DISPOSITIONS IN THE AMERICAS: CONTEMPORARY ART AND THE COLONIAL LEGACY
The exhibition in Chicago brings together 36 Latin American artists who, through more than 40 works, challenge colonial narratives through critical, community-based, and resistance-oriented practices.
“Dispossession”—the deprivation of land, culture, language, or all three—has been a defining condition in the Americas, initiated by European colonialism. The exhibition Dispossessions in the Americas: The Extraction of Bodies, Land, and Heritage from La Conquista to the Present brings together more than 40 works by 36 contemporary artists from across Latin America, whose practices broadly seek to critique and destabilize the historical policies of dispossession. The exhibition opens on Friday, April 17, 2026, at Wrightwood 659 Chicago and is curated by Jonathan D. Katz and Eduardo Carrera.
Featuring photographs, videos, installations, performances, sculptures, and paintings produced between 1960 and 2025, the exhibition examines the enduring legacies of colonialism, showing how dispossession continues to shape Indigenous, Afro-descendant, queer, and trans communities. Professor Katz notes: “Dispossession (…) is not merely a historical fact. It remains, arguably, the defining condition of much of Latin America.” He adds: “Dispossessions in the Americas takes this historical context as its point of departure, bringing together activist artists whose work challenges the colonial values and institutions that have systematically suppressed the priorities of Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro-descendant peoples, as well as women and queer/trans individuals.”
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Saskia Calderón. Lunas que no vi, 2020. Courtesy of the artist
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Felipe Baeza. Ahuehuete, 2018. The Lumpkin - Boccuzzi Family Collection. © Felipe Baeza. Courtesy Maureen, Paley, London; kurimanzutto, Mexico City/New York
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Miguel Ángel Rojas. Me llaman Trinity y Nevada Smith, 1972. Collection of Michael Sodomick. © Miguel Ángel Rojas. Courtesy of Sicardi | Ayers Bacino Gallery and the artist
Co-curator Carrera adds: “The artists in the exhibition reconfigure memory, assert belonging, and create new ways of relating to history and territory by exploring the hybridization of body, land, spirituality, and ecology. They become mediators of physical and symbolic spaces that question colonial hierarchies.”
Between 2021 and 2024, twelve Latin American museums in ten countries collaborated with local curators to present exhibitions as part of Dispossessions in the Americas, a transdisciplinary project that combines research, teaching, and community engagement, led by the University of Pennsylvania with support from the Mellon Foundation. The presentation at Wrightwood 659 is the final and cumulative iteration of these exhibitions and includes bilingual texts in English and Spanish.
Organized around three axes—Territory, Body, and Cultural Heritage—the exhibition explores how contemporary artists transform the materiality and symbols of colonial power into practices of environmental care and embodied liberation. These works also propose a new—and more precise—relationship to history, no longer narrated from the colonizer’s perspective.
Dispossessions in the Americas will be accompanied by an off-site video art program. Held biweekly starting April 24, it will take place on Friday and Saturday afternoons at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church. Artists featured in the video program include Las Nietas de Nono, Coco Fusco, Carolina Caycedo, Zahy Guajajara, Neyen Pailamilla, Arisleyda Dilone, Rio Parana, and Luiz Roque.
Participating artists in the exhibition include Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Archivo de la Memoria Trans, Carlos Arias, Felipe Baeza, Tania Bruguera, Saskia Calderón, Seba Calfuqueo, Javier Cardona Otero, Colectivo Ayllu, Colectivo Tawna, Wilson Díaz, Frau Diamanda / Héctor Acuña, Augusto Falconi, Regina José Galindo, Ani Ganzala, Frank Gaudlitz, Camilo Godoy, Thomas Locke Hobbs, Rember Yahuarcani, Deborah Anzinger, Madorilyn Crawford, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Lizette Nin, Ana Mendieta, Joiri Minaya, Lulu Molinares, Laryssa Machada, Cinthia Marcelle, Carlos Martiel, Purita Pelayo, Kiván Quiñones, Tania Bruguera, Deborah Thomas, Gihan Tubbeh, Javi Vargas Sotomayor, Antonio Wong Rengifo, and Luis Fernando Zapata.
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