In this text, Gerardo Mosquera introduces the exhibition Ante América [Facing the Americas] with an essay describing the common social, political and economic framework that has fostered the art of what he calls “el Sur” or “Nuestra América.” “Nuestra América,” he explains, is not strictly defined by geography, but is an imaginary region that includes, in addition to artists working in Latin America, Latin Americans living in exile in Europe and the United States, African-Americans, Chicanos, and others. Although these artists are marked by extreme heterogeneity, they share a common “cultural, historical, economic, and social community.” What is linking the members of this “community,” Mosquera argues, is their conflicted relationships with economic centers, which, in turn, has caused extreme social cultural contradictions within their local contexts. As a result, the art that is produced by artists working in “el Sur,” tends to always be concerned with its social context, and to exhibit a prone for postmodern appropriation. Mosquera concludes by noting how postmodernism has generated interest in the art of the “Other” in the centers, but warns that this has not necessarily alleviated problems while Facing the Americas with essentialist and stereotypical perceptions of Latin American art.

The Cuban art critic and theorist Gerardo Mosquera emerged during the early- 1990s as a key voice in the re-framing of contemporary art produced in Latin America. With this text, he introduces many important concepts and terms central to the discourse of postcolonial theory and contemporary Latin American art during the 1990s, such as the construct of The Other, certain heterogeneity, and center-periphery axis. Mosquera recovers Latin American thinkers and concepts as postmodernist avant la lettre, such as Jorge Luis Borges, the Brazilian idea of “antropofagia,” and the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. But, he also warns his readers of Postmodernism’s tendency to reproduce the power relation of dominance/dependence that has defined North-South relations. Although Mosquera does not use the term “Globalism,” he is clearly addressing the reach of that phenomenon. The most prevalent problem shared by the urban centers of the region he calls “Nuestra América” is the prevalence of links to urban centers in the United States and Europe and, simultaneously, its lack of attachment with each other. The exhibition Ante America is, indeed, an attempt to forge these inter-American links in the face of globalization.