Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond
The Museum of Modern Art
11 W. 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019 USA

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About the Exhibition
Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond is a major exhibition that focuses on late-20th and early-21st century artworks from the transformative gifts made by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros to The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) over the last 25 years. On view from April 30 through September 9, 2023, this exhibition gathers approximately 65 works by Latin American artists who, over the last four decades, have looked at history as the source material for new work. Videos, photographs, paintings, and sculptures are presented in dialogue with MoMA’s extensive Latin American collection, recent acquisitions, a new commission, and select loans.

The exhibition features works by 39 artists from different generations working across Latin America, including Alejandro Cesarco (Uruguay), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Mario García Torres (Mexico), Leandro Katz (Argentina), Suwon Lee (Venezuela), Gilda Mantilla (Peru) and Raimond Chaves (Colombia), Cildo Meireles (Brazil), Rosângela Rennó (Brazil), Mauro Restiffe (Brazil), and José Alejandro Restrepo (Colombia), among others. Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond is organized by Inés Katzenstein, Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America; with Julia Detchon, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints.

The exhibition is divided into three main sections: Returns, Reverberations, and Kinships. In Returns, artists reexamine and reframe visuals of the Latin American landscape, as seen in works such as José Alejandro Restrepo’s Paso del Quindío I (1992) and Leandro Katz’s photographic series The Catherwood Project (1985–95), both based on images produced by European explorers in the region. A grouping of works in this section, including Regina José Galindo’s Looting (2010), show how colonial views of the landscape and its natural resources continue to shape economies of the present.

The next section, Reverberations, brings together works by artists who revisit undervalued or forgotten cultural heritages. This section features a recent video by Las Nietas de Nonó titled FOODTOPIA: Después de todo territorio (2020), as well as Je ne sais si c’en est la cause (2009–02), Mario García Torres’s investigation of lost chapters of art history among the ruins of a Caribbean resort. Reverberations also includes drawings by artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe depicting traditional symbols used by his Yanomami community, alongside a selection of photographs by his longtime friend Laura Anderson Barbata, documenting her experiences in the Amazon region.

Focusing on inherited and chosen family histories, the final section, Kinships, includes works that examine processes of mourning and memorialization. This section features two video works: Alejandro Cesarco’s video portrait Present Memory (2009), which captures an intimate view of the artist’s father during his final days; and Paulo Nazareth’s Antropologia do negro II (2014), which performs a ritual to exorcise the violence of slavery in Brazil. The exhibition closes with En Passant, a newly commissioned mural by Iran do Espírito Santo that uses a degradé of vertical stripes in shades of gray as a metaphor for the effects of time and the fading of memories.

For more information, please visit MoMA's website.

About the Publication
Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue that brings together a diverse array of artworks whose mobilization of Latin America’s varied histories animates both their politics and their poetics. An essay by curator Inés Katzenstein examines how artists working in video, photography, painting, and sculpture over the past four decades have investigated and reimagined the region’s legacies, including long histories of colonialism, undervalued cultural and visual heritages, and inherited and elective kinships. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org.

Related Activities
May 17, 2023 at 6:00 p.m.
Leandro Katz on The Catherwood Project
Click here for more information.

May 23, 2023 at 6:00 p.m.
Artist Talk with Laura Anderson Barbata
Click here for more information.

July 18, 2023 at 12:00 p.m
Anti-paisajes (Online Lecture/panel)
Click here for more information.

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Press
Elegir los recuerdos: otras historias de América Latina se cuentan en el MoMA, La Nación, April 25, 2023

MoMA de Nueva York: artistas latinoamericanos reflexionan sobre historia, El Tiempo, April 25, 2023

New York's MoMA Takes Off the Colonial Lenses, El País, April 27, 2023 (PDF)

Arte latinoamericano contemporáneo protagoniza la nueva exhibición del MoMA, El Nacional, April 27, 2023

Los artistas colombianos que iluminan el MoMA de Nueva York, El Tiempo, April 30, 2023

At MoMA, Latin American Artists Look Back to the Past in Order to Plot Their Future, ARTnews, May 18, 2023

Chosen Memories—Latin American Artists Fascinate at MoMA, New York, Financial Times, August 4, 2023

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Image: Suwon Lee, Lights On, 2011. Inkjet print, 36 1/4 × 47 1/4" (92 × 120 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Promised gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Carolina Cisneros Phelps. © 2023 Suwon Lee