A crisscross of traditional and conceptual changes occurs as a product of a globalized world.

There is an interweaving of elements and artistic expression. The use of interactive multimedia has attracted a considerable number of young Chilean artists who explore the possibilities of combining painting, photography, found objects and video in their installations. Painting does not escape the conceptualists’ scrutiny it is often questioned as a means of artistic expression.Īt the same time, technological developments have made it possible to incorporate new elements of artistic expression. These trends are supported by a great number of art schools that are very keen on new aesthetical expressions. There is a resurgence of conceptual art, in which theorical discourse has great relevance. Topics such as nudity, eroticism and homosexuality are no longer forbidden. The liberation of morés and customs greatly influences artistic production. In addition to the contemporary mockery of consumerism, much of today’s artistic expression of social concerns deals with lifestyle and identity. Yet social concerns have often been on the periphery. An incipient muralist movement in the 1940s, stimulated by the Chilean sojourn of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, and the 1960s’ “art of denunciation” somehow contributed several artistic ways of interpreting the aftermath of the Pinochet coup (see below). At the beginning of the last century, the so-called Generación del 13 used painting to highlight social concerns by depicting local customs. The degree of social consciousness in art in Chile has varied in intensity over time. While many artists mock the consumer society and the search for easy and quick satisfaction, few concern themselves with the poverty, unemployment, and social and economic inequality that is part of modern Chile. Later, the artists produced another exhibition, Si vas para el Mall (If you go to the mall). An example is the well-received 1999 exhibition by Bruna Truffa and Rodrigo Cabezas at the National Fine Arts Museum, Si vas para Chile (If you go to Chile), taking its title from a well-known traditional folk song and making fun of consumer culture. Instead, some vent their criticism on the economic model, the free market and the consumer society. Only a few artists focus on the political and social context. They look to the future with a critical and constructive view, without hatred. Rather, this new generation of artists seek to understand the recent past without a sense of guilt or victimization.

This critique of the art market helps to explain Meireles's stance on rejecting identification as a conceptual and political artist, despite the fact that his opus can be seen as both political and conceptual.Chile’s contemporary artists do not cling to any particular ideology. Proposing a differentiated art history, offering an autochthonous point of view, Malasartes's editors challenged the traditional view of the artwork as an isolated, commodified object, inserted in larger art movements through the stultifying imposition of stylistic categories on the artist. Revealing, in particular, the manner in which this generation of artists criticized the incipient art market in Brazil, then seen as synonymous with the larger art system. Revisiting theses debates permits a deeper understanding of Meireles's view of art and politics. These shaped the theoretical ideas that would inform the Brazilian art scene in the 1970s. This groundbreaking magazine, founded by Meireles and eight others in 1975, published texts crucial to Brazilian art history and translated international articles. I argue that the artist builds his notions of conceptual and political art based on socio-artistic theories propagated in the short-lived but highly influential publication, Malasartes. I use his rejection of these terms to reconsider conventional categories of the political in Latin American conceptualism as these have been historicized in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This article examines Cildo Meireles's refusal to describe Red Shift, his 1984 installation, as conceptual, political art.

Paisaje chileno matilde perez