Review: Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today

South London Gallery, 10 June-04 September 2016

Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today presents the culmination of a year's research and acquisition by curator Pablo León de la Barra. His premise is historical and corrective and sets out to showcase under-represented works from the 70s and 80s. The curation is concerned with inspiring dialogue between artists, spectators and generations of both, and despite relying on some predictable thematic 'threads' (e.g. The Tropical), la Barra’s skill is in allowing the works autonomy, to coalesce and perplex our expectations. 

The works which stand out among the forty-something pieces, are the ones which contend with the hypocrisies continuing in Latin America today: endemic corruption, ecological defilement and racial injustice. La Barra's emphasis on the history of resistance art presents us with a genealogy of discursive works that may be known in their native countries but are not widely celebrated beyond. Most compelling are the moments that speak to the tensions lurking in the gallery itself; between the financiers with their rampant expansion into emergent markets and the artists who attack the oligarchs with absurdity and directness. Emblematic of this is Minerva Cuevas' Del Montte-Bananeras (2003), a strident, scratchy installation that upsets the Del Monte aesthetic, reproducing the transnational corporation’s logo onto brickwork above a clutch of South London palms. 

Overall these moments feel curtailed. Like a luxury compound on some equatorial island we are enthralled when inside and only sense on departure that the place has been sanitised and inconvenient truths have been ejected to a safe distance. Most inconvenient of all is the corporate sponsor UBS, whose record in the region is far from pristine. La Barra has deftly bent the limits imposed by the corporate sponsor amassing a travelling survey ripe with wit and vibrancy.