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Art Systems in Latin America. A traveling exhibition from Buenos Aires (1974-75)

16 May 2024 - 12 Jan 2025

Fifty years after Art Systems in Latin America first set foot in Antwerp, M HKA is dedicating an archival presentation to the exhibition. Art Systems in Latin America is an exhibition of contemporary Latin American art that traveled to Antwerp, Brussels, London, Paris, and Ferrara in the years 1974-75.

Jorge Glusberg, director of the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC) in Buenos Aires organized the exhibition in collaboration with Florent Bex, director of the International Cultural Centre (ICC) in Antwerp. Together with the artworks in the exhibition, some twenty Latin American artists traveled to Belgium. For several of them, this relocation marked the beginning of a fascinating journey through Europe during which new encounters and new places would leave a lasting impression on their work.

Drawing on a selection of archival documents, the presentation highlights the new forms of mobility introduced by this art in the mid-1970s. Aspects ranging from transportation, migration, portable art (systems) to political mobilization are framed within the broader artistic, institutional, and cultural-political context of the 1960s and 70s.

A collaboration with KB45

Art Systems in Latin America. A traveling exhibition from Buenos Aires (1974-75) is curated by Ine Engels, Elize Mazadiego, Wouter Davidts and the research group KB45.

The multidisciplinary research group KB45 (Art in Belgium since 1945) is located at Ghent University and is led by Prof. Wouter Davidts. KB45 aims to map the situation of the living arts in Belgium since 1945 and to contextualize it within the larger artistic culture in the country’s postwar era, from a both local and international perspective.

Lea Lublin, Wat is Kunst? (What is Art?), 1975, Groenplaats, Antwerp. Realised within the series Interrogations sur l’art. Discours sur l’art. (1974-79). Copyright: Bert Van Evercooren.