Streams of Being

STREAMS OF BEING SELECTIONS FROM AMA | ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES THE ART GALLERY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK STREAMS OF BEING SELECTIONS FROM AMA | ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title, Streams of Being: Selections from the Art Museum of the Americas, organized by The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park. The exhibition is curated by Abigail McEwen, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History and Archeology, University of Maryland, with contributions by Meredith J. Gill, Professor and Chair, Department of Art History and Archeology, and Andrés Navia, Director, Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States. The exhibition is presented at The Art Gallery from March 25 through April 25, 2015. FOREWORD 4 MEREDITH J. GILL © 2015 The Art Gallery. All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, FOREWORD 6 electronic or mechanical, without the permission in writing of the copyright holders. ANDRÉS NAVIA Library of Congress Control Number: 2015935680 ISBN: 978-0-9961126-0-4 STREAMS OF BEING 8 All works reproduced are courtesy of Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of ABIGAIL McEWEN American States, unless otherwise noted. All images are in inches, height x width. BESTIARY 12 Design: JJ Chrystal RAINO ISTO Copy editor: Theresa Morse Printed by Doyle Printing & Offset Co., Hyattsville, MD Cover image: Víctor Vázquez, Untitled, circa 1987, Photograph COSMOS 24 Back cover: Filemón Santiago Avendaño, Untitled, circa 1979, Watercolor KATHLEEN WEIGAND Photography by Greg Staley The Art Gallery TOPOLOGIES 38 1202 Art-Sociology Building University of Maryland KATHLEEN WEIGAND College Park, MD, 20742 Phone: 301.405.2763 Fax: 301.314.7774 BODIES IN EXILE 54 [email protected] ELEANOR STOLTZFUS www.artgallery.umd.edu The Art Gallery’s exhibitions and programs are supported, in part, by a grant from CHECKLIST 78 the Maryland State Arts Council, and by individual donors. Printed in U.S.A. 3 FOREWORD This exhibition is the culmination of a landmark institutional partnership 2015 respectively), together with three of the Department’s graduate assistants, between the University of Maryland, College Park and the Art Museum of the collaborated on this project, each of them offering significant insight and original Americas (AMA) in Washington, DC. It is the result of a unique commitment discoveries along the way. among faculty, students, and museum professionals to bring to light the mul- The University has long been fortunate in its on-campus gallery spaces. tiple dimensions of modern and contemporary Latin American art represented The Art Gallery, in particular, has been a respected forum in the Washington- in AMA’s collections. Baltimore region not only for its diverse range of curatorial experimentation, The works on display, drawn from AMA’s archives and permanent collection, but also for its community and educational outreach. Closer to home, The Art represent the accomplishment of forty-five artists from sixteen countries across Gallery regularly provides an elegant showcase for faculty and student work in the Americas. They engage multiple materials and media -- from works on studio art and art history. paper to painting. Brought together under the inclusive rubrics of existence and We are especially indebted to the generosity of the Director of the Art embodiment, these objects speak to enduring themes at the intersections of Museum of the Americas, Andrés Navia, and to Adriana Ospina, Education and art and human experience, from the realms of nature—flora and fauna—to the Archives, as well as to John Shipman, former Director of The Art Gallery. poetics of the shadow and the fragment; from the elemental materials of the Streams of Being constitutes a distinctive collaboration between the University universe to the forms of the still life and the portrait. of Maryland and AMA, and it is one that results in an eloquent and absorbing The short texts in this catalogue, adapted from longer essays by doctoral encounter with modern and contemporary Latin American artistic cultures. students in the Department of Art History and Archaeology under the steady and inspiring guidance of Abigail McEwen, offer a suite of meditations on several of the exhibition’s key themes, explicating the works’ universal provoca- Meredith J. Gill tions and relevance. In addition to these contributions, students of Professor Professor and Chair McEwen’s graduate and undergraduate classes (in the fall, 2014 and spring, Department of Art History and Archaeology 4 5 FOREWORD AMA’s legacy has historically been associated with its effort to link Latin frontiers, both essential components