For its 2022 edition, The Armory Show has selected curators for its Focus and Platform sections, as well as the Curatorial Leadership Summit, leaders in the field who share complementary areas of expertise. The curators Carla Acevedo-Yates, Tobias Ostrander and Mari Carmen Ramírez all specialise in Latin American art and will bring a unified perspective to the fair’s curated sections at New York City’s Javits Center in September 2022.
“As New York’s Art Fair, it is important to reflect the communities that make up our city,” says Nicole Berry, executive director of the fair. “We look forward to seeing their presentations come to fruition, shining a spotlight not only on the diverse New York art community, but a broader representation of global artistic practices.”
The fair’s decision to focus its curatorial sections on works by Latin American and Latinx artists comes at an opportune time. Latin America has recently been more prevalent in the art market, and the world in general, than in previous years. One of Frida Kahlo’s final self-portraits, Diego y yo (1949), executed just before the artist’s declining health forced her into the British American Hospital in Mexico City for almost a year, sold for $31m ($34.9m with fees) at Sotheby’s in November, smashing Kahlo’s auction record and the record for any Latin American artist, a testament to Kahlo’s appeal and the overall increase in popularity of Latin American art.
To add to the fervor and focus on the region, human rights organisations have for the better part of 2021 been calling for the release of artists in Cuba who were imprisoned simply for fighting against state kneecapping attempts to freely express themselves. One of the leaders of Cuba’s artist lead opposition movements, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year.
The fair’s 2022 Focus section, which will be dedicated to solo and two-artist presentations that examine the intersectionality of issues surrounding the environment, focusing on personal and political climates as they interact with race and gender, will be curated by Acevedo-Yates, the curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago. Platform, the sector dedicated to large-scale installations and site-specific works, will be curated by Ostrander, curator of Latin American art at the Tate, under the theme of “Monumental Change”. And Ramírez, the curator of Latin American art at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Houston, will chair the fifth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit, a day-long, invitation-only symposium focusing on the differences and affinities between Latin American and Latinx art.
