Andrea Giunta: “Goya’s daughter as an artist was a presence erased from history”

Two books marked the childhood of Andrea Giunta (Buenos Aires, 64 years old). “The Martin Fierro “I was illustrating the works of the Argentine Juan Carlos Castagnino and a volume of the Salvat Encyclopedia with the 100 masterpieces of art that I looked at all the time,” she recalls. She wanted to study Exact Sciences, but ended up studying Philosophy and Letters and specialized in art. “My university had a completely Eurocentric curriculum, Argentine art was studied up to 1870, the year of the death of Prilidiano Pueyrredón, a 19th century artist. I asked myself: ‘Why don’t we study contemporary art, or pre-Hispanic art, or Latin American art?’ And they answered me: ‘Because if you study all the styles of European art, you apply them to Argentine art, and you understand it.’ That was the mentality.” She is now a professor of Latin American Art at the University of Buenos Aires, between 2008 and 2013 she directed the Chair of Latin American Art at the American university of Texas and has just published Diversity and Latin American art (Editorial Siglo XXI), an essay that brings together stories of Latin American artists who have broken different glass ceilings.

When did you become aware of the low representation of women in major art centres?

What changed my consciousness was the work of the exhibition Radical women [que comisarió en 2017]due to the degree of opposition from my fellow curators, who considered it unnecessary and absurd to hold an exhibition of women artists. Today, there is a much more egalitarian landscape. The Ni Una Menos movement and the Fourth Wave of feminism resulted in a transformation that is not only numerical, but also of concepts, poetics and representations of the world. Being able to observe diversity instead of constantly focusing on the same five names enriches the art and culture of a country enormously.

“Why have there been no great women artists?” asked Linda Nochlin in 1971. Is the question still relevant?

Yes, art history is working on revising how it has been told. Goya’s daughter has recently been investigated and a catalogue of her work has been published, she was an erased presence. And many of Eileen Gray’s designs that were attributed to Le Corbusier have been reassigned.

What led you to delve deeper into glass ceilings?

I was interested in talking about these profiles because they didn’t have the possibility to exist before. I think there are several glass ceilings in this book. They are not only female artists, they are also older, gay, linked to pre-Hispanic or contemporary indigenous cultures, who are now having a place in the art world. It also raises many questions, such as what does the mainstreamfor how long do you incorporate it… Why do these incorporations happen and just as visibility is given it is forgotten?

Now we are talking about the decolonization from the collections.

It is not only about the decolonisation of the collections, but also everything that has to do with restitution policies. We are in a time of transformation, many museums in Europe are returning the Benin bronzes, but there are also many pieces that are being claimed from Latin America that are not being returned. And not only that, but when they come on the market, European states compete, buy them and they remain in Europe.

How did you select the artists you talk about?

These artists allow me to address different problems. They are proposing feminism from theories that are not militant ones about representation, numbers, power, but rather feminisms that have to do with affection, the anthropocene, our relationship with nature… María Luisa Bemberg in Argentina and Mónica Mayer in Mexico are the first to raise the relationship between art and feminism, activism, the possibility of making feminist art that seeks to contribute to awareness, but I also wanted to explore more contemporary artists who address other issues.

He explains that in the face of this union of activism and art that can be seen in proposals such as that of the Chilean group Lastesis (with the ‘performance’ A rapist in your way) “Anti-feminist” reactions are emerging. Are they increasing?

Without a doubt. Feminist discourse became widespread from 2014-2015 onwards and feminism has shown itself to be a movement with a constant share of self-criticism. The new right-wing has understood very well that feminism was not only in the streets, but in the transformation of curricula, in state policies… The cultural battle is to attack not only feminism, but all discourses of difference. I cannot say in a simplistic way that the right-wing emerged as an opposition to feminism, but they have strongly captured the irritation it produces in the power structures, because it not only introduces the fight for women’s rights, but it questions these power structures.

There is increasing diversity in the profiles of directors and juries at awards. Is this reconfiguring the art world?

Being a woman doesn’t mean that you have a more open and open perspective; some women replicate the power structures. But it is true that the greater presence of women who have been trained in ideas that understand that institutions are enriched by diversity is changing things. And I am excited about that process.