Marta Traba: Arte latinoamericano actual (1972) [Spanish]

In this book, Marta Traba examines how the growing influence of American art shaped the art of Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s, and how Latin American artists have both succumbed and resisted the effects of this influence.

Publisher Ediciones de la Biblioteca Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, 1972
Nuevos Planteamientos series, 10
117 pages
via ICAA Docs

WorldCat

PDF (5 MB)

Walter D. Mignolo: Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (1999)

“This book is an extended argument on the “coloniality” of power by one of the most innovative scholars of Latin American studies. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practice in the social sciences and area studies. He introduces the crucial notion of “colonial difference” into study of the modern colonial world. He also traces the emergence of new forms of knowledge, which he calls “border thinking.”

Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by employing the terms and concerns of New World scholarship. His concept of “border gnosis,” or what is known from the perspective of an empire’s borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to dominate, and thus limit, understanding.

The book is divided into three parts: the first chapter deals with epistemology and postcoloniality; the next three chapters deal with the geopolitics of knowledge; the last three deal with the languages and cultures of scholarship. Here the author reintroduces the analysis of civilization from the perspective of globalization and argues that, rather than one “civilizing” process dominated by the West, the continually emerging subaltern voices break down the dichotomies characteristic of any cultural imperialism. By underscoring the fractures between globalization and mundialización, Mignolo shows the locations of emerging border epistemologies, and of post-occidental reason.”

Publisher Princeton University Press, 1999
Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History series
ISBN 0691001405, 9780691001401
xix+371 pages

Interview with author (L. Elena Delgado and Rolando J. Romero, Discourse, 2000)
Author on pluriversality (2013)
Review: Serge Gruzinski (Annales, 2002, FR).
Commentary: Linda Martín Alcoff (CR, 2007).

Author
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (17 MB)

Magiciens de la Terre (1989) [French]

Catalogue of an exhibition held 18 May-14 August 1989 at the Centre Pompidou and La Grande Halle-La Villette, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin with the assistance of Jan Debbaut, Mark Francis, Jean-Louis Maubant, Aline Luque, André Magnin and Jacques Soulillou.

“An exhibition loved and hated in equal measure, Martin curated the show to address the fact that there were, as he put it, “one hundred percent of exhibitions ignoring 80 percent of the earth.” He attempted to engage critically with certain aspects of neo-colonial mentality in the West, particularly a resurgent interest in ‘primitivism,’ which Martin felt aestheticized exotic cultures without destablilizing western definitions of fine art, modernism, or identity. The exhibition included works by 100 artists (50 from the so called ‘West’ and 50 from the ‘margins’), attempting to show all on equal footing. The success of this attempt is still disputed and discussed in terms of the exhibition history of the past twenty-odd years, but it remains undeniable that the exhibition enacted an important break with some of the conventions of exhibition-making and strictly defined notions of modernism. Exhibited artists included Marina Abramovic, John Baldessari, Mike Chukwukelu, Braco Dimitrijevic, Yongping Huang, Boujemaa Lakhdar, Richard Long, Sigmar Polke, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Ulay, Jeff Wall, Jimmy Wululu, etc. ” (Source)

With essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Aline Luque, Mark Francis, André Magnin, Pierre Gaudibert, Thomas McEvilley, Homi Bhabha, Jacques Soulillou, Bernard Marcadé.

Publisher Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1989
ISBN 2858504989, 9782858504985
271 pages
via Gioni

Interview with curator (Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Art in America, 1989, EN)
Reviews: 10 French press reviews (1989), more, list of reviews (1989, 30 pp).
Analysis and commentary: Special issue of Les Cahiers du Musée National d’Art Moderne (1989, FR, 101 MB, added on 2019-8-14), Special issue of Third Text (1989, EN), Thomas McEvilley (1990, EN), Cesare Poppi (engage, 2003, EN), Hal Foster et al (2004/07, EN), Daniel Soutif (2005, FR), Reesa Greenberg (Art Journal, 2005, EN), Maureen Murphy (Critique d’art, 2013, FR/EN), Lucy Steeds et al. (book, Afterall, 2013, EN), Pablo Lafuente (2013, EN), Annie Cohen-Solal (Stedelijk Studies, 2014, EN), Adam Jasper (AU&NZ Journal of Art, 2014, EN), Julia Friedel (C&, 2016, EN).
Short documentary (1989)
Wikipedia
Pompidou’s 25th anniversary exhibition (2014)
Film retrospective at Tate (2014)

Exhibition website
Press release (FR/EN), Petit journal (FR)
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (168 MB)