Visual Arts 2022: “No vaccine for the political pandemic”, creators and critics report on a difficult year

All the specialists consulted agree with him. In other words, the curator Luisa Fernanda Lindo points out that the deep economic and political crisis, added to the global context, is the ballast that drags our market. “However – she adds – the problem of the arts system is not in the market, but in the precariousness of artistic education at the national level”.

For the critic Gustavo Buntinx, it is not the pandemic itself, but anxiety that still intoxicates certain artistic expansions in Peru. “The disorders of this paranoia that from the new technologies infiltrate and intoxicate our lives, are manifested in the hallucinated politicization of everything”, he points out. For the scholar, this puerile, Manichaean and delusional ideologization of practices that also try to impose itself from the arts, is leaving a terrifying mark on our culture. “All this should lead us not to lament but to reflection”, he affirms.

“The current collapse of the market is not a deferred effect of the Coronavirus, but an immediate consequence of the great national derangement caused by the recently deceased coup government, without a doubt the most corrupt and incapable of our 21st century. There is in all this more than one lesson to be assumed by our fantasized republic of the arts”, he says.

Paradoxically, as Pedro Pablo Alayza, director of the Osma Museum, points out, the weakening of exhibition and museum spaces has generated a very intense trade union movement. “My impression is that the associations of museologists, conservators, curators and the museums themselves have come together and consolidated, proposing new paths.

women’s hour

The presence of female artists in the best individual views of the year is evident. But beyond this quantitative data, for Eduardo Tokeshi this 2022 left a very powerful and different narrative in the artists. “Their sensitivities overlap experience, practice and denunciation”, he points out, recalling the great exhibitions by Ana de Orbegoso and Rocio Rodrigo presented at the Icpna.

“We are witnessing many transformations in different layers,” says Luisa Fernanda Lindo. As the curator says, the gender vision not only involves women, but also men and an LGTBIQ community that is gaining greater presence and participation. “What is being built is an awareness of the presence of diversity in contemporary visual arts. Going specifically to women, I see a new generation of female art workers who are aware of their strengths, research-oriented, respectful of nature, and inclined to collaborative practices,” she states. As examples, she raises ‘Totemiq’ in Cusco, ‘Quipa’ in Arequipa or ‘Fibra’ in Lima, as well as the emergence of new collectives such as ‘MAV’ and ‘Artistas Peruanas’, or the articulation platform for women arts workers. ‘Contemporary’ visuals.

Precisely, Miguel Aguirre points out that art is one of the spaces that make claims, denunciations and the desire for equality possible. “Something that today should be the norm – absolute gender equality – its constant struggle is necessary: ​​be it in favor of feminism, be it in favor of the non-binary gender, be it in favor of sexual minorities. And he adds that a notable example of this was offered by the two-person “Paradiso” by María Abaddon and Wynnie Mynerva at AMIL, curated by Miguel A. López.

For his part, Pedro Pablo Alayza points out that this presence not only has to do with visual artists, but especially with those who have assumed the role of curators. “Without a doubt, his contribution is enormous, of even unsuspected scope, from the symbolic and social perspective.

As Buntinx appreciates, in these multiple and renewing flows of our art, there are no single directions. “The exchange between the erudite and traditional arts is becoming more and more fruitful. Think of the fruitful migration (of bodies and techniques and expressions) in Venuca Evanán (originally from Sarhua), or in Olinda Silvano, from the Shipibo community”, he warns. Or in the artistic activism encouraged by creators such as Karen Bermedo, Micaela Aljovín , Milagros and Sonia Cunliffe or Silvana Pestana, as well as Gladys Alvarado Jourde, Patricia Bueno, Rosanna López Guerra, Carmen Reátegui, and an exciting etcetera.

The space crisis

How can we appreciate trends in artistic production when we have fewer and fewer spaces and galleries to appreciate them? In this sense, the notorious persistence of a gallery like Fórum, with 48 years of existence, is something remarkable. But as the painter Tokeshi warns, in addition to traditional and independent galleries (the latter a refuge for young artists) hybrid spaces have flourished, in bookstores and cafes. “They are different spaces, with gallery dynamics and that is very good”, he points out.

