The National Council for Culture and the Arts established the first Continental Biennial of Contemporary Indigenous Arts.
The Indigenous creation is often shrouded in disdain: a production for utilitarian purposes with many critics thinking that is aesthetics are not the most effective, even if in recent years there have been efforts to demonstrate that this is not the case, as demostrated in the project ArteSano entre artistas, driven at the Museum of Popular Art.
With a broader perspective, the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA), through the Directorate General of Popular and Indigenous Cultures, promoted the first ContinentalBiennial of Contemporary Indigenous Arts, which sought to recognize an Indigenous creation rooted in their traditional techniques with contemporary proposals.
The documentary Nacimos el 31 de diciembre (We were born on 31 December) of Estercilia Simanca Pushaina, Indigenous Wayuu from Colombia; the monumental work on paper Wathä oni-Gran serpiente tragavenados of Sheroanawë Kakihiiwë, Yanomami of Venezuela: and the photographic series Loö litz beë, of Baldomero Robles, and Báalam. To´on k chi´i´ibalo´on by the artist Maya Flower Canche, were the winners of the biennial.
According to Consuelo Sáizar, Conaculta, this first biennial recognized the forefront and, in particular, the future of Indigenous artists in the community and global context, "articulating the time, space, environment, the universe intellectual, symbolic and aesthetic of their worldviews. "
"The first biennial continental opens an opportunity for the Indigenous art of constructing new paradigms, including our present and future, to the native cultures of the continent."
Fresh look
209 works were sent to the Biennal, of which 147 were sselected from 13 countries, in what was defined as "a way to interrogate the art that is being done with equal prominence and strength from the large spaces power of the Western world to the small villages, small towns "in the words of Miriam Morales, Head of the CMPD.
"When we talk of Indigebous art it is the intention of the creator: an artist, someone who aims to make art, who really wants to be challenged in a different way and that makes it art - to be an artist you must have an intention of creator. "
As part of the Biennial Contemporary Continental Indigenous Arts, National Museum of Popular Culture will host, from August 9, an exhibition of about 50 works that offer an overview of the links and differences in the Indigenous creation throughout the Americas.
The jury consisted of the art critic Dore Ashton, former Minister of Culture of Paraguay and expert in art, popular and Indigenous Latin American culture, Ticio Escobar, Alaskan Yup'ik artist, Susie Silook, Candida Fernandez, director of Fomento Cultural Banamex, and artist and curator Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera.
Against the prevailing view
The question is, Indigenous art is recognized as an art form with all the rights of the "high culture", and what has become both the aesthetic approach to these works?
According to Walter Boesterly, director of the Museum of Popular Art, both forms have the same thread that leads them to create objects, elements, works that somehow serve to embellish the life of man on earth, even if in the social field they do not have the same equal recognition.
For the critic and art historian Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera, the problem is that since the eighteenth century we have been shown the Western view of historical divide: high art, folk art, ancient art, modern art, and we must "unlearn all that history" and that the historical perspective is only one non-exclusive vision, and not always consistent in taste, trends and forms of expression.
"All cultural expressions that have a certain artistic level are art, are they made as they are made, whether anonymous or not, whether utilitarian or not."
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