Guayasamín

“The irrepressible corporeality of  Oswaldo Guayasamín’s figures constitutes, without a doubt, one the most striking qualities of his  work. In his images, the spiritual, the abstract, the universal, and the ethereal of the human essence finds its form, its undeniable materiality. History does not acquire in his art an allegorical dimension, nor is the voice of the artist lost amidst a forest of symbols.  History and its multiple, anonymous stories are represented, rather, as open flesh:  wounded bodies, corpus delicti.  The artist composes his figures as if he were turning a kaleidoscope, in which arms and legs, enormous hands and feet, boundlessly open,  connect with each other composing a dreamlike landscape. At the same time, the body is nature. Since there is nothing left, the figures show their skeletons, their ribs,  joints, and clavicles.  Arms,  hands, and legs reveal  their veins and arteries as if they were dried nervures, or arid sceneries of the Andean mountains. A ceremonial, primordial, and ritualistic quality traverses Guayasamin’s human images, which appear as if they had been taken by surprise in a moment of  sadness, desperation or existential bewilderment. The work of Guayasamín is a martyrlogy, a memorial of suffering...”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The invitation made in a familiar rhetoric by the advertising machine at the beginning of Ridley Scott’s film suggests, among other things, that at least in some forms of political imagination, it would be impossible today to depict a future in which some notion of colonialism and enslavement is not present. The quote also suggests that the world itself might be becoming too small a place to satisfy, within its traditional parameters, the ambition of colonial domination; it expresses a vision of another New World, for which yet another colonial beginning is imagined. Post-colonialism, trans-colonialism, or coloniality at large, finally on the loose, unconfined, universal?...”

 

 

“Pese a la innovación de algunos argumentos el replanteo de que ha sido objeto en los últimos años el debate sobre el concepto de literatura mundial  parece un déjà vu en los estudios latinoamericanos. Aparte de la larga tradición de esta noción en el campo de la literatura comparada, pensar América Latina desde categorías, procesos y lugares teóricos europeos constituye una estrategia reincidente y naturalizada en la historiografía de la región, aunque numerosos aportes —muchos de ellos elaborados por quienes colaboran en este mismo libro— hayan abierto desde hace muchos años nuevas direcciones para nuestro trabajo...”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“La reflexión sobre el sentido y direcciones de la crítica ha sido siempre una tarea central del latinoamericanismo. Las relaciones entre pensamiento    y poder, ideología y sociedad, producción simbólica y trabajo académico, para mencionar aquí sólo algunas de las líneas por las que se ha orientado la actividad metacrítica en nuestro campo, siempre han sido entendidas como esenciales para la comprensión del lugar que ocupa la labor intelectual y particularmente la crítica de la cultura en sociedades marcadas desde sus inicios por urgencias mayores...”