Contemporary Latin American Art

A general category for art created in Latin America since roughly 1970. Despite the obvious difficulty of casting broad generalizations about such a large and diverse region, the most dominant themes of the last 30 years have been the rise of Conceptual, Minimalist, and Performance art during the 1960s and '70s, and the concurrent and ongoing strand of political practices that engage the contradictions, absurdities, and horrors of Western imperialism and military dictatorships. Contemporary artists like Doris Salcedo take the personal histories of political victims as a starting point, while Vik Muniz focuses on materials to represent the effects of globalization and economic inequality. Especially since the 1990s, Latin American artists (like most artists around the world) work in a context increasingly exposed to the international art world through the proliferation of art fairs, biennials, and museums.