SUR:Biennial 2011
Up and Under - SUR:biennial Re-Maps the South
Essay by Sharon Mizota
The SUR:biennial ventures to turn the world upside down. Sur, which means south in Spanish, designates both a geographical region - all of the featured artists have some relation to the cultures of Latin America - and something of an underdog stance. The exhibition, which sprawls across three venues in Los Angeles and includes sculpture, painting, installation, photography, video, and performance, is a showcase for these artists, most of whom are young. In this sense sur suggests at least two things bubbling up from below - influences from the geographic south and the emergence of something new. By allowing for these multiple meanings, SUR:biennial co-founders Ronald Lopez and Robert Miller make intriguing connections between this emergence, the global south, and the geography of Southern California, in particular East L.A.
For East L.A. is SUR in a number of ways. It is of course located in the southern part of the U.S.; it is the home of many people from points further south (and their descendants), and it is, in terms of the mainstream art world, basically underground. This first SUR:biennial takes place during the run of Pacific Standard Time, a large, region-wide slate of exhibitions dedicated to the recent history of art in L.A. Yet, although these shows feature many artists from East L.A., few of the exhibitions are located anywhere near it. This paucity of museums and other art venues has kept the area largely off the map of the wider art world. The SUR:biennial sets out to rectify this, bringing East L.A. out of the shadows as a destination for contemporary art.
However, in an art world that is increasingly globalized, does place make a difference? The international biennial circuit is more or less dominated by the lingua franca of conceptual art, in which ideas rather than media or style are paramount. Much of the art being made in Sao Paulo looks a lot like the art being made in Beijing, or London, or Mumbai. The artists in the SUR:biennial are no exception. They are all more or less fluent in the symbolic language of juxtaposition, irony, and incongruity. This is unremarkable in the context of global biennials, but in East L.A., where Latino art and artists have long been associated with murals and other traditional art forms, it does make a difference. Context, as they say, is everything.
That said, the SUR:biennial does more than bring contemporary conceptual art to East L.A. In some ways it carries on a dialogue begun a decade ago in exhibitions like 2001’s Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem, or more recently (and locally), 2008’s Phantom Sightings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The former introduced the concept of “post-black art,” or art that dealt with race and racism without being confined to narrow, stereotypical definitions of what “black” meant or looked like. The latter, in a similar vein, was subtitled Art after the Chicano Movement, a somewhat cagey but provocative way of saying that although all of the artists in the show were Chicano, they were not making your abuela’s Chicano art.
Like the figures featured in these shows, the artists of the SUR:biennial are using the language of conceptual art to engage with political, social, and personal issues influenced by the transition or translation from one culture to another. (The theme of this first installment is Adaptation, Assimilation, & Acculturation.) As U.S. residents with Latin American roots and influences, the artists have likely encountered stereotypes or cultural misunderstandings that define expectations of Latin American art. To say that one is influenced by Latin American cultures instantly conjures up stereotypical images of textiles, ceramics, or religious art. By operating to varying degrees within the language of conceptual art, the SUR:biennial artists defy these assumptions. Even those who work in a traditional medium, such as painting, are subtly tweaking it, so that it updates the form or escapes easy classification.
The conventions of contemporary art however, pose different problems. From the perspective of the mainstream art world, the SUR:biennial artists could be seen as injecting Latin American cultural influences and concerns into a form that’s easier fora global art audience to consume. In other words, their work may defy stereotypes, but it also risks abandoning the local flavor that makes it distinctive. Are they simplifying and commodifying Latin American-ness by translating it into a language that appeals to a global public?
The variety and richness of the works in the SUR:biennial suggest that this is not the case. The notion of translation implies an inside and an outside - two sides so totally separate and different from one another that they cannot communicate except through an intermediary. In our global society, this situation has become increasingly rare. People, capital, and ideas flow regularly across traditional geographic, political and cultural boundaries. Communication happens effortlessly and instantaneously via electronic translators. There is simply, with apologies to Gertrude Stein, no there there anymore. Everywhere, in a sense, is here.
This is the world in which the SUR:biennial artists live and work. They do not have to choose between here and there, the local and the global. The exhibition does not chart a movement from one to the other, but the overlapping of one and the other. The SUR:biennial not only brings the art world to East L.A., it subtly transforms the terms of art discourse, expanding the definitions of what art is, where it is found, and who makes it.
This, I believe is the point of the SUR:biennial. The south, whether you take it to mean Latin America, Southern California, or the underground, is not some place down below us, but right here.
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