Sandra Monterroso in Threads to the South at Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA)

THREADS TO THE SOUTH

Curated by Anna Burckhardt Pérez

Mar 28, 2024 → Jul 27, 2024

ARTISTS

Olga de Amaral

Gustavo Caboco

Feliciano Centurión

Manuel Chavajay

Nora Correas

Gracia Cutuli

Antonio Dias

John Dugger

Jorge Eielson

Elvira Espejo Ayca

Cristina Flores Pescorán

Anna Bella Geiger

Marlene Hoffman

Nelson Leirner

Lidia Lisbôa

Mónica Millán

Sandra Monterroso

Julieth Morales

Hélio Oiticica

Marta Palau

Antonio Pichillá

Cecilia Vicuña

CURATORS

Anna Burckhardt Pérez

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is proud to present Threads to the South, curated by Anna Burckhardt Pérez. The exhibition features works by over twenty artists from ten countries, including videos, photographs, paintings, works on paper, and textiles developed between 1967 and 2023. Through these varied works, Threads to the South considers the medium of fiber as a conceptual tool for exploring the relationship between belonging, identity, and territory in Latin America.

The exhibition title is borrowed from the poem “I am climbing threads to the South” by Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña. Having lived most of her life in exile from her homeland, Vicuña writes of longing for her home and climbing symbolic threads that connect her to her roots in the south. Featuring artworks by artists including Gustavo Caboco, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Anna Bella Geiger, Lidia Lisbôa, Hélio Oiticica, Marta Palau, Antonio Pichillá, and Vicuña, among others, the exhibition showcases how artists have used fiber, thread, and textiles in disparate ways to chart connections to their roots.

Spanning ISLAA’s upstairs exhibition space and its two lower-level galleries, Threads to the South illustrates how fiber serves as a bridge between distinct times and places, embedded with histories and cultural traditions, including the complexities of national and individual identities in and from Latin America. The artists in the exhibition use thread to communicate physical or emotional displacement as they long, search, and strive for real and imagined territories to ground themselves firmly in Latin America. Together, these works underscore the processes of making, thinking, and feeling through fiber to question colonial conceptions of time and place, produce alternative art histories, and create new ideas of home.

Threads to the South is on view from March 28 through July 27, 2024 and is accompanied by an original booklet featuring an essay by the curator and designed by ISLAA’s graphic designer in residence, Luiza Dale.