New Art Examiner,
September, 1991

In the Heart of the Country/En el Corazon del Pais
The Chicago Public Library Cultural Center
by Claire Wolf Krantz

This show's achievements were subtle. In its endeavor to exhibit the work of Midwestern artists of Latino/ Hispanic descent whose quality was considered exemplary, It raised difficult issues for both curator and critic relating to definitions and questions of significance regarding regionality, ethnicity, and qualify of work. Such concerns are slippery, potentially explosive, and can shift critical focus away from the art itself. By exploring instead of defining his parameters, curator Edward Maldonado managed to deflect some of these concerns and put together a cohesive presentation that also presented work with a wide variety of intentions and styles.

Rather than limiting his curatorial choices by selecting work to illustrate a narrow theme relating to Latino art or culture, or claiming easily contestable affinities, Maldonado focuses on the artists' desire to understand and communicate their lived experiences via art. In extensive studio visits and interviews with the artists, he gleaned valuable testimony to supplement the work on view and translated it into readable texts strategically displayed throughout the exhibit.

The individuals chosen are savvy, accomplished, mature artists. Using a variety of formal means, they each refer to multiple places, languages, ideas and social groups in their work, placing themselves in several spheres at once. One of the most interesting presentations was Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's Assigned Identities, in which he addresses the U.S. immigration policy of measuring and documenting specific parts of an immigrant's physiognomy, like ears, for purposes of identification. He uses various strategies both to call attention to the dehumanizing results of these classificatory procedures and to suggest possibilities for new ways of assigning identities. A series of enlarged photographs printed on blank cards is a particularly direct allusion to identity cards, and how the "blanks are -- or could be -- filled in by anyone.  While this work refers to the immigrant experience and the "green card," it applies to a wider audience s well. One immediately thinks of the ubiquitous driver's licenses, identity cards, passports, and charge cards that most Americans carry. As Manglano-Ovalle exhibits this institutional way of locating identity in the shape of an ear or a fingerprint, he also suggests that it is possible for people to describe themselves, to expand their self-definitions, in individual and interiorized ways.

In an entirely different vein, Silvia Malagrino and Bibiana Suarez focus on the landscape, using personal sources from the past and documents from the present to connect the earth with the body and to suggest the connection of the natural to the culturally formed. Malagrino's Argentinean past has informed her confrontation of the fragility of freedom of expression, an issue pertinent to her both as a citizen and as a woman. Her large, manipulated photographs contain multiple suggestions of the natural. But these same methods of artmaking never let the viewer forget that art is a willed act. Her work suggests that both nature and artistic expression can only thrive under freedom. On the other hand, Suarez's impetus is spurred by her religious embeddedness in Puerto Rico and her difficulty in maintaining a sense of spirituality here on the mainland in a secular environment. Her large, generalized landscape drawings reconnect her to places as well as to her sense of nature and its creation, a spiritual reuniting with the ultimate creativeness.

An alternative let of interactions between specific and generalized, personal and culturally shaped, is represented by muralist Marcos Raya's work. His paintings, collages, and assemblages express themes that are at once peculiar, personal, and rooted in Chicano culture. Yet they communicate outside his milieu as well. A manikin wrapped in plastic tubing and breathing through an oxygen mask becomes terrifying mixture of sexuality, maternity, and illness that alludes to the nightmares of both men and women. Juxtaposed with small paintings, altered photographs, various kinds of masks, wrapped bottles, and other objects, each item becomes supercharged with vibrating meanings resulting from both context and individual content. Although assemblage is a well-worn and often tired and easy technique, in Raya's hands it becomes a viable instrument of his own personal history and psyche.

In his catalogue introduction, curator Maldonado, himself a School of the Art Institute-trained Latino artist, first uses the work "our" to place himself as a mainstream consumer in claiming that these artists have "influenced our consciousness through their art." He then shifts to being a participant as he says that "the works . . . bring us a bit closer to understanding who we are as Latinos in the late twentieth century." Maldonado's stance of simultaneous distance and subjectivity is a far cry from traditional demands for so-called curatorial objectivity. Shifting his focus from the more usual one that looks for shared says of seeing, shared stylistic devices or influences, or shared interests (usually art world-related ones), he asked the artists to describe -- both verbally and through their work -- it means to be a Midwestern Latino or Hispanic artist. For them social and cultural history assumes an importance, a presence, and an inclusiveness still largely rejected by a mainstream that for the most part foregrounds stylistic innovation. Thus, while there are no stylitic surprises in this how, its focus produced an exhibit of consistently strong and interesting work, with fresh, intelligent, and mature solutions to diverse ideological positions and conceptualizations of problems.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.