COMUNICACIÓN

Yuste Foundation presents a book that covers the recent history of Latin American exhibitions carried out in Spain

The European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation presented the book La exposición como recolonización. Exposiciones de arte latinoamericano en el Estado español (1989-2010) by Francisco Godoy Vega in the bookstore La Central of the Reina Sofía Museum.

The Director and the Academic Director of the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation, Juan Carlos Moreno and César Chaparro, respectively, participated in the presentation as did the professor of contemporary art at the Autonomous University of Madrid and author of the prologue, Jesús Carrillo; the person in charge of programming the Artistic Residences Centre (Matadero, Madrid), Manuela Villa, and the author.

This work covers Latin American exhibitions carried out in Spain from 1989 to 2010. In this sense, the author points out that “this research situates itself within the history of the exhibitions, which allows a review of Latin American art read from the perspective of the bias of curatorial and political relations between Latin America and the Spanish State”.

This publication is the result of the doctoral thesis defended by Godoy Vega at the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2015, winner of the 3rd Research Prize to Doctoral Theses “Fernando Mangas”; a call launched by the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation.

César Chaparro claimed that the subject of this research “is related in its own way to other areas dealt with by the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation as is the realisation of exhibitions and art exhibitions”.

This book is volume 2 of the Doctoral Theses Collection included in the in the European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation’s editorial initiative, which aims at publishing studies that may contribute to reinforce the ties at each side of the Atlantic, fostering cultural and academic cooperation while collaborating to boost literary and scientific creations in an Ibero-American context.

In this sense, Chaparro highlighted the fact that with such collections and publications Yuste Foundation indubitably contributes to the development of culture “understood as the cropping of great values that serve as oxygen to our lives is a process of aspiration and expiration inspired by permanent dialogue”.

Through archive research and interviewing curators, artists and cultural managers, the book makes a criticism of Eurocentric thinking, analysing the different readings concerning Latin American art through exhibitions carried out in the Spanish State during the last decades. From an anticolonial perspective, La exposición como recolonización carries out a geopolitical study of the relations that the Spanish art system establishes with its former colonies and it deals with the symbolic, political and economic connotations within the curatorial projects analysed.

Professor Juan Carrillo points out in the prologue that Francisco Godoy’s work “is a deep immersion in the ways national and transnational identities are created in the context of globalisation; its colonial foundations and the role that art, exhibitions and institutions have had in those processes”. Carrillo stresses that this research has a dual value because “it provides a deep knowledge of processes that have contributed to make up the current art system and, on the other hand, displays a power of judgement from the standpoint of colonial criticism that expands the scope of intervention in the contemporary scene”.

            About the author

Francisco Godoy Vega (Santiago, Chile, 1983). Chilean curator, teacher and poet residing in Madrid. He has worked as a professor in the Department of History and Theory of Art of the UAM (2015-2017) and has been a researcher at the Reina Sofía Museum (2009-2011, 2014-2016). He has published poetry books: La revolución de las ratas (Madrid, Esto no es Berlín, 2013) and La enfermedad del sudaca (Valencia, FEA, 2018) as well as articles in books, such as Pensar los estudios culturales desde España (Madrid, Verbum, 2012), París/México, capitales del exilio (México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014) and Decolonising Museums (Brussels, L’Internationale Online, 2015). He has co-edited the book No existe sexo sin racialización (Ayllu, Madrid, 2017, with Leticia Rojas). He has also been the curator of samples such as Chile Vive. Memoria activada (CCE, Santiago, 2013), Crítica de la razón migrante (La Casa Encendida, Madrid-CCE, Asunción, Tegucigalpa and Mexico DF, 2014-2016, with Carolina Bustamante), Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA), 1979-1985 (MNCARS, Madrid, 2016) and Multitud MaricaActivaciones de archivos sexo-disidentes en América Latina (MSSA, Santiago, 2017, with Felipe Rivas). He is currently preparing the exhibition Todos los tonos de la rabia. Poéticas y políticas antirracistas (MUSAC, León, 2018, with Carolina Bustamante). He is a member of the group El Real Archivo Sudaca and Ayllu and resides in Matadero, Madrid.