Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo Feliciano Centurión: Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo Americas Society Americas
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FELICIANO CENTURIÓN:FELICIANO ABRIGO FELICIANO CENTURIÓN: ABRIGO AMERICASSOCIETY ISBN 978-1-879128-45-3 AMERICAS SOCIETY 9 781879 128453 EXHIBITIONS AMS_exhib_Centurion_cover_r6_g.indd 1 1/24/20 10:40 AM FELICIANO CENTURIÓN: ABRIGO AMERICAS SOCIETY EXHIBITIONS AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 1 1/17/20 9:21 AM Alejandro Leroux, Feliciano Centurión, c. 1989–92 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 2 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/17/20 9:21 AM 3 1/17/20 9:21 AM abrigo, m. 1. overcoat; wrap. 2. shelter, sheltered place. 3. (mil.) shelter; cover. 4. (fig.) help, protection. 5. (mar.) harbor, inlet, cove. 6. (archeol.) small, shallow cave. 7. (Arg.) blanket; quilt.— al a. de, sheltered by, protected by, under cover of; estar al a. de, to be protected by; a. antiaéreo, bomb shelter. “abrigo,” Tana de Ganiez. Simon & Schuster’s International Dictionary English/Spanish – Spanish/English, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 4 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_gr1.indd1/17/20 9:21 AM 5 1/22/20 12:07 PM CONTENTS 9 Foreword Susan Segal 15 Abrigo Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro 29 South American Jungle Tales Aimé Iglesias Lukin 41 Exhibition Checklist 108 Exhibition History 114 Bibliography 119 Acknowledgments AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 6 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/17/20 9:21 AM 7 1/17/20 9:21 AM FOREWORD Americas Society is pleased to present Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo, the first institutional exhi- bition of the Paraguayan artist’s work outside Latin America. Centurión was a key figure in early 1990s cultural circles in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was known for his engagement with folk art and queer aesthetics. Now, some twenty years after his death, Feliciano Centurión’s work is starting to attract the attention it deserves. As with many art- ists from Latin America, his work was not widely exhibited or collected in his lifetime. This exhibition, then, provides a much-needed opportunity to trace the short but vibrant career of a remarkable artist. 9 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 8 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/17/20 9:21 AM 9 1/17/20 9:21 AM I am grateful to this exhibition’s guest the New York City Department of Cultural curator, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, for his Affairs in partnership with the City Council. work in bringing Centurión to a New York Additional support is provided by Sharon audience. It is a pleasure to have him back Schultz. at Americas Society, after his directorship This exhibition presents works kindly lent here in 2000–2002. I welcome and congratu- by the artist’s estate, represented by Cecilia late Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Brunson Projects, and also by waldengal- Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society. lery, and institutions including the Blanton This exhibition is representative of the pio- Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; neering programming we expect from her the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New tenure here. York; and the Fundación Museo Reina Sofía, I am thankful to Karen Marta and her col- Madrid. We are also grateful to private lend- league Todd Bradway for their editorial support ers Amalia Amoedo, Estrellita B. Brodsky, and to Garrick Gott for designing this publica- Colección Brun Cattaneo, Adriana Cisneros tion series. Diana Flatto, Assistant Curator, and de Griffin, Eduardo F. Constanini, Hochschild Carolina Scarborough, Assistant Curator of Correa Collection, Donald R. Mullins Jr., Raúl Public Programs, deserve special recognition Naón, and other collectors who haven cho- for their work to deliver high-caliber exhibi- sen to remain anonymous, and we extend our tions and related events. thanks to Mon Ross for allowing her docu- The presentation of Feliciano Centurión: mentary on Centurión’s life and work, Abrazo Abrigo is made possible by the generous sup- Íntimo al Natural, to be shown as part of the port of waldengallery, Galeria Millan, and exhibition. Cecilia Brunson Projects. This exhibition On the occasion of Feliciano Centurión: is supported, in part, by public funds from Abrigo, Americas Society is publishing the 10 11 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_gr1.indd 10 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_gr1.indd1/22/20 12:07 PM 11 1/22/20 12:07 PM first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work, with the support of the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA). Americas Society acknowledges the gen- erous support from the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Estrellita B. Brodsky; Kaeli Deane; Diana Fane; Galeria Almeida e Dale; Isabella Hutchinson; Carolina Jannicelli; Diana López and Herman Sifontes; Luis Oganes; Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti; Vivian Pfeiffer and Jeanette van Campenhout, Phillips; Erica Roberts; Sharon Schultz; and Edward J. Sullivan. SUSAN SEGAL PRESIDENT AND CEO, AS/COA 12 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_gr1.indd 12 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/22/20 