Permission To Be Global

Curated by Jen Mergel, Robert L. Beal, Enid L. Beal, and Bruce A. Beal, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, and Liz Munsell, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and MFA Programs, both of the MFA, in consultation with Jesús Fuenmayor, Director and Curator of CIFO.

This exhibition traveled to The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
March 19 - July 13, 2014

Power in balance. Exchange across borders. Freedom to occupy and participate. Vigilant witness to history. These ideals of a "global" world, one which values equal engagement across cultures, differ starkly from the unequal realities of globalization. For decades, artists across Latin America have addressed these disparities using visual strategies that resonate within local and international contexts. Engaging critically with their practices permits U.S. institutions and audiences to examine the political motives and broad cultural impacts of globalization.

Permission To Be Global / Prácticas Globales interrogates what it means “to be global” today through a selection of works from the past six decades by 61 artists from over a dozen nations. Their experiences across generations and geographies are diverse, and their styles and media are varied. Yet they each share a discerning attention to restrictive political and aesthetic constructs: social hierarchies, physical boundaries, “pure” abstraction, and silenced voices.

Organized in four thematic sections—Power Parodied, Borders Redefined, Occupied Geometries, and Absence Accumulated—their unique works defy institutional restrictions on expression in their own countries and abroad. The exhibition’s title provokes questions: What forces authorize or deny the flow of people and perspectives in the Americas? Who has the vision and capacity to promote expansive, “global” thinking? Permission To Be Global / Prácticas Globalesconfronts the problematic category of “Latin American art”—itself an invention of early globalization—by reflecting on its diversity, distribution, reception, visibility, and influence worldwide.

The Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection includes significant works by artists from across the world. This collection exhibition is CIFO's first to focus specifically on contemporary art from Latin America, a field that the Foundation has helped shape for over a decade. Developed directly with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), the presentation aims to expand U.S. reception and appreciation of this art's global influence and traveled to Boston in March 2014.

Artists
Eduardo Abaroa, Francis Alÿs, Eduardo Basualdo, Alberto Borea, Ricardo Brey, Waltércio Caldas, Luis Camnitzer, Yoan Capote, Yaima Carrazana, Lygia Clark, José Damasceno, Gabriel de la Mora, Juan Roberto Diago, Eugenio Dittborn, Marisol Escobar, Eugenio Espinoza, Magdalena Fernández, León Ferrari, Lucio Fontana, René Francisco + Eduardo Ponjuan, Regina José Galindo, Carlos Garaicoa, Mathias Goeritz, Fernanda Gomes, Pablo Helguera, Inti Hernandez, Guillermo Kuitca, Jac Leirner, Nelson Leirner, Glenda León, Carlos Leppe, Mateo López, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Anna Maria Maiolino, Marepe (Marcos Reis Peixoto), José Carlos Martinat, Daniel Medina, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, Israel Meza Moreno (Moris), Marta Minujín, Priscilla Monge, Oscar Muñoz, Ernesto Neto, Rivane Neuenschwander, Yoshua Okón, Gabriel Orozco, Daniela Ortiz, Claudio Perna, Liliana Porter, Wilfredo Prieto, Ishmael Randall Weeks, Nicolás Robbio, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Lázaro Saavedra, Regina Silveira, Valeska Soares, Meyer Vaisman, Sergio Vega, Horacio Zabala.