Gavlak presents Terms of Belonging, an intergenerational exhibition of Latin American artists featuring Allora & Calzadilla, Candida Alvarez, Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.), Iván Argote, Ricardo Brey, Gisela Colón, Débora Delmar, Teresita Fernández, Ignacio Gatica, Lucia Hierro, Alfredo Jaar, Anuar Maauad, Carlos Martiel, Joiri Minaya, Gabriela Salazar, Yoab Vera, and Valeria Tizol Vivas. The word “belonging” conveys an effortless kinship: a natural affinity between like and like. The imposition of the word “terms,” however, shatters this ideal and serves to remind that communities are also forged through selective exclusions. By focusing solely on conceptual practices in the work of Latin American artists, Terms of Belonging asks what it means for an artist to refuse the call for “positive” representation on behalf of a marginalized community through established artistic conventions and forms. Though this pressure to produce and/ or represent on behalf of a larger cultural identity is not isolated to artists of the Latin American diaspora, Terms of Belonging proposes a framework for Latin American art that does not hinge on nationality or ethnicity. Like the contentious term “Latinx,” the exhibition signals the need to expand beyond antiquated categories of belonging while acknowledging the ways in which these new and supposedly more inclusive terms are themselves rooted in specific and localized definitions of Latin American experience. Like the broader conceptual and minimalist traditions to which they belong, the works in the exhibition do not comprise a rejection of figuration, or identitarian concerns entirely. Instead the inclusion or allusion to real bodies constitutes an acknowledgment of the reductive nature of individual and collective identity, and a desire to speak beyond the constraints of the self. The exhibition will continue through December 10, 2022. A closing panel moderated by curator Susanna V. Temkin, PhD. will take place on Saturday, December 10, 2022 and Valeria Tizol Vivas will perform her durational piece remejunje: requemar.