of artistic creation and study. American art with the region’s common cultural foundations within the political I wish to express the deepest of appreciation and gratitude to the Department frame of the Organization of American States (OAS), the region’s premier forum of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland, and its Chair, Professor for multilateral dialogue and concerted action promoting good governance, Meredith J. Gill; to Assistant Professor Abigail McEwen and her students; to human rights, peace, and security. Nevertheless, it is pleasing and refreshing John Shipman, former Director of The Gallery; to Dorit Yaron, Deputy Director of to see Streams of Being go beyond curatorial perspectives traditionally applied the David C. Driskell Center; and to Taras Matla, Arts Administration Manager to our museum’s collection, transcending artistic trends, movements, and at The Art Gallery. I also wish to acknowledge the hard work and dedication political affiliations. Under the direction of Dr. Abigail McEwen, students of the of AMA’s Curator of Collections, Adriana Ospina, who played a key role in courses Aesthetics of Exile: Borderlands, Diaspora, Migration and Twentieth- supporting this project and who provided information on and access to AMA’s Century Latin American Art: Practicum at The Art Gallery broke with more collection. traditional approaches and conceived of new curatorial subjects—Bestiary, It has been a joy to have UMD students perusing our archives, viewing works Cosmos, Topologies, and Bodies in Exile. largely unseen by the public, and re-interpreting core collection pieces. We We recognize UMD’s Department of Art History and Archaeology’s contributions hope that this is just the beginning of an ongoing working relationship with the to new ideas and interpretations of the region’s artists’ portrayals of various University of Maryland’s College of Arts & Humanities. histories and geographies, ringing in a fresh understanding and appreciation of our collection. This teaching exhibition and the research behind it represent a continual commitment to the study of the modern and contemporary art of Latin Andrés Navia America and the Caribbean, fostering educational awareness of the region’s Director, AMA | Art Museum of the Americas variety and quality of artistic production. This partnership has helped to unveil Secretariat for External Relations new mysteries associated with our collection and established new research Organization of American States 6 7 STREAMS OF BEING Drawn from the riches of the museum’s permanent collection, Streams of of home, of the “local,” of the “national”—at a time when the mobility of Being: Selections from the Art Museum of the Americas distills the conceptual artists and culture has never been greater. Yet in also acknowledging the breadth of contemporary Latin American art through unraveling visual itineraries residual traces and frictions of movement, more often the product of exile and that move across space and time. Aided by an open structure materializing in forced migration than of blithely cosmopolitan freedoms, the exhibition accepts medias res, the exhibition crosses borders both territorial and diffusely psycho- the persistence of place and the ambiguities of a permanently liminal exis- somatic, probing the inner and outer dimensions of identity in varyingly national, tence. A contact zone in its own right, our seminar roamed across challenging cultural, ontological, and existential terms. Featuring forty-five artists from six- intellectual ground as students tested their ideas against these artworks and teen countries across the Americas, Streams of Being meditates on questions began to articulate the relationships between them, toggling back and forth of existence and embodiment through conjunctions of scale and place, animal from critical theory to the material evidence they discovered in AMA’s archives. and human bodies. Throughout its four galleries—Bestiary, Cosmos, Topologies, Among our goals in curating Streams of Being from AMA’s collection was to and Bodies in Exile—the exhibition stages movement and displacement, dwell- foreground artists and artworks that, for a multitude of reasons, had fallen ing on crossings and encounters both serendipitous and multiply transgressive into historical neglect or been typecast in ways that had precluded new forms in kind. A true collaboration between the Art Museum of the Americas (AMA), of seeing. Although we are delighted to include many of the collection’s most Organization of American States (OAS), and The Art Gallery at the University of familiar names—among them Roberto Matta, Juan Downey, Mario Carreño, José Maryland, Streams

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