For the second stage of this Jaguar route, the Jaguar Arte team will meet you at Fundación Concepción 41 in La Antigua, Guatemala. This space invites us to discover a manifestation of art linked to the environment and history, by reinvesting a previously abandoned building after its destruction by an earthquake in 1773.
In 2013, when the Foundation was inaugurated, María Rondeau, initiator and director of the project wanted to reinvest these places to transform them into a new center of contemporary Guatemalan art. Since then, every detail has been thought of to highlight the works on display and make them interact with this past to be reconstructed. The alignment of the installations around the porch of the old convent that opens to a huge garden, with the volcano as a frame and inspiration, bears witness to this desire for artistic recreation.
All the artists and art professionals who collaborate with the Foundation carry within them the desire to recover forms and space previously destined for worship and prayer. To this end, they are given carte blanche. As a result, the works, scattered throughout the Foundation, multiply and occupy all the space and invite the visitor to question their relationship with art and with the occupation of space.
The giant installations invite the visitor to rethink the notions of space, forms, and perspectives. This is precisely what the exhibition “Paisaje”, curated by Rosina Cazali, a famous art critic and columnist for the Guatemalan newspaper “El Periódico”, aims to demonstrate. In this space open to everyone, amateurs and professionals, adults and children, thought of as a great open-air event, the idea is to represent the concept of landscape artistically and/or philosophically.
This cultural space is linked to the development of an interdisciplinary and intercultural contemporary art that promotes, disseminates, and confronts the existing visions in Guatemala. Fundación Concepción 41 has decided to consider art as a cultural, political and social process and to use, in addition, to live performances, all possible artistic tools (artistic residency, organization of exhibitions and provision of 'an exhibition space').
Among all the works produced in this context, Strange Fruit, Bitter Fruit: The Consequences of Abundance (2016), produced by Moisés Barrios, re-examines the relations that man has with nature and, possibly, denounces the socio-cultural and socio-political systems that derive from it.
This work focuses on the actions of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala and aims, above all, to build on the massive cultivation of bananas, leading the Guatemalan population to see their landscapes changed.
Fundación Concepción 41 is a powerful laboratory for questioning the changing socio-environmental reality, which has been deploying energy treasures and artistic experiments for almost 6 years.
Find :The Jaguar Route, a tour around the art centers in Latin America related to nature.
Antoine Troccaz