Four decades of contemporary Latin American art at the MoMA

From April 30 to September 9, 2023, the Museum of Modern Art presents “Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond”

Source: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York · Image: Rosângela Rennó. “Wedding Landscape”, 1996. Gelatin silver negatives and acrylic, 44 3/4 × 58 1/2 × 1/2″ (113.7 × 148.6 × 1.3 cm). Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Sarah Hermanson Meister. © 2023 Rosângela Rennó

The exhibition gathers approximately 65 works by Latin American artists who, over the last four decades, have been looking at history as the source material for new work. On view in the third-floor Robert B. Menschel Galleries, this exhibition will explore a transformative group of works, primarily from the 21st century, which were donated by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in 2018. Videos, photographs, paintings, and sculptures will be presented in dialogue with MoMA’s extensive Latin American collection, recent acquisitions, a new commission, and select loans. Chosen Memories will feature works by approximately 40 artists from different generations working across Latin America over the last four decades, including Alejandro Cesarco (Uruguay), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Mario García Torres (Mexico), Leanrdo Katz (Argentina), Suwon Lee (Venezuela), Gilda Mantilla (Peru) and Raimond Chaves (Colombia), Cildo Meireles (Brazil), Rosângela Rennó (Brazil), Mauro Restiffe (Brazil), and José Alejandro Restrepo (Colombia), among others.

“The artworks in this exhibition prove that some of the most relevant art of the present is conceived through investigating and retelling history in new ways,” says curator Inés Katzenstein. “This exhibition will introduce visitors to distinguished Latin American artists working in recent decades who have engaged with the past as a means to repair histories of dispossession, reconnect with undervalued cultural legacies, and strengthen threads of kinship and belonging.”

Organized into three main sections “Chosen Memories” examines how artists have investigated and reimagined histories and cultural legacies of the region. The first part of the exhibition reframes long histories of colonialism in the region, through works such as José Alejandro Restrepo’s video installation “Paso del Quindío I” (1992) and Regina José Galindo’s performance-based sculpture “Looting” (2010). The next section of the exhibition explores the different ways in which artists revisit undervalued cultural heritages and will feature works by Cildo Meireles, as well as a new video by Las Nietas de Nonó. The final section of the exhibition looks at inherited and chosen kinships, as well as processes around mourning and memorialization, through works like Alejandro Cesarco’s video portrait Present Memory (2009) and a newly commissioned mural by Iran do Espírito Santo.