, and the appointment of Brazilian Adriano Pedroza as curator of the 60th International Art Exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale, which included more than a hundred artists from the region, have proved that Latin American art is well entered into today's art world. Yet, as Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui argues, “essentialist...notions [have] become hegemonic, and Indigenous peoples are [being] turned into multicultural adornment for neoliberalism.” In our neoliberal present, where economic restrictions have limited or even defunded state-sponsored cultural projects, museums, and/or governmental departments, we ask: How has Latin American art been exhibited in Latin American countries in recent years? What curatorial projects have been arranged to dispute the neoliberal institutionalization of culture? What have been their challenges? This panel seeks papers that examine how curatorial practices in Latin America have deployed critical responses to the systematic suppression of subjectivities in institutional settings delineated by colonial ideas, as well as presentations that question the global paradigm of curatorial inclusion through a variety of themes, focusing on case studies developed from and within Latin America and the economic and cultural realities it entails.