NO OCEAN BETWEEN US – THE EXHIBITION THAT CELEBRATES ASIAN DIASPORA IN LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN

Curated by Adriana Ospina, No Ocean Between Us: Art of Asian Diasporas in Latin America & the Caribbean, 1945 - Present was developed and organized for tour by International Arts & Artists in collaboration with the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of the American States, Washington DC.

The richly and multifaceted cultural fabric of Latin America and the Caribbean cannot be fully understood without considering the great variety of threads woven by migratory processes from East, South, and Southeast Asia. No Ocean Between Us: Art of Asian Diasporas in Latin America & The Caribbean, 1945–Present offers a fascinating glimpse of modern and contemporary art through an exploration of flows of migration from Japan, China, India, and Indonesia and the artistic impact in its host countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guyana, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname. By framing artworks as active historical documents, artists in the exhibition reveal the multiple layers of complex and evolving cultural exchanges that have shaped the modern multiethnic societies of today.

Although the initial Asian migration to Latin America and the Caribbean dates from the sixteenth century, it was not until the mid-eighteen century when it actively began due to labor shortages after the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean colonies in the 1830s. The new Latin American Republics, Brazil, Panama, Peru, Argentina, and Mexico along with the Spanish, English, and Dutch empires imported Asian indentured servitude as a low wage force for agriculture in most cases.

The artists in the exhibition explore themes related to the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic crossings of their own or their ancestors underscoring the expansive cultural legacies and transcultural processes. No Ocean Between US departs from the Organization of American States | Art Museum of the Americas permanent art collection to map familial and personal journeys through which art shapes discourse, seeking to gain a greater understanding of processes of contact and exchange, colonization and decolonization, assimilation and preservation of culture.

The artworks shown here engage with many aspects of a quasi-system of slavery and more contemporary forms of globalization.  They examine the difficult circumstances of arduous migratory journeys, exploitation and discrimination on sugar and tobacco plantations, and racial persecutions. While many of the thousands of workers who came to Latin America and the Caribbean in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century returned to their countries of origin, others settled down in their new homelands with cultural diasporas that attracted new Asian migratory flows after World War II.