Leading expert on Latin American art Andrea Giunta to lecture in Helsinki
Researcher and curator Andrea Giunta, one of the most esteemed international experts in Latin American art, will arrive in Helsinki in February 2020 to give the Saastamoinen Keynote Lecture, organised by the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts and the Saastamoinen Foundation.
Argentinian Andrea Giunta is an art historian, researcher and professor who has published widely on Latin American and international art, memory and politics, the power of images – especially Picasso’s Guernica – and gender and feminism in art. Giunta is chief curator of the Mercosul Biennial 12, organised in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2020. The theme of the biennial will be the relation between art, feminisms, and emancipation. The Mercosul Biennial is one of the most important biennials of contemporary art in Latin America.
During her visit, Giunta will give the Saastamoinen Keynote Lecture, which is open to the public, and meet students and alumni of the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts as well as representatives of the Finnish art community. The Keynote Lecture What We Can or Cannot See in Latin American Art, will take place on Tuesday 4 February 2020, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Exhibition Laboratory, Merimiehenkatu 36 C, Helsinki, Finland.
In her lecture, Giunta will deal with areas left in the dark in the white and patriarchal canon of Latin American art. Art by women or artists of African or indigenous descent is too often excluded. With the rise of right-wing populism in Latin America, the question is ever more important. On the lecture, for example the work of Afro-Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino and of Mexican Tzotzil artist Maruch Sántiz is presented.
Giunta’s visit is part of the fine arts internationalisation programme started by the Academy of Fine Arts and the Saastamoinen Foundation in 2015, which, in addition to lectures, includes international mentoring and residence activities for MA students and alumni of the academy.
The lecture by Andrea Giunta is already the fifth Keynote Lecture organised by the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts and the Saastamoinen Foundation. Speakers at the annual lecture include internationally important actors in the field of art. The series was opened in January 2016 by Okwui Enwezor, Director of Haus der Kunst in Munich and the curator of the 2015 Venice Biennale. In 2017, the lecture was given by artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, curators of the 2017 Istanbul Biennale. In 2018, the guest lecturer was Adam Szymczyk, who has worked, for example, as the artistic director of Documenta 14. This year’s visitor was Martha Rosler, a pioneer of feminist art.
The programme of the visit is coordinated by the Academy of Fine Arts and the Saastamoinen Foundation.