01Latin American contemporary artists: a useful, imperfect label
Latin American contemporary artists are often grouped as if they shared a single story. They do not. The label covers many countries, several languages, the Caribbean and a large diaspora in the United States and Europe. I use it because collectors search for it, but I try not to let it flatten the work.
Working between Los Angeles and Miami, I see a great deal of this art, and Miami in particular has long been a meeting point for collectors from across the region. The artists below are ones I am watching closely. What they share is less a style than a seriousness about material, history and movement.
Collectors in the United States sometimes treat Latin American art as a regional specialism. I think that undersells it. The questions these artists ask about migration, labour, land and inherited images are among the central questions of contemporary art anywhere.
I should be clear about what this list is. It is not a ranking and it is not a forecast. These are artists whose work I keep returning to, and whose practices seem to me to be developing in ways worth following.
Material and memory: Gabriel Chaile and Oscar Murillo
Gabriel Chaile, who is Argentine, makes monumental adobe and clay vessels drawn from pre-Columbian form and family memory. The work is sculptural and domestic at the same time, and it carries histories that were never written down.
Oscar Murillo, who is Colombian, works dirt, labour and displacement into canvases that travel with him between continents. The surfaces show where they have been. His practice also shows how an artist's own movement can become the material of the work, a thread that runs through much of this list.
Both practices raise a practical question I always discuss with clients: what counts as damage when wear is part of the work? Before acquiring, I ask the artist or gallery to document the intended state, so that future condition reports have something to measure against. With large clay or adobe forms, I also plan for weight, installation and climate before anything ships, and make sure the cost of crating and installing is understood before the purchase rather than after it.
Paper, collage and the moving body
María Berrío, who is Colombian, makes large collages in Japanese paper picturing migration and female resilience. The layered paper gives the figures a shimmer that no reproduction captures.
Felipe Baeza, who is Mexican-American, builds fugitive bodies from ink, cut paper and plant matter, and his subject is migration and the undocumented body. The materials feel provisional on purpose, and so do the bodies.
It is not an accident that so much strong work about migration is made in fragile materials. Paper, plant matter and collage suit a subject about bodies that are exposed, pieced together and never quite settled.
Work on paper and with organic matter needs a considered home. I talk to clients about UV-filtering glazing, stable humidity and keeping these pieces out of direct sun. In a humid city like Miami, that conversation happens before the work arrives, not after.
Painting as rewriting
Ana Segovia, who is Mexican, repaints Mexican golden-age cinema in order to unpick its machismo. The source images are familiar to a whole culture, and she turns that familiarity against them. It is a good example of an artist arguing with a national mythology from the inside.
Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, who is Cuban, renders Caribbean light and landscape as heat and dissolution. Firelei Báez, who is Dominican-American, works in painting and on paper, drawing on Caribbean history, folklore and diaspora. Her works on paper deserve as much attention as her canvases, and for a collector starting out, paper can be a serious way into a practice rather than a consolation.
Together these three make a strong case that the Caribbean and the diaspora belong at the centre of any Latin American collection, not at its edges. Much of the most urgent work about the region is being made by artists who move between places.
Tomás Saraceno and what you can actually own
Tomás Saraceno, who is Argentine, works with air, spiders and atmospheric structure, proposing them as a serious model for living differently. His work is a good test of what a private collector can responsibly hold.
Installation-based work is usually acquired as a set of rights and instructions as much as an object. If a client is considering it, I want to see the certificate, the installation specifications and any conditions attached to display, and I want to be sure the space and the care exist. If they do not, the better way to support the work may be through an institution.
For many collectors, the right relationship with an installation artist runs through smaller, self-contained works, or through supporting an institution that can show the larger pieces properly. I would rather a client do that than acquire something they cannot care for.
What watching an artist looks like in practice
Watching is not the same as tracking prices. It also means being honest about what I do not know. The region is large, no single adviser sees everything, and I rely on curators and writers based there to point me towards work I would otherwise miss. For the artists above, watching comes down to a steady set of habits.
- Seeing exhibitions in person, including in the artist's home city when I can
- Following regional biennials and institutional group shows, not only the fairs
- Reading criticism written in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English
- Talking with curators who work in the region and know the context the work answers to
- Noticing how a practice changes from one body of work to the next
- Keeping notes over the years, so I can see a trajectory rather than a snapshot
- Waiting when I am unsure, because the right work usually comes around again
