PERSPECTIVES ON EDITION 03 THE CONNECTIONS C&AL 2020 BETWEEN AN ART LATIN AMERICA, MAGAZINE THE CARIBBEAN AND AFRICA C& AMÉRICA LATINA #WEARECONTEMPORARYAND AMLATINA.CONTEMPORARYAND.COM C&AL AMLATINA.CONTEMPORARYAND.COM EDITION 03 | C&AL 2020 CONCEPT Julia Grosse Yvette Mutumba Soraia Vilela Hernán D. Caro EDITORIAL TEAM Julia Grosse Yvette Mutumba EDITORIAL CONTENTS Soraia Vilela Hernán D. Caro GRAPHIC DESIGN We need to talk… It feels like there has never been so much Britta Rogozinski, urgency nor so many ways to network and cultivate dialogue as SHIFT Design, London we are all experiencing right now. On a personal scale. On a local scale. On a global scale. On countless digital devices. In Webinars, COLLABORATORS 4 – 7 Nan Collymore Instagram-Live-Videos, digital conferences. Fábia Prates Welcome to our first C&AL Interview Issue. This 3rd edition of ART AS COUNTERSPELL Luciane Ramos Silva our print magazine seeks to reflect what we at C&AL do most Aline Baiana creates an installation for the 11th Berlin Biennale for Marie-Louise Stille of the time: discuss and connect – with artists, curators, critics, Contemporary Art in response to environmental crimes, referencing academics, and cultural producers. We see the launching of this COPY EDITING AND #WEARECONTEMPORARYAND the devastation caused by mining in Brazil. TRANSLATIONS print issue as an opportunity to elaborate on what it means to Cláudio Andrade talk globally. 8 – 11 Sara Hanaburgh The print issue opens with features on two artists that are part Laís Kalka of this year’s Berlin Biennale, one of the first large-scale art events TELLING STORIES ANIMATED BY DESIRE Zoë Perry to convene again physically: Alina Baiana and Naomi Rincón Mexican artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo, a participant in the 11th Berlin Zarifa Mohamad Petersen Gallardo talk about their artistic practices and the works they are Biennale for Contemporary Art, formulates a feminist, decolonial and contributing to the Biennale. The cultural mediator Luciane Ramos PRINTING anti-racist critique of Eurocentrism, extractivism and the creed of progress. BVZ Berliner Zeitungsdruck Silva and member of the magazine O Menelick 2º Ato spoke to GmbH, Berlin the curatorial team of the Frestas: Art Triennial about the process of putting together such an event in these challenging times. 12 – 15 While we have endeavored Finally, Leticia Contreras reflects on her recurring examination of PLURALISM IN CURATORIAL FRAMING in good faith to obtain from making and dismantling the idea of “home” and its many modes such third parties the rights Diane Lima, Beatriz Lemos, and Thiago De Paula Souza, curators of the latest of belonging. we believe necessary to edition of Frestas, a project organized in Sorocaba, Brazil, talk about the include their works, we do research process that preceded the exhibition, the challenges of discussing not represent or warrant that Let’s start the conversations! use of the content displayed policies of access, and ways of presenting space for artistic practice that can will not infringe or violate the The C&AL Team overcome constraints imposed by a lack of financial structure. rights of third parties. AMLATINA.CONTEMPORARYAND.COM © authors/photographers/C& 16 – 21 All rights reserved. REACTING TO SOCIAL EMERGENCIES FRONT COVER Texan native Leticia Contreras builds landscapes in her art. Her recurring Naomi Rincón Gallardo, examination of making and dismantling home is a reflection on her own Resiliencia Tlacuache, cultural experience as a “Queer Afro-Xicana Tejana.” performance, 2019. Photograph: Claudia López Terroso. Courtesy of the artist ISSN 2701-3413 C&AL C& AMÉRICA LATINA C& AMÉRICA LATINA AMLATINA.CONTEMPORARYAND.COM IS A PARTNER OF IS PUBLISHED BY #WEARECONTEMPORARYAND Contemporary And América Latina (C&AL) is a dynamic, critical art magazine focusing on the connections between Afro-Latin America, The Caribbean and Africa. 3 AMLATINA.CONTEMPORARYAND.COM IN CONVERSATION WITH ALINE BAIANA ART AS COUNTERSPELL By FÁBIA PRATES Aline Baiana, Polluted Paraopeba River one year after the crime at Brumadinho, January 25, 2020. Research image. Courtesy of the artist “As news of the death of the Doce River and pictures of animals and people dying in a sea of mud reached us, I began to think about how the risks of mining and its process of environmental destruction are obliterated from the final product.” Brazilian Aline Baiana presents an C& AMÉRICA LATINA Could you tell us merge the demonstrations with the daily installation piece at the Berlin Biennale a little about your path as an artist? life of the city. From there, I started my own that references the collapse of two tailings research and artistic production, working dams which, combined, resulted in nearly ALINE BAIANA I went to film school, on videos, objects, and installations. In 2019, 300 deaths and left