Paper short abstract:

This paper first critiques the approach to Latin American exhibitions that avoid the political contexts of their curatorial practice and subject, before discussing alternative practices currently being employed at MOA, UBC.

Paper long abstract:

Since its foundation in 1949, MOA has eschewed the idea of narrative neutrality and taken committed political positions on Indigenous issues, which frequently influence the content and style of its public exhibitions. It has provided a forum for Indigenous voices, and will hold its first community based triennial show this year. Over the past seven years, it has curated five major temporary exhibitions and hosted public programs and academic workshops and lectures on Iberia and Latin America. The heightened profile given to Latin American themes at MOA has coincided with a significant increase in Latino populations in British Columbia. That said, past exhibitions have been deemed by some to have avoided aspects of dependent market economies and the effects of the international division of labour on the production and circulation of popular culture and exhibition spectacles.

This presentation will examine the intimate and changing connections between politics and poetics through MOA's past exhibitions before focusing on a major current project, The Arts of Resistance. This exhibition attempts to challenge established genres of presentation by examining the links between colonial and contemporary political forces and different aspects of popular culture. The project is centred around contemporary artistic practices and has resulted in the acquisition of a number of objects directly from communities that have been subjected to violence and state sponsored terrorism. In this way, The Arts of Resistance counters current practices in the exhibition of ethnographic and folkloric art.