Irrupciones, comprensiones, contravenciones: arte contemporáneo y política cultural en Colombia
Irrupciones, compresiones, contravenciones examina la insistencia de la clase media intelectual colombiana en revisitar eventos fundacionales de la nación, tales como las expediciones científicas, geográficas y etnográficas. Esta tendencia se explica por la nostalgia de reclamar una modernidad incompleta. Se trata de un síntoma de esquizofrenia social y, a la vez, de una sensibilidad que en lo retro busca entender el presente que vive la nación. Mediante una lectura comparada del trabajo de las artistas María Elvira Escallón (1954) y Libia Posada (1961) se da cuenta de situaciones del contexto nacional relacionadas con el estado de lo público y su interacción con el mundo doméstico. En una segunda instancia el texto se enfoca en la violencia cultural que ha marginado, exotizado y racializado sujetos nacionales. Esta sección presenta el caso de don Abel Rodríguez (1941), indígena nonuya, quien en la última década se ha dedicado a ilustrar (como un nuevo naturalista) miles de especies botánicas y naturales. Él es un ejemplo de procesos de adaptación y captura que ha negado ópticas de carácter no eurocéntrico dentro de la misma lógica expedicionaria y cientificista; ahora dentro de procesos de construcción de política cultural post-Constitución de 1991 y la emergencia de nuevos mercados culturales. Finalmente, el trabajo de Juan Obando (1980) muestra un espacio intersticial en el que emerge una posibilidad crítica/anárquica. Se discute la construcción de una imagen de nación mansa basada en una cultura popular domesticada por las fuerzas del mercado global (lo narco). El branding de país y su espejo bizarro se hacen presentes en el trabajo de Obando, en el que un doble movimiento, el de estar en el centro y en el margen del debate de nación, en una falla tectónica, ejemplifica bien la posición de muchos de los creadores contemporáneos en el país.
Nota biográfica
Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, PhD en Arte Contemporáneo y Teoría Cultural (Universidad de Pittsburgh) con certificaciones doctorales en Estudios Latinoamericanos y Estudios Culturales ymaestría en Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo. Miguel es egresado del Departamento de Arte de la Universidad de los Andes. Fue director de Artes Visuales del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia (1998-2001) donde trabajó en el desarrollo de la política cultural para el sector durante los primeros años del Ministerio de Cultura. Miguel es académico, curador, activista y artista visual. Está vinculado al Centro de Estudios para Latinoamérica y el Caribe de DukeUniversitydonde es profesor, coordina grupos de estudio multidisciplinarios y eventos especiales. Su trabajo se concentraen la historia cultural moderna y contemporánea de Colombia y América Latina. Ha publicado ampliamente sobre arte contemporáneo, teoría crítica, estética, y cine documental. Miguel es director del Festival Latinoamericano de Cine y Nuevos Medios de Carolina del Norte.
Ediciones Uniandes | Universidad de los Andes. Abril 2017.
Autor: Miguel Rojas Sotelo
EdicionesUniandes, 2017
Nº páginas: 174
ISBN: 9789587744705
18x21cm
https://ediciones.uniandes.edu.co/paginas/DetalleLibro.aspx?lid=783
http://www.libreriadelau.com/irrupciones-comprensiones-contravenciones-arte-contemporaneo-y-politica-cultural-en-colombia-u-de-los-andes-9789587744705-historia-del-arte/p
English.
Miguel Rojas-Sotelo once served as visual arts director in Colombia’s Ministry of Culture (1997-2001), and after more than 10 years in the United States, the director of the NC Latin American Film Festival has written a book reflecting on the changes brought about by the Constitution of1991 to the culture of his native country.
Rojas-Sotelo recently presented his book at FILBO, the International Book Fair in Bogotá (April 29, 2017), as well as at the Museum of Modern Art, University of the Andes, and PontificalXaverian University.
In Irruption, Compression, Contravention: Contemporary Art and Cultural Policy in Colombia (Uniandes Press, 2017), Rojas-Sotelo explains how the new national Constitution, 1991, shaped cultural policies and the production of visual art, literature, and mass media and by extension Colombian national identity.
In 1997 the Ministry of Culture developed policies to decentralized and recognized cultural diversity. Simultaneously, and in line with the new economic framework of Colombia, neoliberalism, those policies intended to actualized cultural production through markets,
professionalization of cultural actors, public and private institutions. It was a good moment of democratization and redistribution of resources for the cultural sector. However, the country abandoned its centralist nationalized economy with a decentralized system and a market-based economy, throwing away everything that was not market driven, a new wave of natural and
cultural extraction emerged, displacing populations and reshaping cultural production, Rojas-Sotelo said.
As the nation has long been preoccupied by the war between the government, organized crime, paramilitary militias, and the FARC guerrilla. Colombian culture has been given over to the influence of narcoaesthetics (gangster culture), replacing traditional folk music and socially
engaged arts for shallow versions, good for mass consumption.
The result is a country in which cultural markets emerged and where distinctions between hi and low culture collapsed. Everything is for sale, cultural products have been domesticated, he said.
The book explores from the production of visual artists those modernizing projects left behind. Artist are producing from the unfinished project that is the modern nation. That is why, the Colombian intellectual middle class has been obsessed with revisiting the foundational
moments of the nation, such as early natural and scientific expeditions, with a Eurocentric worldview.
“The idea of a culture that expresses diversity and the history of a nation was diminished as global popular culture became part of the mainstream, local and indigenous cultures have been re-marginalized,” Rojas-Sotelo said.
In his critique, he focuses on four artists who are portraying this transformation from multiple perspectives.
Maria Elvira Escallón (born 1954) is an artist who documents the failure of Colombian modernity, using in-situ installations and photography to explore how train stations, theaters, hospitals and other public buildings abandoned by the state are left to tell their incomplete stories.
Libia Posada (born 1961) is a doctor and visual artist who uses her art to examine the abuse of women in the context of urban violence and forced displacement, often using the body as a canvas.
Mogaje Guihu (Don Abel Rodriguez, born 1941) is an indigenous Nonuya elder from the Amazon who was forced to leave the forest due to the armed conflict and now draws the rainforest from memory. Considered outside of the professional art world, he has capture the
imagination as a sort of new-expeditionary in reverse. He has shown his drawings and basket-weaving skills nationally and internationally since 2012.
Juan Obando (1980) is an artist who uses video, performance art, design, and technology to critique contemporary culture in Colombia and in the United States. His installation Tropikopf (2009) used graphic mutations combining the tropical iconography used by the colombian
country brand "Colombia Is Passion" and Nazi symbols like the Parteiadler and the Totenkopf.
The book is written in Spanish and sold by Ediciones Uniandes.
Author: Miguel Rojas Sotelo
Ediciones Uniandes, 2017
Nº pages: 174
ISBN: 9789587744705
18x21cm
https://ediciones.uniandes.edu.co/paginas/DetalleLibro.aspx?lid=783
http://www.libreriadelau.com/irrupciones-comprensiones- contravenciones-arte-contemporaneo-y- politica-cultural- en-colombia- u-de- los-andes- 9789587744705-historia- del-arte/p
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