Nostalgia de izquierda: Fisuras a un loop político-estético

Saenger Gallery opens Nostalgia de izquierda. Fisuras a un loop político-estético a collective exhibition curated by Natalia de la Rosa featuring the work of four artists: Tatyana Zambrano (Medellín), el colectivo Depois do fim da arte (São Paulo), Arhat Alejandro (Maravatío-Guadalajara) and Alfredo Bojórquez (Mérida-CDMX).

This exhibition proposal takes up a text by Enzo Traverso to rethink the relationship between art and politics in Latin America. The book Left Melancholy deals with the history (rise and fall) of the left in the form of a melancholic mourning, a fundamental characteristic proposed by the author to describe a process after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Between history (which points towards the future) and memory (which looks back), in the Marxist distribution of time, the bet was always on the former. For Traverso, recovering utopia in times of crisis and redefining the position of Marxism in relation to memory it is the antidote to get out of mourning and melancholy and to constitute new alternative political options to capitalism. From this approach, we think about the same condition and expectations of political art in Latin America, from the dialogue between Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. In the general discourse of global art, regional art is often described as "political", however, these characterizations are linked to a notion of militancy that has expired in the face of other processes, such as anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial ones, as well as to new political processes that break the traditional dichotomous notion between left and right. Faced with this panorama, we present the work of four artists: Tatyana Zambrano (Medellín), the Depois do fim da arte collective (São Paulo), Arhat Alejandro (Maravatío-Guadalajara) and Alfredo Bojórquez (Mérida-CDMX), to rethink the forms in which political symbols are reappropriated, put into crisis and reformulated. In this way, it is intended to demonstrate other ways of thinking about melancholy in the face of Marxism, anarchism, the revolution, and the conditions where it operates in the face of catastrophe.

— Saenger Galería