MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT: ART AND THE DECOLONIAL TURN IN LATIN AMERICA, 1960-1985

The exhibition Memories of Underdevelopment was dedicated to the production of Latin American artists active during the 1960s and 1980s. The selected works and names questioned the developmental rhetoric that dominated the continent and proposed, through culture, alternative forms of production in light of socioeconomic postulates in force.

In its first production, in San Diego, the show was inserted into a network of exhibitions and events linked to Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA project. The project called for initiatives throughout Southern California and proposed an investigation into the historical relationships between the cultural circuit of Los Angeles and its region and that of Latin American countries. For the second exhibition, the Museo Jumex, from Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte Lima joined the organization.

The exhibition highlighted the production of artists active in several Latin American countries from the 1960s to 1985, most notably in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico. Lina Bo Bardi presented some of her projects that, as a cultural practice, were opposed to the country’s socioeconomic situation. In this sense, the SESC Pompeia project stood out, which was developed in the last years of the civil-military dictatorship and, responding to the regime, became a space destined for freedom.