CREATED BETWEEN the 1960s and the present—often amid milieus of political oppression and socioeconomic unrest—the works in this survey of twenty Latin American artists include computerized sculptures, performance documentation, kinetic assemblages, interactive installations, videos, and wearable art. The exhibition touches on themes such as cybernetics, environmental issues, feminism, and colonialism, with much of the work addressing how technology mediates communication and experience.
The show revolves around the concept of “arteônica,” the term a portmanteau of the Portuguese for “art and technology” that comes from Italo-Brazilian artist Waldemar Cordeiro (1925–1973). In his treatise for a 1971 show of the same name in São Paulo, Cordeiro presented a broad definition of arteônica as a means of “objectifying ideas through images” by synthesizing computers’ systematic logic with artistic experimentation. His computer-generated abstractions of Time magazine pictures only coalesce into images when viewed from afar, bringing to mind how important issues are reduced to ones and zeroes within the digital realm—a notion that could be interpreted as freeing or confining, depending on one’s outlook.
Some of the most compelling pieces in the show are interactive, with experiential light, color, and sound components changing according to viewers’ movements. Inside Peruvian artist Teresa Burga’s dark room, Work That Disappears When the Spectator Tries to Approach It, 1970/2017/2024, is a large patterned square formed by colored lightbulbs that gradually turn off, line by line, as the viewer approaches, with the square getting smaller until it abruptly disappears, leaving glowing afterimages upon the retinas of anyone having come too near. In addition to the phenomenological aspects of this piece, the elusive quality alludes to the futility of grasping for meaning and to the idea that distance is necessary in order to gain perspective. It also gestures toward the literal disappearances of people under Peru’s 1968–80 junta, during which information was regularly restricted.
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