Federico Herrero, Pan de azucar, 2014, acrylic, oil, spray paint, and felt-tip pen on canvas, 65" x 59".
©2013 STUDIO MICHEL ZABÉ/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND KURIMANZUTTO, MEXICO CITY/SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK, GUGGENHEIM UBS MAP PURCHASE FUND
In fact, it is more important. These artists are heirs to the radically politicized hands-on work of a previous generation of Latin American artists—such as Cildo Meireles and Lygia Clark. Modernist history, colonialism, and social inequality are subjects these artists tackle—here are Rafael Ferrer’s 1971 “Artforhum” (for whom?), Juan Downey’s 1979 videos shot by Yanomami tribesmen, Luis Camnitzer’s Art History Lesson no. 6 (2000), with blank slides and empty projectors referring to those excluded by history, and Federico Herrero’s Pan de azucar (2014), which refers obliquely to Rio’s dark past. McDonald’s politely rejected Marta Minujín’s free-lunch proposal for an edible hamburger-encrusted Lady Liberty in 1979, but Alfredo Jaar’s A Logo for America (1987), revolving at Times Square, set the Western hemisphere spinning on its axis.
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