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Over the last few decades, the artistic circuit has exposed a major wound in Western art: the hegemony of white men as the center of cultural production in societies. Faced with this gap, an effort and commitment by institutions and field professionals is noticeable in order to offer equal space for productions by social minorities, such as Latin women and artists.
Along with this movement, there is also a great public interest in delving into other perspectives of production. However, the task of finding new artists is arduous, in the same sense it is very difficult for artists to gain visibility.
Seeking to remedy this double impasse, we found the online and free platform Latin Artistsa collaborative visual arts space created in 2019. Anchored in the principles of education and dissemination, it proposes to be part of a great emancipatory goal in extensive debate in the Western cultural scene: rewriting the history of art from the perspective of Latino women. American.
To this end, the team concentrates the greatest amount of work on organizing a search and dissemination environment. Connecting curious people, researchers and artists, visitors to the site have access to the work and profile of more than 150 artists, separated by nationality.
THE BEGINNING
Paulo Farias, cultural producer, is the founder and responsible for managing the platform. In an interview with Artsoul, he says that he created the project in 2019 as a result of a course he took in the same year, Women Artists in Art Historyoffered by Your roof.
Moved by the debates he was in contact with, he proposed, for a period of one year, to offer a space of protagonism to women artists within the Latin American framework, and organically the deadline fell apart and the platform expanded its objectives.
Currently, the project is independent and non-profit, relying on volunteers and funding through public notices to maintain its operation.
SEARCH TO EVIDENCE
The curatorial council, currently composed of Ana Carla Soler, Carolina Rodrigues, Francela Carrera and Renat Castillo, articulates mappings to promote large collections of portfolios, thus offering its space to more women.
Mappings are the most important actions promoted by Artists Latinas. In addition to feeding the research database, it is also a source for the curatorial council itself, which uses them for future projects, publications and fairs.
From the rich material they receive, new discussions and themes such as motherhood, peripheral perspectives, displacements and decentralization of Latin American urban axes are born. An example of the developments is the curatorship on maternity carried out for the Artsampa fair, which started from the mapping of artist mothers.
In 2023, the team will finalize the mapping of women curators of the visual arts, aiming to expand the field of debate and understand the conditions of art workers beyond artists.
The calls reveal a very problematic structural gap: the fact that relevant or emerging artists with powerful works cannot be located, which are not in research sources, hence the need to place them on the map and allow them to be found.
Being digital is a fundamental part of the project, as Farias says, this presence allows borders to be more fluid “if it reaches further and in the time that people have available, resulting in interactions with the entire globe.”
With the aim of being and having an online presence, they share a large volume of posts on Instagram, who follow the page can check out the disclosure of exhibitions, calls and the #artistaslatinasindica which recommends works by artists on display.
On the website, there is an area dedicated to education that provides more than 20 hours of content, including interviews, video classes, courses and virtual exhibitions. Until the 18th of November, the virtual exhibition, curated by Francela Carrera, is on display. Poetics as historical inscription: A look at the production of 10 women artists from Brazil and Guatemala.
Intending to be an open and collaborative environment, the “you here” tab provides a simple form for submitting works, from the submission of artistic portfolios to essays and reflections related to the thematic section of the page.
The blog feeds from this collaboration, with exhibition reviews, market analyzes and another series of approaches to the world of art that orbit the women’s debate.
Whether for art lovers or those in the field, the platform has been gaining space and visibility as an important environment for debate, research and insertion of artists in the market.
Francela Carrera, chief curator of the platform, reveals that there are many important projects for the year 2023 and says: the patriarchal system has always pitted women against women and we are trying to break this logic, listening to them and letting them take a stand and develop their projects .
Giovanna Gregório is a graduate student in Art: History, Criticism and Curatorship at PUC-SP. Independent researcher and critic.
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