In a Regional Geography class, I was asked to answer the prompt of “To what extent is art a meaningful form of resistance in Latin America? Explain your reasoning.” As we have been focusing on different regions of the world including Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the NASWA region and Southern Asia. Each region has enlightened me on the similarities we all have experienced through colonization, and having our resources and communities be exploited. As a Black Indigenous/Latina artist myself, the excitement I felt when reading this prompt was unimaginable. I, myself, have actually been exploring the topic of “Art as Resistance” in my own personal series of paintings, and illustrations called “Peace as Resistance”. These two themes align very well in the sense that artists are continuing to use their art in a way that tells our stories, even when systems in power (politicians, laws, regimes, etc..) work overtime to silence us, and erase our histories, and our stories. Art is a meaningful form of resistance because it is a free expression with little to no rules. Any rules that have been set in place in regards to art, continue to be pushed and broken, making the art created as a result even more meaningful and revolutionary. In the Radical Women exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, many artists involved in this exhibit worked to break through any boundaries of the silencing and harmful regime that was being pushed at the time (1960-1985). “Many works were realized under harsh political and social conditions, some due to U.S. interventions in Central and South America, that were complicated or compounded by the artists’ experiences as women.”(Brooklyn Museum) The art in this exhibit ranges from paintings, photography, videography, and performance art, all in which had an underlying theme of freedom of expression in the Latinx women of the diaspora. I especially appreciated this exhibit as it was very intersectional, and included Black and Indigenous Latinx’s perspectives. This is revolutionary, as the colonizing powers work really hard to dilute the Black and Indigenous roots of the people in Latin America and oftentimes do not give these groups a platform.

This idea of “Mestizaje” or the mixing of blood with Spanish roots as an attempt to dilute and erase Black and Indigenous cultures is further explored in the article “Decolonizing Identity through Latin American Visual Art” by Anthony Dexter Giannelli. “ From architecture to portraiture, non-Eurocentric creative thought and tradition were cast aside in exchange for a style resembling not that of the environment that the works exist in, but rather that of a ruler's land far, far away. Thankfully, the tides have turned on this tired narrative, and an oppressive Eurocentric chapter has come to a close as we enter a new chapter of appreciation for decolonizing identity in Latin American art, reflecting the diversity of each artist’s own story” (Giannelli). Many of the pieces included in this article really spoke to me, and captured me as I saw myself and my experiences reflected in them. As the effects of European colonization continue to be felt, looked at, and dissected in today’s generations of Latinx people, we are beginning to see a rise in Black and Indigenous identities be reflected in the art of this region. “Answering the question of who we are and who we aren’t as ex-colonized peoples has left an expansive landscape to be explored through the canvas and beyond. Latin American artists trained in European cultural centres such as Paris saw familiar forms of indigenous representation take on new appreciation. Across Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, artists such as Rufino Tamayo, Wifredo Lam, and Fernando de Szyszlo recreated forms of human and emotional representation from their indigenous or Afro-Caribbean heritage that just years ago would have been deemed untalented or primitive by the Eurocentric, fine-art elites”(Giannelli). European colonization left no stone unturned, as it has seeped its way into almost every sector of one’s society, identity, and beliefs, including the art world. Art on a global scale has become Eurocentric in a sense that in order for an artist's work to be considered worthy or valuable, it had to have certain European ideals reflected in it. So to see art that reflects identities that have been looked down upon in itself is very radical. We see this in art movements all over the world from Jean-Michelle Basquiate’s work in 1980’s Brooklyn, to Frida Kahlo’s expressionist work in 1940s-1950’s Mexico. “Frida Kahlo worked to further bring this visual language to the popular audience, to say the least. Her self-portraiture bringing facets of inner-identity to the surface enjoys a cult-like following to this day from the diaspora of Latin Americans searching for canvases of representation that reflect their own struggles with identity” (Giannelli).

All in all, art is a meaningful form of resistance in Latin America because it challenges the status quo that white imperialism has set. For those unaffected or who can turn a blind eye to these effects, you may not see the value in resistance, especially in the form of visual art. But for those of us whose identities, beliefs, and practices have been stained by the effects of colonization, this is revolutionary. It’s about time we begin to reclaim our spaces, and identities rooted in Blackness, Indigeneity, Womanhood, Queerness, and any other experiences those in power continue to invalidate and suppress.

References:

Brooklyn Museum, Radical Women:Latin American Art 1960-1985, April 13-July 22 2018 https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/radical_women

Giannelli, Anthony Dexter, Decolonizing Identity Through Latin American Visual Art, Artland Magazine, March 2025 https://magazine.artland.com/decolonizing-identity-through-latin-american-visual-art/

Art As Resistance: Latin America

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