What defines contemporary Latin American art? Who are its key exponents? And what role do art collectors play in shaping this field? While these questions are complex and resist easy answers, they provide a concise framework for understanding the exhibition Plural Domains: Selected Works from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) Collection.

Since its founding in 2002, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) has developed one of the most comprehensive and influential contemporary Latin American art collections. Between 2012 and 2015, I had the privilege of serving as director and curator of CIFO, where I participated in the acquisition process and gained in-depth knowledge of the collection. That experience and the critical perspective I now have enabled me to select works that engage in a rich dialogue with the official program of the XIV Cuenca Biennial, offering a unique perspective that complements and enhances it. Many of the artists featured in this exhibition have already left their mark on the Biennial’s history.

The CIFO Collection represents a diverse array of contemporary Latin American artists, spanning generations, countries, disciplines, and experiences. This exhibition reflects CIFO’s generational structure, showcasing established, mid-career, and emerging artists. It also highlights the geographic range of the collection, featuring artists from countries such as Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guatemala—many of whom have pursued their careers beyond their home countries. These artists are trained in a variety of contexts, both within local institutions and in the art schools of global avant-garde centers. Many engage in multidisciplinary or hybrid practices, combining traditional techniques with cutting-edge methods and drawing from the vast repertoire of contemporary art. Moreover, many works are rooted in research, as these artists see art as both a form of inquiry and a reflection on the social and cultural environments they navigate.

The rigid dichotomies that once defined Latin American art—tradition versus revolution, localism versus universalism, figurative versus abstract, political versus apolitical, public versus private—are no longer relevant in today’s artistic landscape. Since the 1960s, Latin American artists have responded to shifting global realities with new creative strategies. Few of them now rely on iconography or narrative tropes to define Latin American identity. Instead, each work challenges stereotypes of what it means to be Latin American. Identifying an artwork’s “Latin American-ness” can be so complex that it often becomes indistinguishable from the practices of artists from other regions—yet this does not diminish the work’s relevance or sense of belonging.

Today, the focus of art has shifted from purely aesthetic concerns to anthropological, political, and philosophical inquiries. Contemporary artists engage with the viewer and consider the social, economic, and cultural forces that shape our increasingly globalized and fragmented world. 

They also explore the relationship between art and other disciplines, addressing topics ranging from the philosophical dilemmas of the present to the sociocultural realities of their environments.

These practices coexist with various artistic strategies, including current trends and reworkings of past methods. Some of the key approaches adopted by contemporary artists include appropriation, estrangement (or decontextualization), archival and documentary practices, deconstruction, intertextuality, performativity of language (prioritizing the discursive over the narrative), and site-specific reflexivity, which has replaced earlier modernist ideas of site-specificity. At the same time, many artists draw from theoretical frameworks such as post-colonial studies, representation theory, systems theory, epistemology, and the social sciences. Their work often tackles complex subjects such as those posed by new materialist philosophies, expanding the dialogue around art’s role in contemporary life.

Attempting to identify a unifying Latin American essence in every work in this exhibition would be overwhelming and ultimately futile. However, if we understand these works as spaces of plural reflection and dialogue, we can appreciate how they address not only the questions relevant to Latin America but also the broader concerns of our contemporary moment.

Jesús Fuenmayor Curator of the Exhibition