Home—So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas since 1957

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Home—So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas since 1957

June 11 to October 15

Home—So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas since 1957, a groundbreaking exhibition on the universal concept of home, and the first group show at a major Los Angeles museum to focus on Latino and Latin American art since the 1950s. Offering an extraordinary look at one of the world’s most basic social concepts, this exhibition explores the differences and affinities within artworks relative to immigration and political repression, dislocation and diaspora, and personal memory and utopian ideals. Home—So Different, So Appealing features approximately 100 artworks by 40 Latino and Latin American artists. This expansive exhibition includes painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film/video, and public sculpture by U.S. artists from the largest historic Latino groups—of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban origin—plus artists from Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, and Uruguay, among other countries. Included in the exhibition are works by internationally recognized artists such as Laura Aguilar, Allora & Calzadilla, Carmen Argote, Andres Asturias, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Myrna Báez, Antonio Berni, Johanna Calle, Luis Camnitzer, Leyla Cárdenas, Livia Corona Benjamin, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Gabriel de la Mora, Perla de Leon, Christina Fernandez, León Ferrari, Ramiro Gomez, Beatriz González, María Elena González, Félix González-Torres, María Teresa Hincapié, Salomón Huerta, Jessica Kairé, Guillermo Kuitca, Daniel Joseph Martinez,  Antonio Martorell, Gordon Matta-Clark, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Mondongo (Juliana Lafitte and Manuel Mendanha), Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Julio Cesar Morales, Jorge Pedro Núñez, Camilo Ontiveros, Pepón Osorio, Miguel Ángel Ríos, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Doris Salcedo, Juan Sánchez, Teresa Serrano, Vincent Valdez.

“We are thrilled to present Home—So Different, So Appealing, the first of five exhibitions at LACMA in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the ambitious regional collaboration devoted to exploring Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “The spirit of exchange is evident in the conception of this exhibition, a collaboration with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), LACMA, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). Drawing from a range of artist voices, this exhibition offers a thought-provoking look into the ways in which Latino and Latin American artists have understood the idea of ‘home’ amid a changing political and socioeconomic landscape.”

Exhibition co-curators Chon Noriega (CSRC director and adjunct curator at LACMA), Mari Carmen Ramírez (curator and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at MFAH), and Pilar Tompkins Rivas (director of the Vincent Price Art Museum) added, “This exhibition is not a historical survey but a thematic investigation of home—a dwelling, residence, or place of origin—an embodiment of one of the basic concepts for understanding an individual or group within a larger physical and social environment. Here the artists speak across art history and social history in order to get at something about home that is so different, so appealing.”

The exhibition is organized thematically into sub-categories of “home” spanning seven decades, allowing both historical and contemporary artists to create a dialogue across time and space. The curators use a “constellation model” that allows for works by artists from different nationalities and generations to be compared and contrasted on a level playing field. As co-curator Ramírez, whose earlier exhibitions developed this model, explains, “The constellations are arranged according to conceptual or formal affinities as well as tensions that illuminate unsuspected relations between the artists and their production.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the CSRC Press and distributed through University of Washington Press.

In our next posting, we will look at Playing with Fire: The Art of Carlos Alamaraz at LACMA.