The Daros-Latinamerica Tapes

The Daros-Latinamerica Tapes

Raul Cordero, Still from Un video con 2 defectos, 2001 (Daros-Latinamerica)

Daros-Latinamerica has been acquiring contemporary art from Latin America since the year 2000. At present the collection includes the work of over 70 different artists from almost all of the countries in Latin America. These works have been created over the past twenty years, but are complemented with a few selected earlier works. As heterogeneous as the continent itself, the collection is not limited to one specific form. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, graphics, photographs, installations and videos all have a place within it. The Daros-Latinamerica Collection is currently one of the most up-to-the-minute and extensive collections extant in this area. In 2002/2003, Daros presented a first selection from the collection’s photographic works in the Daros Museum in Zurich, entitled La Mirada – Looking at Photography in Latin America Today. The second exhibition organized by Daros-Latinamerica, called Cantos/Cuentos Colombianos – Contemporary Colombian Art , is currently on view in the Daros Museum and shows the work of ten Colombian artists. Both exhibitions are accompanied by extensive catalogues with images of the most important works and interviews with the artists by Dr. Hans-Michael Herzog, director of Daros-Latinamerica.

Huis Marseille will be showing videos by artists such as Juan Carlos Alom (Cuba), Juan Raúl Cordero (Cuba), Oscar Muñoz (Colombia), Liliana Porter (Argentina, living in the USA), Lázaro Saavedra (Cuba) and Martín Sastre (Uruguay, living in Spain). Although these artists come from different countries and have diverse backgrounds, an unmistakable social and political engagement as well as a hate/love relationship with their native land runs like a red thread through their work. It is worthy of note that after an exhibition like U-ABC (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 1986, which included then-current photography from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Chile), the photographic eye in Latin American countries is now considerably less focussed on reportage, and much more on the daily irritations that occur in an extreme, complicated society. The medium of video, used here as a kind of photo-camera-with-a-longer-breath, seems to be better suited for this than the static photograph alone.

See also: www.daros-latinamerica.com