As a start, this statement by Sontag was the exact place where we found ourselves, two art historian friends, one in London and the other in Santiago de Chile, determining the creators who would tell the story of our continent to the world, imagining the re-definition of the nature of art galleries and dreaming of artists willing to open their worlds to show their work with the same spirit of two travellers who are about to discover new horizons.
The world needs Latin American art, that much was clear to us.
Looking around some relevant places in the global art scene and with a mere glance at the specialised media, the dominance of the economically developed countries was clear; and while we also looked at the powerful presence with which contemporary artists from Africa and Asia are increasingly breaking into the commercial circuits, the question was…
What about Latin America?
Some contemporary artists in resonance, almost always self exiled from their home countries and already camouflaged in international galleries.
Other experienced or deceased artists, with decades of career, who are the ones that have allowed the world to create an idea around Latin American art, sometimes dominating how the art of our continent "should look".
We aimed to bring together emerging creators regardless of their background, generation or trajectory. The main thing was for their work to be able to translate the intense mixture that defines the Latin American identity.
It's clear to us that we would not only deal with artworks, that our project would not be simply a sales gallery website.
In Blast Gallery we aim to show the living beats of Latin America through our artists.
There were difficulties... to find the artists, to invite them, to get to know each other, and for our objectives to resonate with them with some of the passion we felt when we wrote our guidelines.
One by one, talented artists appeared, unfolding before us a screen of life stories that surpassed even our most idealised images of what a Blast artist would be. They are the living image of the sense we wish to transmit: multiculturalism and plurality represented in mixed proposals of techniques and materials, in different generations that coexist through the presence of urban expressions and the spirit of our ancestral cultures.
We heard stories of immigration, of enchantment and disenchantment with their creative processes, of disappointment and deep love for their countries, of uprooting, of hope and above all of dedication to a work that they had not chosen, because in Latin America being an artist involves a resignation, sort of an apostolate... in Latin America being an artist still means that a stream stronger than one's own senses has taken over.
And it is with these brave representatives of emerging Latin American art -with whom we ended up each of our meetings feeling excited and proud to have invited them- that we began a route to lands beyond the seas. We know that many more will join us, but this first group of artists will always be the starting point of Blast Gallery's journey of no return.
Nicolás Quero
Felipe Carvajal Brown
Iván Melnick
Laikblua
Fran Benavides
José Miguel Marty
Andrea Barrios
Santiago Castro
Fernanda Levine
Juliano Mazzuchini
Stfi!
Anelys Wolf
Thanks for being here.