behind an array of then worked with photography for a long I was invited by curator Claire Tancons to damage to the ecosystem. The artist collected time, but decided to take a step back from participate in the “Look For Me All Around materials from the devastated surroundings that to pursue a degree in Environmental You” platform at the Sharjah Biennial 14: of Brumadinho, in the state of Minas Gerais, Management and work for an NGO. That Leaving the Echo Chamber, in the United a place that has paradoxically become was the year Rio+20 took place and I was Arab Emirates. And in 2020, in spite of known for two reasons: as the location of able to participate in the People’s Summit, everything – and “everything” this year is the world’s largest open-air contemporary a transformative experience for me that gave an awful lot – I’m happy to have been invited art museum, Inhotim; and as the stage of me greater awareness of certain memories to the Berlin Biennale by such a special what is considered one of Brazil’s worst and my ancestry and completely changed curatorial team. environmental crimes. my commitment to the environmental and Born in Bahia, the artist moved to Rio human rights struggle. In 2012 I also got a C&AL Social criticism and political thought ALINE BAIANA creates an installation for the 11th Berlin Biennale de Janeiro as a teenager and now lives scholarship to attend the course “Art Outside are key elements of your creations. Could you for Contemporary Art in response to environmental crimes, between Brazil and Berlin. In an interview, the Cube: Artistic Actions and Political talk about this? referencing the devastation caused by mining in Brazil. she recounts “the discomfort, outrage, Reactions in the Contemporary Art Sphere,” and anguish” that typically permeate the at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, in AB For me, being Latin American and, genesis of her works, analyzes the current Rio de Janeiro. more specifically, Black and Brazilian, a precariousness of Brazilian cultural Over the next two years, a time of many separation between art and politics has Aline Baiana, Polluted Paraopeba River one year after the crime at Brumadinho, January 25, 2020. production, but concludes: “One thing I’m street protests in Brazil, I did stencilling never existed. From the beginning, what led Research image. Courtesy of the artist certain of is I’m not in this alone.” and collages on the streets in an attempt to me to make art was indignation, perhaps 4 5 AMLATINA.CONTEMPORARYAND.COM IN CONVERSATION WITH ALINE BAIANA “I like to imagine works of art as a sort of counterspell for capitalism, patriarchy, racism, alongside others in the anti-colonial struggle.” my motivation is what the Zapatistas call I began to think about how the risks of water and become ill. I’m also starting some “la digna rabia.” My work generally arises mining and its process of environmental preliminary research in Germany, still at a from a discomfort, outrage or anguish. In destruction are obliterated from the final very early stage. the research process, which is often painful, product. And also thinking about this place I come to understand why and how to deal that we have historically occupied with other C&AL Do you believe it’s possible to talk with this. I try to look for ways to question countries in the Southern Hemisphere as a about a new way of making art after the the ideas that sustain this world, and source of natural resources to be exploited pandemic? What consequences have you share other worlds in which those ideas are and exported until exhaustion, for the profit seen, for example, in conducting projects inconceivable. The shape that each piece of a few and at the expense and suffering of since then? takes, as well as the mediums and materials many people. I use, come to me during this research process. The work is an installation piece that AB It seems hasty and arrogant to want reproduces the Southern Cross constellation to speculate about a post-pandemic world, C&AL Feminist and environmental themes, out of fragments of rock from which some of when I can’t even wrap my head around what and racial issues are part of your work. Brazil’s most exported mineral products are I’m experiencing right now. One obvious and How does the current situation in Brazil extracted. In order to see the rocks laid out as painful consequence is the distancing. But one specifically influence your production in we see the constellation in the sky, you have thing I’m certain of is “I’m not in this alone.” that regard? to stand in a specific spot, marked on the My work is linked to a network of people who ground by a compass rose with references to are also dealing with this subject in some way AB The situation right now in Brazil is mining and positioned on iron ore collected and these meetings and exchanges are a very really bad.