Latin Elephant launches new public programme in partnership with Gasworks, South London Gallery and in collaboration with Tate. Supported by the Arts Council England, the programme will enable access and increase participation in the arts by the Latin American communities in the UK
Programmes running from February until July 2022
Online via Zoom and offline at Gasworks, South London Gallery and Tate
Free tickets available in this link
Inhabiting Spaces, the art public programme 2021-2022 conceived by the recognised charity Latin Elephant, will have leading UK art institutions Gasworks, South London Gallery and TATE collaborating on a series of cultural activities to enable access, explore creativity and increase participation in arts by the Latin American communities in the UK.
Timed to take place during February 2022, the first structure of Inhabiting Spaces titled ‘Working Disobedience from Latin America’, an international encounter organised in collaboration with Working Disobedience Platform,will see online and offline conversations and performances, involving 35 participants working on Latinamerican art and cultures. This part of the programme will look at contemporary art practices and colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonialism in Latin America, focusing on the different forms that power takes in the region.
These sessions will highlight ways to activate a de/anticolonial practice in Latin America and will invite participants and audiences to think how to dislocate power relations within the art system and how to propose new power dynamics for an extended art field.
One of the highlights of the series is the panel discussion titled Decolonial Perspectives on Exhibition-Making, Heritage and Material Cultures taking place on the 23rd of February at Gasworks where special guests will focus on the politics of display, heritage and material cultures, in order to interrogate the future role and place for art within institutions. For the full programme of ‘Working Disobedience from Latin America’, including titles, dates and times please see below or check this link
The second part of Latin Elephant’s art public programme is ‘Right to Inhabit’ which consists of a series of 6 commissioned workshops delivered by 6 Latin American contemporary visual artists, in partnership with South London Gallery and Gasworks, and with the collaboration of Tate. These research-based workshops will explore the meanings of inhabiting today while socially engaging with the realities of Latin American communities in the UK.
The series of workshops will kick off at Gasworks on the 5th of March with Sebastian Calfuqueo, a Chilean Indigenous Mapuche non-binary artist who will facilitate Insubordinate Bodies. Departing from the history of Latin American performance art and its various forms of resistance to colonialism, participants of this workshop will explore how gendered and racialised bodies affirm themselves in the context of the Southern Cone and beyond.
Following Calfuqueo’s workshop, on the 12th of March Chilean artist Carolina Illanes will present at Tate modern a workshop to reflect on recent transformations carried out at Elephant and Castle through documents, letters, architectural drawings, and photographs taken from public archives, elements that comprise evidence through which to rebuild fragments of urban and residential places that no longer exist.
Subsequently, there will be further workshops in May, June and July with artists to be announced soon.
All the activities are free and open to all.
Inhabiting Spaces is supported by the generosity of the Arts Council England which recognised the value of this programme in the impact it will have in the Latin American community in the UK, by strengthening Latinamerican audiences and increasing the community’s confidence while enabling their access and participation in the arts and cultural scene of the UK.
Patria Roman, Chair of Trustees at Latin Elephant says:
“One of the aims of this programme is to delve into the power relations involved in the design of cities and how these are observed in communities that are less visible when thinking about inhabiting cities, whether in London, San Juan de Puerto Rico, or Santiago de Chile.”
Joselyne Contreras Cerda, Public Programme Curator at Latin Elephant says : “This programme appears at a particularly relevant moment in and from Latin America, considering the political, social, environmental crisis in the region, which is observed with great attention from different places and territories, making it possible to see other forms of relations. Our aim is to open a reflection about the meanings and senses of inhabiting today, and how it is intersected with issues of infrastructure.”
For further information, interviews and images please contact Joselyne Contreras or Sophie Wall at info@latinelephant.org