Heart of the hemisphere

www.miami.com Posted on Sun, Mar. 16, 2003 BY ELISA TURNER and DANIEL CHANG elisaturn@aol.com

In the past decade, Miami has become the international stage of choice for contemporary artists and galleries drawn by the city's reputation as a center of Latin American culture and commerce.

A new wave of artists and curators have relocated to South Florida. Dealers and fairs have followed suit and infused Miami with the promise of becoming a capital of contemporary Latin American art.

But whether South Florida can fulfill that potential is open to interpretation. The region remains hindered by the absence of a major museum collection that regularly showcases Latin American art, the conservative tastes of local galleries and collectors, and the lack of a research center turning out groundbreaking scholarship and exhibits.

What's more, some see no glory in the label ''Latin American art'' and others challenge its accuracy in an era when contemporary art has shed nationalist tendencies and adopted a global identity.

Still, South Florida's influx of Latin American artists, galleries and curators has created the momentum for a movement, as evidenced by the latest fair to showcase the genre -- arteAméricas Miami 2003 -- which debuts Friday at the Coconut Grove Convention Center.

''Miami's on the radar now,'' says curator Sylvia Karmen Cubiñá, who has been busy assembling exhibits in Miami's Design District since she moved to South Florida from Puerto Rico in fall 2002.

''It used to be more of a South Beach scene,'' Cubiñá says. Now the city can be a place that ``will not only be a commercial scene with buying and selling, but where people will create and ideas will boil.''

For years, Miami has been home to collectors of works by modern masters such as Wifredo Lam, as well as galleries that represent a range of contemporary Latin American art, but with a heavy emphasis on more traditional painting.

But Miami's new love affair with Latin American art is due, in part, to increased immigration from South America. An influx of émigrés from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and elsewhere during the past decade has made Miami a synthesizing frontier where contemporary Latin American art can thrive unencumbered by nationalism or tradition.

''I think that's one of our strengths,'' says Miami Art Museum associate curator Cheryl Hartup. ``Miami has a strong international mix.''

FEELING AT HOME

Milagros Bello is an art critic and judge on the selection committee for arteAméricas Miami 2003, which will feature works from 15 U.S. galleries and 30 from the Caribbean and Latin America.

Bello describes a local art scene that thrives at the intersection of two of South Florida's overriding themes: tourism and immigration.

''People who come here on business or to shop, they run into a museum or know someone who has art from another country,'' she says. ``That's where the interchange happens, with business and culture and vacations.''

As a city not bound by decades-old conventions, Miami also offers creative freedom and opportunity, says Odalis Valdivieso, a Venezuelan artist who moved to South Florida a few years ago.

''We were tired or bored in our own countries, or [left] because of social and political situations,'' says Valdivieso, who has been showing her large-scale drawings at Locust Projects and other local venues. ``Now we are here to do what we couldn't do over there.''

LOCAL CONSERVATISM

Some artists, though, see a conservative, even staid, bent in the local art scene. Maria José Arjona, a performance artist who moved to South Florida from Bogotá, says Art Basel opened Miami's eyes to a variety of art from the rest of the world.

Yet, Arjona says, ``a lot of people are willing to see oil paintings on canvas, but forget about drawings or whatever is new.''

Some even argue that the term ''Latin American art'' is limiting and clashes with the international realities of Miami and of the contemporary art world.

Fred Snitzer, owner of Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, represents some of Miami's best-known Latin American artists, including Cuban-born painter Jose Bedia. Snitzer believes there's too much passing for Latin American art.

''In many ways Latin American art is a catchall for anything in Latin America and there's a wide range of quality in terms of that,'' Snitzer says. ``There's very, very good art being made in Latin America and there's tons and tons of garbage -- decorative, sort of not interesting work. Maybe its only promotional value is that it's Latin American.''

Another local dealer takes issue with a fair being marketed as only for Latin American art, insisting that ``regionalizing contemporary art today doesn't have any meaning.''

OPENING DOORS

But as a young city increasingly open to more experimental work Miami has opened new doors for artists.

Artist and curator Robert Chambers, for example, presented Arjona's work at the Bass Museum of Art in 2001, and that led to an invitation for her to perform last fall at Exit Art in New York.

South Florida still lacks the hallmarks of a true capital of Latin American art, namely a pace-setting research center and a museum where a range of artists can be seen regularly -- though current shows at the Lowe Art Museum, MAM and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale do feature a variety of work by artists from Latin America.

Hartup, the associate curator at MAM, says more should be done. ''Miami doesn't have a big presence in Latin American art discourse, in terms of scholarship and organized exhibits,'' she says.

Perhaps Florida International University could build upon lectures and courses offered by professors Carol Damian and Juan Martinez and contribute ''more programming, faculty positions, and recruiting [of] top students,'' Hartup said. ``It's just a natural.''

RACIAL EVOLUTION

If the nation's demographics are any measure, it may be a matter of time before art from Latin America becomes second nature.

As Hispanics become a larger part of the nation's population -- and as countries like Mexico become important trading partners -- many are discovering a taste for Latin America.

Gregorio Luke, director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Calif., sees the preponderance of Latin American art as an indicator of America's ethnic and racial evolution.

''What is really going on and nobody wants to call it by its name but what you're really looking at is that the U.S. itself is becoming Latin American,'' Luke says. ``What is the essence of Latin America? It's a simple thing. It's the mixture of races that does not exist in the North.''

Such attitudes point to a sea change in the art market, where a younger generation is more accepting of the diversity of Latin American and contemporary art.

Because of that change, Coral Gables gallery owner Gary Nader no longer will host an annual Latin American art auction. Instead, Nader says, he will participate in fairs that feature a range of international artists.

''Before it was only Cubans buying Cubans, Venezuelans buying Venezuelans. That was the norm, and now it's the exception,'' Nader says. ``Now people want to have a more open collection. Globalization has taken over.''