12:07 PM 13 1/17/20 9:21 AM ABRIGO Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 14 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/17/20 9:21 AM 15 1/17/20 9:21 AM Feliciano sits at a table in one of Buenos Aires’s glamorous old-world cafés or hotels. He looks directly at the camera with an expression that is both dramatic and seductive; his ringed fingers clutch his torso in an operatic contrapposto that could be entirely serious, or not. The iconic photograph by Alberto Goldenstein shows us the artist at the prime of a tragically short life: confident, handsome, realized. Within three years Feliciano Centurión would be dead, one of the countless victims of the HIV/AIDS epi- demic that decimated an entire generation. PARAGUAY: THE SUBTROPICAL JUNGLE Feliciano Centurión was born in San Ignacio, in the southern region of Paraguay, close to the Argentine border. San Ignacio was one of the settlements created by the Jesuits in the Alberto Goldenstein, Feliciano Centurión (from the series Mundo del arte [Art world]), 1993/2018 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Jesuit missions have often been characterized or romanticized as the softer face of coloniza- tion, with the Guarani and Catholic traditions living in relative harmony. Regardless of 17 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_gr1.indd 16 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/22/20 12:07 PM 17 1/17/20 9:21 AM the degree of truth that supports this per- language, Guarani, is the official language spo- haps idealistic vision, the Jesuits did indeed ken by 90 percent of the population, and with bring the European Baroque to this region, a distinct cultural heritage that is markedly and built many ornate churches that were different from the better-known civilizations decorated with hybrid indigenous/Catholic of the Andes or Mesoamerica. elements. This coexistence of Guarani and Centurión grew up in this context, in a Catholic cultures forged a unique culture in household dominated by women, in which he Paraguay, a country that was emerging as learned to sew and crochet. As part of its com- a regional superpower until the War of the plex cultural makeup, Paraguay is justly famous Triple Alliance (1864–70), in which neighboring for its crafts, especially ñandutí, an elaborate Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, supported handmade lace inspired by models imported by European powers, devastated the coun- from the Canary Islands during colonization try, killing 90 percent of the male population. and baptized with the Guarani word for “spi- After this war, Paraguay never recovered, and der’s web.” As a young boy, Centurión was both became something of a regional backwater, a attracted to the crafts traditionally associated landlocked republic that, in the popular imag- with women, and also made to feel uncomfort- ination, was plagued by drug traffickers, Nazi able for not following more conventionally war criminals, Islamic terrorists, and the long masculine interests. When the family moved shadow of the thirty-five-year dictatorship to the border town of Alberdi, he attended the of Alfredo Stroessner. On the other side of art school in Formosa, just across the Paraguay this coin, however, is a country with the most River in Argentina. As a student he made fairly ethnically mixed population in the Americas, conventional still lifes and landscapes, albeit one of the few countries where an indigenous with a certain moody intensity. His teacher 18 19 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd 18 AMS_exhib_Centurion_guts_r9_g.indd1/17/20 9:21 AM 19 1/17/20 9:21 AM encouraged him to follow his dreams and con- family, neighbors. This was where politics was tinue his artistic career in a bigger city. manifested and where it could be effective. Centurión felt liberated not only by this BUENOS AIRES: THE URBAN JUNGLE new artistic spirit, but also by the ability to be In 1980 Centurión moved to Buenos Aires to open in his sexuality. These issues were closely study at the national art schools. More import- related: as the expression of individual sub- ant than the training, which was somewhat jectivity, sexuality itself became a contested traditional, was the vibrant cultural milieu site, as evidenced by the phrase, The personal in which he now found himself. By the mid- is the political. What, after all, was the point of 1980s, Argentina was emerging from a brutal political freedom if it couldn’t be expressed at dictatorship, and artists and intellectuals were the most personal and everyday level? enjoying new freedoms and expressive possi- In the late 1980s a small and unassuming bilities. The previous generation was largely university cultural center, the Centro Cultural defined by its opposition to the military regime, Ricardo Rojas (El Rojas), became the epicen- and this broadly societal concern shaped the ter of an unexpected revolution in the visual art scene, from expressive tortured figuration arts. Under the directorship of the artist to intellectually encoded conceptualism. In a Jorge Gumier Maier, El Rojas championed a newly democratic society, the political focus new generation of artists whose shared con- shifted from the general to the specific, from the cerns included the everyday, self-expression, sociological to the intimate. The artist Marcelo an interest in kitsch aesthetics, and an exu- Pombo, a friend of Centurión’s, famously berant, almost Baroque, aesthetic.