Abstract:

Parallel to documenta 6 in 1977 in Kassel, activists of the International Solidarity Movement organized the production of a mural of 60-meter in a public square. They invited renowned political painters of the Chilean art scene in exile in Paris, such as José Balmes, Gracias Barrios and Guillermo Nunez. The mural was painted collectively with local art students and was signed as the Brigade Pablo Neruda. The International Solidarity Movement supported the anti-fascist political cause against the dictatorship in Chile, the occupation in Palestine and the war against Vietnam, among others, during the 1970s, and was comprised by a transnational network of artists, collectives, intellectuals and institutions committed to the solidarity cause. Forty years after the event, the aesthetic and political implications of the Kassel mural are revisited against the backdrop of current politics and the configuration of the ‘global art’. The talk will explore both the context of the mural production, from the formation of transnational networks committed to the antifascist and solidarity movement of the 1970s, to the intersection of art histories beyond the traditional confines of the national or Eurocentric narratives.

CV:

Paz Guevara is a curator, researcher and author based in Berlin. Currently, she is collaborating in the long-term project Kanon-Fragen at HKW, where she contributed to the exhibition Past Disquiet. Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978 with research on Latin American artists and museums involved in the solidarity movement and the public program. She is co-curator of the upcoming exhibition on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which opens on next November 2017 in HKW. Among others, Guevara has been co-curator of In Other Words: The Black Market of Translations—Negotiating Contemporary Cultures at NGBK (Berlin, 2012); the Latin American Pavilion at the 55th and 54th Venice Biennale (2013 and 2011) and Comunidad Ficticia in Matucana 100 (Santiago, Chile, 2009). In 2016-2017,  she was lecturer of history of exhibitions and collections with focus on Latin American art at Heidelberg University, Germany.