Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, curated by Marcela Guerrero, along with curatorial project assistant Alana Hernandez, is an exhibition of many firsts. It is the first group show to exclusively feature Latinx emerging artists at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Guerrero is not only the Whitney’s first Latina curator, but she is also the museum’s first Puerto Rican curator. And it is the first group show on contemporary Latinx artists to feature Quechua in its title, the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas.
Latinx art (the “x” provides a more gender inclusive alternative to Latino or Latina/o) has navigated a complicated space within art history. Scholars and critics have struggled to situate it within art history’s tendency toward rigid periodizations and nationally circumscribed categories. If Latin American art has been marginalized within the art historical canon, Latinx art has not even been recognized as a legitimate category of analysis. Consider, for instance, the rather dismissive critical reception of Smithsonian Museum’s 2013 exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art; one prominent art critic even claimed that “Latino art, today, is a meaningless category.”