For Lindo, unlike other times, today Instagram is the consolidated platform for the exhibition of works of art and artistic processes, reaching out to gallery owners, curators and collectors. “It is a tool for the socialization of works for those who are not represented in a gallery or lack exhibition spaces in their localities”, she explains. For the curator, more than a reduction in spaces or galleries, what is observed is an interesting activation of new platforms by emerging artists. Examples of this are ‘Sismo’ in Arequipa, ‘Augusta and Maleza’ in Cusco or ‘Fisura’ in Lima.

Coinciding with Lindo, Miguel Aguirre also thinks that social networks are the ones that today provide previously unthinkable visibility. “Today, any artist has a permanently open “gallery” on these networks to show their work, their visual, textual and sound research, their participation in exhibitions in any city in the country and the world and, particularly, their position on reality. ”.

Exhibitions to highlight

consulted by Tradethe experts consulted share what they consider to be the best exhibitions or artistic projects appreciated in 2022

Gustavo Buntinx (Critical)

Maybe it’s better to think not about trendsbut in drives, in almost unthinkable manifestations of Desire. Signs of hope are emerging in our apparent disaster zone. The reconstructive vocations seek to multiply, in every area, and against all difficulties. With impressive results, usually associated with almost heroic efforts. The extraordinary advances in the recovery of public spaces and monuments in the Historic Center of Lima, for example (special mention to Luis Martín Bogdanovich). Or the finally achieved expansion and opening of the now Palacio de Bellas Artes (the admirable effort of Rubén Ramos). And the multiplication of complex, challenging publications, such as those self-financed by Álbum del Universo Bakterial (Arturo Higa) and Juan Enrique Bedoya (Museum It is a remarkable, decisive book).

In closer terms, I can testify to the proliferation of initiatives that have involved me since I led the Micromuseo project. There are half a dozen “routes” that we have managed to complete this year, including the curatorship of the monumental intervention in the public spaces of Manhattan with the portentous, thaumaturgical Seeds by Jaime Miranda Bambaren. A moment of exception —I think, from my flagrant subjectivity— for the history of the arts in the entire continent. May those healing energies bear fruit.

In all of us: hopefully, with the New Year, some degree of good sense returns to our civic coexistence. And that art can—know—contribute to it. Moving away from the incitements of the Thanatos, to return —return us— to the Eros that is its essential aura. And the genuine support of any true critical project.

Eduardo Tokeshi (Plastic artist)

The best of this year has been the inauguration of PLAM with the exhibition on Trilce. This space and its manager Rubén Ramos have been the most resulting this year. The anthological and individual exhibitions of Ana de Orbegoso and Rocio Rodrigo at the Icpna.

Miguel Aguirre (Visual artist)

Contemporary Imaginaries Vol II: Collection of the Museum of Art of Lima, curated by Sharon Lerner, in MALI

underground atlas [1933[1810-1983]2020]individual by Iosu Aramburu in Livia Benavides

Rivers can exist without water but not without shores, curated by Giuliana Vidarte and Christian Bendayán, at the MAC – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima

Bonus track: Arqueologies of the present and poetics of the city. Anthology by Alberto Borea, curated by Max Hernández and Adriana Tomatis, ICPNA

Pedro Pablo Alayza (Art historian. Director of the Osma Museum)

The monumental mosaic in the Paseo de la República in Miraflores. Ricardo Wiesse

“Striking, sharp sisters multiply”, in the Juan Acha Room of the San Marcos Art Museum, Lima. Artist: Natalia Villanueva, Curator: Augusto del Valle.

Beyond the typical tendencies of the plastic arts, it seems to me that every day artists are taking a particular interest in popular traditions, somehow this has made the public approach contemporary creation again. The long-term projects promoted by the ICPNA and the Ricardo Palma University on Peruvian popular art, the project of the Ministry of Culture Ruraq Maki, as well as the increasingly significant presence of Amazonian art have contributed notably to the consolidation of this rereading of the national. I don’t think there is a direct connection, but it is clear that figuration in painting is now a trend that probably finds its roots in a return to nature.

Places like the Espacio Tamarindo directed and managed by Armando Williams, which makes contemporary creation a subject for reflection, open to the not necessarily academic public, constitute a new or renewed way of approaching art and above all approaching the public that is so important for its validation.