The curator Ivo Mesquita discusses the concepts and criteria that informed his curatorial process in organizing the Latin American art exhibition Cartographies (Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada, 1993). He proposes the concept of “cartography” as a way of addressing the need to update the role of the curator of contemporary art in Latin America. Thus, he rejects the standard method for pigeonholing the region’s artistic production used by history and traditional art criticism, as well as by multicultural movements. Mesquita wants to change this approach and instead base the process on the historical evolution of Latin American art by researching the strategies of local artists, an idea that conflicts sharply with the policies of established cultural institutions. The works selected for the exhibition therefore become “landmarks” of a new territory, identified as a result of this process rather than defined in advance. This curator’s goal is thus to avoid pre-established definitions in order to stress the uniqueness and the autonomy of the artistic poetics involved. 

This essay by Ivo Mesquita (b. 1948) contributes to the discussion concerning the concept of “Latin American” art. It was published in the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1993 that presented works by José Bedia and Marta María Pérez Bravo (Cuba); Germán Botero and María Fernanda Cardoso (Colombia); Guillermo Kuitca (Argentina); Julio Galán and Nahum Zenil (Mexico); Gonzalo Díaz and Juan Dávila (Chile); Mario Cravo Neto, Iole de Freitas, Carlos Fajardo, and José Leonilson (Brazil); and Alfred Wenemoser (Venezuela). The essay is therefore part of the ongoing debate that took place during the 1980s and 1990s, a period when Latin American art was gaining in value in the international circuit and the contemporary art market. By rejecting all alternative approaches, Mesquita sides with the fashionable “Postmodern” view, basing his position on poststructuralist philosophy, in particular on the idea of cartographie conceived by Félix Guattari and by the Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik in Micropolítica— cartografia do desejo (1986). Mesquita’s text refers directly to Rolnik’s Cartografia Sentimental - transformações contemporâneas do desejo (1989), and even paraphrases certain sections to define “his” new curatorial proposal. The exhibition and Mesquita’s essay were discussed by Latin American curators and in art circles in Brazil. 

For further information on this subject, that was widely discussed at the time, see essays by Brazilian critics as follows: by Annateresa Fabris, “Duas cartografias da América Latina: Joaquín Torres García e Anna Bella Geiger” in América Latina: territorialidades e práticas artísticas (Porto Alegre: Ed. UFRGS, 2002) [doc. no. 808407]; by Paulo Herkenhoff, the linguistic complement to Mesquita’s curatorial proposal, “Incomplete glossary of sources of Latin American Art,” in  Cartographies (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1994) [doc. no. 808171]; and by Maria Angélica Melendi, “Da adversidade vivemos ou uma cartografia em construção,” Revista do Instituto Arte das Américas, Belo Horizonte, Year 2, Volume I, 2004 [doc. no. 808351].