Photo set

The Centro De Arte y Creacion Industrial Laboral of Gijon (in the Asturias), produces (in collaboration with the Fundación Telefónica) and hosts Emergentes, an exhibition of Latin American artists who communicate using the new languages of contemporaneity and experiment with new expressive forms using digital media. Ten artworks centered around the hybridization of science and technology and its effects on artistic and social processes: the artist observes his social context, sees the effects of science and technology and ponders about the new forms of cultural interaction produced by their influence. The answers vary, nonetheless it’s possible to see a common denominator in the recent works produced in Latin America (or which can be ascribed to that area). This is the belief of the curator, José-Carlos Mariátegui and, indeed, the exhibited works seem to create an organic reality where each installation introduces or assumes some of the themes which will be developed by the others: from Deretano’s psychographic study on the urban sound contexts to Rejane Cantoni’s and Daniela Kutschat’s representation in sound of human interactions using the elementary particles space is made of; from the reflection on the obsessive presence of information in every contemporary ambient, by the Peruvians Martinat and Mayorga, to Mariano Sardon’s research on the interoperability of a text and its digital renditions. Visiting Emergentes is like being carried hand-in-hand to a universe which is often – unfortunately – ignored by the European digital art world, a very tightly knit and surprising universe, rich in reciprocal references, which is all the more surprising because it’s hard to think of another contemporary art exhibition dedicated to Latin American artists. One could argue that digital media, in the Latin continent, have encouraged the creation of a common language where traditional art and media have stressed the differences instead.

Vito Campanelli