Reviews
Reviews of Latin American and international art exhibitions. Critical writing on shows at museums, galleries, and contemporary art spaces.
HE AND I: ON ROMANTIC LOVE AND UNCONSCIOUS DESIRES OF NICOLÁS SAID AND CERVIO MARTINI
On a wall in downtown Buenos Aires, a tiny message from a fortune cookie tells the viewer: “Today is a good day to fall in love; look carefully around you.” Beneath the text sits an egg wearing a magician’s hat, next to a lit mosquito coil. Above it all, a single word: Yo (I).
A PERCEPTUAL LABYRINTH OF JULIO LE PARC AT TATE MODERN
The London-based museum presents a pedagogically structured retrospective on the Franco-Argentine artist, yielding a successful outcome that showcases his experimentation with light, movement, and color while maintaining viewer participation as a key element.
THE TERMS OF INDEPENDENCE
Curated by Gabriela Román González at London’s Brixton House, with the participation of artists Débora Delmar and Ilê Sartuzi, INDEPENDENCE turns its own making into an experiment in what it means to act independently within the legal structures and working relationships that shape cultural production today.
FRIDA AS AN ICON: AN ARGUMENT BETWEEN THESIS AND THE BLOCKBUSTER
The Tate Modern presents a sociological reflection on the construction of Frida Kahlo as a cultural icon through a curatorial discourse that risks becoming a theoretical justification for a proposition of immense commercial appeal.
BODY, EARTH, AND MEMORY: ANA MENDIETA AT TATE MODERN
The British institution reclaims the legacy of the Cuban artist through an exhibition that examines the intersection of her lived experience, nature, and identity, utilizing a museographical approach that transcends mere documentation to bridge ephemeral actions, moving-image works, and sculpture.
FROM ONE DREAM TO ANOTHER: THE 18TH LYON BIENNALE
In a world marked by dizzying change and a constant flow of images and information, the 18th Lyon Biennale encourages us to take the time to observe, disconnect and listen to what the works of the invited artists seek to express. In dialogue with the social, political and economic realities of our time, they question and challenge our certainties, enriching democratic debate, our collective imagination and our ways of living together.
LATIN AMERICAN ART SEEKS A PLACE AT FRIEZE LONDON
The British event highlights the growing presence of Latin American contemporary art, although its visibility remains conditioned by the commercial dynamics of a global fair and by local cultural policies that pragmatically contribute to shaping a contemporary art landscape closer to its audience.
SOLANGE PESSOA IN SANTANDER: MATERIALITY AS THE ORIGIN OF THE SPIRITUAL
The Brazilian artist’s exhibition at the Centro Botín explores the links between matter, nature, spirituality, and architecture through a multidisciplinary body of work that evokes origin and transformation as the fundamental axes of her production.
ON "ANNEMARIE," THE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHER ANNEMARIE HEINRICH
Presented at Argentine film festival BAFICI and soon to premiere at MALBA in Buenos Aires, Annemarie is the documentary about photographer Annemarie Heinrich, directed by her great-granddaughter, Mariana Sanguinetti. Heinrich's work, which has appeared in several editions of Pinta BAphoto, will also be on view this 2026 with the fair celebrating 200 years of photography.
TWO WAYS OF APPROACHING DREAMS AT RUTH BENZACAR GALLERY
With a characteristic exercise of Ruth Benzacar's exhibition program, intergenerational dialogue is established between Roberto Aizenberg's works in "La flor de la distancia" (The flower of distance) and Andrés Piña's "El alma volvió preñada de materia" (The soul returned pregnant with matter).
INSISTING GHOSTS THAT REMAIN IN THIS VENICE BIENNALE'S EDITION
From the ghosts of cyberspace to the Orixás, the Venice Biennale builds correspondences between visible and invisible worlds.
THE GARDENS OF 6 WOMEN ARTISTS AT THE 2026 VENICE BIENNALE
In Minor Keys is the title Koyo Kouoh chose for the Biennale we now read in the light filtered through her branches. What was she telling us? In this piece I reflect on its meaning and on the possibilities artists sow as they resignify the structures of our modernity. It is a walk through six works understood as ecologies, in the way philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers conceptualized it.
MEMORIA STRATA: A MATERIAL STUDY AS A TRIGGER FOR LATIN AMERICAN MIGRATORY MEMORY
"The spiral is a form of transit, a structure that transforms whoever moves through it." With that statement, curator Enzzo Hernández opened the presentation of Memoria Strata, the new artistic research project by Elmer Castillo, inaugurated on August 7 at Estudio-Galleria Mansión Castillo, in Havana.
THE DUTCH PAVILION AND A PERFORMANCE OF CONTRASTS IN VENICE
An orderly, Dutch line. A pavilion, white, tall and closed. We were given generic instructions: no filming, keep silent, respect the tempo of the piece. All the visitors entered together and we followed the implicit choreography, finding where to place ourselves in the space. There is something terribly solemn in performances that make room for waiting, that builds tension.
ESTRANGEMENT AND ANTICIPATION: ORNELLA POCETTI AND IVANA DE VIVANCO AT MACBA
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires (MACBA) presented the work of two women artists. In ¿Cómo suenan las lágrimas antes de secarse? (What Do Tears Sound Like Before They Dry?), Ivana de Vivanco builds a warning. Snakes, with their capacity to sense catastrophe. In Curada de espanto (Cured of Fright), Ornella Pocetti brings together scenes that hold a story that never fully reveals itself. Both artists hold the abyss steady through anticipation and the suspicion of an estrangement. All you have to do is pay attention.
