***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 16:35:58 -0500
   [From]: "Pablo Helguera" <PHelguera@guggenheim.org>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Censorship 



Estimados Raul and Chris (plus all other forum participants):

I can't help but to respond to your comments on censorship, particularly as
they relate to cultural politics in Chicago - which, by the way, I do think
is an interesting microcosm to understand the cultural politics of the U.S,
including New York.  I worked in Chicago for a decade, including several
years at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum at the heart of the latino
community. I had a decade of exposure to the cultural politics of that city
and can tell you that, whereas a white-anglosaxon mentality does persist, I
think that what you define as racism or a  lack of opportunities for
minority artists is actually a more complex problem that has more to do with
the way we have conceived the division between the mainstreaim and the
minority.
To my view the question lies in whether we, the cultural administrators,
curators, critics, artists and educators, have adequately fought to
structure a system in which minority artists can integrate into the dialogue
of the mainstream withough necessarily loosing their individual identities
or cultural discourse. The Cultural Center's exhibition in 1990 was in fact
a scandal, because in a very naive way the organizers could not figure out
what would be the criteria for selection- whether it was race or quality of
art, and if it was the quality, what was the basis to judge that quality
(and to this time, that confusion still persists). Some years later, in
1997, I was working for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which
organized another controversial exhibition: "Art in Chicago", a survey of
the last 50 years of artmaking in the city. Impossible to please anyone with
such a title and mission; the show was highly criticized too. However, what
is interesting is that the question on how you evaluate and include the art
of the "minorities" arose again; and once again, I can say now, the curators
only solved it partially, compromising by showing the work of a few
well-known latino and black artists. These were artists who would never get
a solo show at a contemporary art museum, such as muralists Marcos Raya and
Alejandro Romero, whereas there was work by other, "integrated", US-raised
and educated latinos such as Inigo Manglano-Ovalle -whose work, in contrast,
is perfectly informed of the comtemporary art vocabulary and deals with
socio-political issues, so it is a perfect fit for any cultural institution.
On the other hand, the presence of Raya and Romero in the show was very
important politically: it showed that the MCA was recognizing the validity
of the art made by the communities in the city. However, the contrast was
evident to anyone who has been in the artworld for a while: the "community"
artists stood out like a sore thumb in that show; only for the reason that
the work was made with some sort of strange, isolationist, antiquated
aesthetics, which if it was to be coldly analyzed by a contemporary art
critic, it would be considered derivative from the muralism of the 30's,
technically mediocre, and, in the case of Raya, a good sample of "outsider
art"; that is, some sort of artist with a handicap that needs to be
appreciated "because of" or even "despite" that handicap.

We are talking about two artists who are supposed to be the best examples of
what a Mexican community in Chicago of 1/2 a million people has produced in 50
years. Why? Is it that there are definitely no good artists in the
communities? I think the answer goes back to the late eighties and the
vigorous defense - and temporary triumph- of multiculturalist theories. By
establishing the right to the "minority" artist to have its own aesthetic,
we created ficticious categories and alienated realities which now the
really aware artists despise. We created terms as "community art", which,
with very few exceptions, have never been taken totally seriously by the
international museum and art world. At the beginning of multiculturalism,
artists found that ethnicity gave them grants, opportunities and shows.
However, with the passage of time, it backfired - rightly so- by showing
that these goods were given because of their being minorities, and not
necessarily on the basis of their being good artists.
 Nowadays, in contrast, minority artists who really know what it means to
"make it" in the artworld usually want to make sure that their nationality
or ethnic heritage is mentioned at the end of the list or not mentioned at
all; nationality is not anymore an attraction, but a simple circumstance.
The art of Raya and Romero, on the contrary, is the art created by the idea
that ethnicity is  an aesthetic. Probably, as Raul suggests, this could be
part of their own subconscious censorship, meaining this thinking that the
world would expect them to paint in a certain style (murals and surrealism,
two very "Mexican" things to do indeed).
I think we have thought too long about modernism and post-modernism as a
white anglo-saxon concepts this entire time, and this is not true at all -
as conceptualism, for instance, has existed all throughout Latin America for
decades. And, even if they where anglo-saxon concepts, nowadays all belongs
to everyone, and an exciting lingua franca (at least to me) allows us to
communicate visually throughout the world. But the tacit, isolationist
thinking of contemporary art as a cultural and not an international reality,
(or even, as an "elitist" practice) I believe, has been damaging to many
artists who are led to believe that their work has to "look different", and
necessarily restrict their visual vocabulary to a particular community.
To summarize, I think that, as a result of the battles we fought in the
eighties in regards to defending multiculturalism, we failed to understand
that deriving cultural influence to one's work does not preclude an artist
to also develop a contemporary art language and therefore have the
opportunity to expand its audience. I think the challenge to the next few
years (forget the millennium) we need to figure out how we can bring artists
to understand these divisions and see that artists expand to the best of
their potential.

A final word, which hopefully ties with the whole "Sensation" discussion:
the mainstream is here to stay; it is the nature of every single specialty,
not only art. Art will always be structured in such a way in which there
will always be a more informed minority and an excluded majority which will
always resent its exclusion. All we can do is understand this process and
articulate our language and our actions in a way in which we can communicate
properly to the various constituencies. And of course we can do it: it's our
job.

Pablo Helguera
Artist and Critic
Senior Manager for Education and Public Programs
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York