Curator Mónica Amor analyzes the exhibition, Sin fronteras/ Arte latinoamericano actual, held at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas in 1996. She discusses the significance of the show in the context of the debates that had taken place in the previous decades (1970–90) on issues affecting the regional art, specifically questions such as the hierarchies of value in objects considered works of art and the nature of legitimating assessments. Amor reflects on changes in perspective regarding the concept of “borders” in terms of (Latin) American art. On the basis of dialogue with art of the past, she explores a now-questioned historicist fiction capable of endowing certain objects with value, continuity, and an “artistic nature” among other things. She states that today’s artists, curators, universities, and even some museums are engaged in a thorough revision of ideas resulting from either from “power discourse” or “nationalist rhetoric” such as “origin and essentiality.” Amor asserts that those ideas distort the meanings and contributions of art, especially of Latin American art.

This essay by curator Mónica Amor published in the bilingual (Spanish-English) catalogue to the exhibition, Sin fronteras / Arte latinoamericano actual, held at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas in 1996, is an extensive analysis of the problem of identity in relation to “the Latin American” and to art of the region. On the basis of the contributions of different disciplines (sociology, philosophy, aesthetics, theories of modernism, and Postmodernism), Amor reflects on notions once sacred to art theory and to history in general, notions that are currently subject to far-reaching revision: hierarchies of value in art; the legitimacy of artwork; repetition and tradition; the ability to generate symbolic discourses; dominant artistic narratives; and models of production and circulation. 

The text is extensive. It formulates an analysis and revision of the “limited, contingent, and idiosyncratic” stances on “the Latin American” and Latin American art that had been predominant. It is due to those historicist stances, Amor argues, that Latin American art was considered derivative, mimetic, and “dated” for much of the twentieth century. To counter that perspective, Amor points to the emergence of artists in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela in the fifties and sixties who formulated innovative and critical re-readings of the European Constructivist traditions on the basis of new approaches to the art object. Specifically, Amor mentions artists like Gego [Gertrude Goldschmidt] and Jesús Rafael Soto in Venezuela; and Helio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and Lygia Pape in Brazil. 

Significant as well are the ties Amor establishes between her theoretical formulations and the work of contemporary artists, such as Alfredo Jaar (Chilean, lives in the United States), and Miguel Ángel Ríos and Guillermo Kuitca (both from Argentina). She mentions exhibitions and books that have distorted the meaning of Latin American art, which she contrasts with what she deems valuable contributions from critics and curators, such as Mari Carmen Ramírez, Luis Pérez Oramas, Gerardo Mosquera, Carolina Ponce de León, Sandra Antelo Suárez, and others.