POETRY, LANDSCAPE, AND FORM: ELBA BAIRON AND PAOLA VEGA AT EL MAR
On Saturday, July 4, the exhibition biformes bicoloreadas bitremendas bilejanas lejanas lejanas opened at Museo MAR in Mar del Plata, featuring artists Elba Bairon and Paola Vega, curated by Sofía Dourron.
GRAPHIC DESIGN AS ARTISTIC PRACTICE IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: A HISTORICAL DEBT OF THE ART ECOSYSTEM
Graphic design is one of the most influential engines of contemporary visual culture in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its aesthetic, political, and social impact on the construction of identities and public spheres is undeniable. Yet its presence in the market and in the legitimizing structures of contemporary art continues to occupy a peripheral position.
IN MINOR KEYS: WHAT WE SAW AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
An overhead summer sun, harsh and multiplied by the closeness of the water, beat down on us in the streets, bridges and canals of Venice caught in a heat wave. We were looking for shelter, and then darkness. And then, a panel, an immersive installation by Khaled Sabsabi that glowed in the middle of the entrance to the exhibition. Colors, slow movements, spectral sounds. Can we also imagine, perhaps, certain scents? This is the solemn entrance to the Arsenale in the 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale exhibition.
CHEATING TIME WITH FORNER AND LÓPEZ
At Galería Ruth Benzacar in Buenos Aires, Argentina you'll find “EL ORIGEN DEL MUNDO” and “Futuro acontecer”; two exhibitions with artists building from distant temporalities that are, in their own way, entirely their own.
MANIFEST CHAOS AND ORDER
Alba Triana at Aluna Art Foundation, Miami
VENICE BIENNALE 2026: A CONTEMPORARY LOOK AT MEMORY, ARCHIVE, AND TERRITORY
At the 61st Venice Art Biennale, titled In Minor Keys and conceived by Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh, Latin American artists and projects hold a prominent place within an edition shaped by reflections on memory, territory, identity, and community knowledge.
THE THINGS OF A FAMILY HOME: ON THE HELFT COLLECTION AT W—GALERÍA
"Things house spirits, or at least sprites, and for the collector—possession is the most intimate relationship that one can have with objects: not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them."
Walter Benjamin: Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting (1931)
FROM RELIGIOUS ICONS TO FLUORESCENT ICONS: DAN FLAVIN AND LIGHT AS EXPERIENCE AT MALBA
Luz, color y espacio, the exhibition presented by the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires in collaboration with Dia Art Foundation, offers an experience in which color and space envelop the viewer. It will be open to the public through August 17.
A SECRET FADES IN MY HANDS: AMPARO VIAU'S FIRST SOLO SHOW IN EUROPE
Argentine artist Amparo Viau is presenting her work at ArtNoble Gallery in Milan, Italy, through June 30. The exhibition features a large-scale installation consisting of a continuous drawing approximately forty meters long, created in chalk pastel on paper, along with a series of drawings and bodily fragments that expand upon the themes explored in the main piece.
GONZALEZ-TORRES’ SWEET REVENGE IN MADRID UNRAVELS THE CURATORIAL NARRATIVE
The Museo Reina Sofía presents a selection of more than fifty participatory, reconfigurable and conceptually driven works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, activating a contemporary reading of his practice that exceeds both curatorial boundaries and established discursive frameworks.
WHAT DO THE PAPERS THROWN INTO THE STREET TELL US? JORGE MACCHI EXHIBITS AT MUSEO SÍVORI
In RETOUR the Argentine artist builds a cartography of the city from discarded papers bearing writings that were never meant to be read; on view through August 9, 2026, at Museo Sívori, Buenos Aires.
THE CENTRO BOTÍN REVISITS MARISOL BEYOND THE SCULPTURAL
The Santander-based institution proposes a curatorial reading of Marisol through a major retrospective of her drawing practice, understood as a fundamental axis of her work and as a means of articulating the knowledge acquired through her vital displacements.
THE LEGACY OF EVELYN W. POLITZER (1961–2026) IN MIAMI'S ARTISTIC COMMUNITY
In the week that followed the passing of Evelyn W. Politzer (1961–2026), a pivotal figure in the city's textile art scene, countless expressions of affection emerged alongside a mobilization of cultural initiatives that revealed how, in a time when the sense of community seems to have vanished, art in a city like Miami has been capable of building a social fabric able to bind itself to the meaning of creation even beyond death.
FICTIONS WITH SKIN, A READING OF RUTH BENZACAR'S AUTUMN EXHIBITIONS
Guillermo Iuso and FlorenciaBöhtlingk next to Sebastián Gordin present two exhibitions at the Buenos Aires gallery where text and painting coexist without translating each other.
THE THREAD THAT DOES NOT BREAK THIRTY YEARS LATER AT THE CASTELLO DI RIVOLI
SCAFATI AND PAINTING TRANSFORMED AS AN ACTIVE SPACE
Nombrar el mundo reconsiders painting through a political and affective perspective, expanding the canvas as textile toward sculptural and sonic dimensions as a gesture of resistance.
