THE TELENOVELA AS A SUBJECT OF RESEARCH AT AMERICAS SOCIETY

Americas Society (New York) will open Telenovela on September 9, 2026, an exhibition exploring how contemporary Latin American artists have engaged with the visual and conceptual richness of telenovelas, the most widely circulated Latino cultural product of the postwar period. The exhibition sets out to show that soap operas constitute an enduring pan-American phenomenon that transcends geographic borders, social stratification, and cultural categories.

Curated by Aime Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Art at Americas Society, the exhibition examines the telenovela's profound cultural, social, and political relevance across the Western Hemisphere, positioning it as a serious subject of research within art history.

Telenovelas are a fundamental piece of inter-American dialogue. Over the years, productions from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil have become international hits. Americas Society's exhibition examines how, despite having traditionally been associated with lower-prestige forms of cultural consumption, the television serial have enjoyed enormous popularity, helping shape cultural identities and strengthen social bonds by offering an essential platform for discussing personal and collective experiences.

Open to the public through March 2027, the exhibition includes a collaboration with Mexican artist Pablo Helguera, whose ongoing work Instituto de la Telenovela (2007–present) was a pioneering exploration of this subject. Positioned at the entrance to the exhibition, the audiovisual installation — composed of multiple screens integrated among stage elements characteristic of a telenovela set — serves as a prologue to more than fifty works created across a wide range of media, from video art and photography to installation, painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage.

The artists included in the exhibition are: Alexander Apostol; Amelia Bande; Miguel Calderon; Sol Calero and Dafna Maimon; Stephen Callis, Leslie Ernst, Ruben Ortiz-Torres, and Sandra Ramírez; Déborah Castillo; Leda Catunda; Alex Červený; Phil Collins; Wilson Díaz; Andrés Duque; Enrique Flores; Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante; Julio Galan; Dalton Gata; Camilo Godoy; Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Martine Gutierrez; Pablo Helguera; Miriam Inez da Silva; Katalina Iturralde; Christian Jankowski; Maripaz Jaramillo; Silvan Kalin; Leandro Katz; Juan David Laserna; Jose Leonilson; Lolo y Lauti; Daniela Lovera and Juan Nascimento; Arnulfo Luna; Antonio Manuel; Lucas Michael; Jessica Mitrani; Luis Molina-Pantin; Rachelle Mozman Solano; Vik Muniz; Hélio Oiticica; Yoshua Okón; Luis Bernardo Oyarzún; Wanda Pimentel; Luciana Pinchiero; Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz; Abigail Reyes; Reynaldo Rivera; Fátima Rodrigo; Daniela Rossell; Marco Rountree; Stefan Ruiz; Teresa Serrano; Rodrigo Valenzuela; Yvonne Venegas; Erika Verzutti; Francesco Vezzoli; Marcia X and Aimberê César; Bruce and Norman Yonemoto.

Telenovela is accompanied by two print publications: an exhibition catalogue featuring essays and an illustrated checklist of works, and Telenovela: A Reader. This academic publication, co-edited by Iglesias Lukin and Lopez Seoane, brings together artworks, archival documents, and multidisciplinary essays exploring telenovelas through the lenses of art history, sociology, anthropology, comparative literature, performance studies, and visual studies.

Telenovela will be on view from September 9 through March 2027 at Americas Society | 680 Park Avenue, New York, United States.