Walk into most galleries in India, and you’ll find art from Asia, Europe, and America. What you won’t generally find is art from Latin America or Northern Africa. Not because it doesn’t exist. But because of something far more mundane: money, infrastructure, and the quiet habit of looking only in certain directions.
Other Worlds of Art: Artworks from Latin America and Northern Africa is a direct and generous response to that gap. Curated by Liliam Mariana Boti Llanes— historian, researcher, and former President of the Havana Biennial—the exhibition brings together prints and multiples by master artists from Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, and Mozambique, many of them among the most important artists of the 20th century in their own countries.
The exhibition is organised around familiar themes including environment, migration, and abstraction. That’s rather the point. “All over the world, problems tend to be the same. And at the same time, artists all over are also reflecting on the same kind of abstract art. How we see this from our end of the world — that’s the question,” Liliam says.
Liliam, however, doesn’t romanticise the problem. Asked about the scarcity of Latin American and African art in India, she is refreshingly direct. “It’s not a lack of will,” she says. “It’s a lack of economical capacity to do what you want to do. When you don’t have the infrastructure to bring an exhibition, it doesn’t happen.”
Among the artists featured are Luis Camnitzer, the Argentine-Uruguayan conceptual artist; René Francisco Rodríguez, known for his examination of Cuban social structures; Graciela Iturbide, one of Mexico’s most revered photographers; and Valente Malangatana Ngwenya of Mozambique, whose dense, vibrant work carries the struggle for independence into every line.
Entry with museum tickets. On till June 15. 10 am – 6 pm. Closed on Tuesdays. At Varija Gallery, DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum, ECR.
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