Existence outside the Modern Colonial World; in a Direction together towards a New Horizon

         Sara Garzon is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History and Visual Studies at Cornell University.  She specializes in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on the growing world's impact on humanity's future through the eyes of Latin American contemporary artists.  This method allows multiple individuals to come together as a whole in representing the different perspectives created through their personal experiences.  This allows art to have power in changing the world; it encourages the breaking of colonialized form by understanding or representing the past to help in educating those towards the future.  Garzon wants us to ask questions; Where is the future?  More importantly, whose world are we to imagine?  The collection of artists; indigenous, Black, Queer, and feminist use their stories to provide a uniquely personal point of view to these questions.  

A question for Sara: In what ways do you hope to see a change in society from these artists?

Kiyo Gutiérrez, Afloat, 2020, Performance. Photographs by Pistor Orendain

https://vimeo.com/425548051     (00:52)

      Kiyo Gutierrez is a Mexican performance artist and historian, who's work is meant to inspect the environmental, social, and political relationships of contemporary time. Kiyo refers to the deep-rooted presence of colonialism in the Americas.  Guiterrez sees the New World as a woman naked giving herself to the foreign European colonialists; this image leaves the viewer vulnerable but with this raw essence present Guiterrez expands her mission.

    Afloat is a performance mentioning the issues of climate change, the water representative of the melting ice caps, and how humanity will adapt.  Her materials are products of human trash, these pieces of plastic were found along the Pacific Coast.  The use of materials transforms the activity of plastic from inert energy to a destructive element that damages Earth's marine ecosystem and eventually our bodies through eating the animals of these contaminated oceans.  Kiyo Guiterrez speaks to me personally; being a vegetarian for over 14 years I have become more aware of the carbon footprint I leave and have a deeper respect for how I use my body with the Earth's environment.  I think she is a positive light in this world, her artwork becomes a shared experience invoking hope. 

Left: Alan Poma, Victory Over the Sun revolves around the final moments of the Solar System's existence. Image by Janeth Lozano 

Right: Kazimir Malevich, Set design for Victory Over the Sun, 1913. D. Andrea Jeanne (1990), Kazimir Malevich 1878–1935 © The St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music

Check out the video performance Victory Over the Sun by Alama Poma

https://vimeo.com/533757272

    In the video we become part of the dance with the stars of the universe; first in a serene motion then violent jumps and kicks, the video moves like the neurons of electric data relaying messages throughout the body.  Astronomers within Latin culture used the planets, stars, sun, and moon to foresee disasters.  Here the artist rejects a linear perspective of time and much of his work is influenced by the Russian futurism concept of art being its own reality.  This brings back the mission of the collection; going back to the past in order to reconstruct the contemporary interaction of our future.  There are also similarities between Russian futurism and the Andean artist where art experiments with other possible realities of time and space.  Unfortunately, Latin American societies are ignorant to a massive part of their history, prior to the Conquest, and this loss of cultural foundation inhibits an understanding of identity and displacement within future society.  But through a network of community, the contemporary Latin aesthetic is one to discuss and represent for the future people of the world.