DOHA: One of revered Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s best-known paintings is now on display at the National Museum of Qatar. Titled “Baile en Tehuantepec” (“Dance in Tehuantepec”) and completed in 1920, it depicts a group of female Oaxacan dancers dressed in bright costumes poised to begin the Zandunga dance. The painting, like others by Riviera at the time, aimed to depict the social life of Mexico. With time, the work, exhibited a few years later at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, became one of the most expensive paintings in Latin American art.
Lam, Wilfredo, Omi Obini, ALTA. (Supplied)
Nearly a century after Riviera painted the work, it is on show in Doha in “LATINOAMERICANO,” a comprehensive exhibition running until July 19. Showcasing over 170 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, installation, video, photographs, films and archival documentation by over 100 artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Paraguay, Mexico, Venezuela and Uruguay, the exhibition offers an in-depth look at Latin American art from 1900 to the present in what marks the first-ever show of its kind in West Asia and North Africa for the genre.
The exhibition, organized in partnership with Qatar Museums, is a pivotal aspect of the Qatar, Argentina and Chile 2025 Year of Culture. It presents modern and contemporary artworks from the collections of Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Eduardo F. Costantini and Qatar Museums institutions like Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the Future Art Mill Museum, among others.
Rivera, Diego, Baile en Tehuantepec, 1928, Colección Eduardo F. Costantini. (Supplied)
Curated by Issa Al-Shirawi, a Qatari curator, researcher and head of international exhibitions at Qatar Museums, and Maria Amalia Garcia, curator in chief at Malba, the show ambitiously strives to capture the diverse art and culture of an entire continent.
“The exhibition promotes an exchange of knowledge through art, continuing Qatar Museums’ emphasis on showing art histories from underrated and underappreciated art histories,” Al-Shirawi told Arab News, underlining how Latin American artists have consistently challenged narratives, readapted local traditions and influenced artistic movements across the world.
There are several pieces Al-Shirawi notes that highlight the artistic exchange between the Middle East and Latin America.
Candido Portinari. Festa de Sao Joao, 1936. (Supplied)
One is by Uruguayan-born artist Gonzalo Fonseca who traveled to the Middle East during the 1950s where he visited archaeological sites that made a lasting impact on his sculptural work, highly conceptual with great references to architectural forms.
Another is a vibrant painting by Lebanese-born artist Bibi Zogbe, who emigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina and became known throughout South America as “la pintura de flores” (“the flower painter”).
These works are displayed alongside those of both globally renowned artists from the continent, like Colombian artist Fernando Botero, Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam, Belkis Ayon, also from Cuba, known for her work on African influences in the Caribbean island, and Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, among many others.
Candido Portinari. Festa de Sao Joao, 1936. (Supplied)
The exhibition’s in-depth thematic sections provide a first taste for those new to Latin American art.
“At first, we thought we would organize the show chronologically, but then we realized that it was crucial to show the connections between traditional art and various modern and contemporary movements and what influenced these,” Al-Shirawi aid. “How does the traditional translate back into the contemporary? And how does the contemporary go back to the traditional?
A poignant multisensory installation that demonstrates this and that, in Al-Shirawi’s opinion, serves as one of the “anchor” works for the exhibition is by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuna. Titled “Quipu desparecido” (“Disappeared Quipu,” 2018), it refers to the Andean civilization’s quipus — knotted strings made of colored and spun or plied wood or llama hair — used to record information. The practice was crucial to societal organization across the ancient Incan Empire but was decimated by the Spanish colonization. Vicuna’s artwork pays homage to these important threads to reactivate the memory of the quipus, which she refers to as a “poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once.”
