Changing the Focus, Latin American Photography at MOLAA

Submitted by carolyncastano on February 25, 2010 - 5:09pm.

Panama:Tropical Paradise

Changing the Focus- Latin American Photography from 1996-2005 is an appropriate title for the new exhibition at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach. If you haven't been out to MOLAA, you should. The museum has a new and much anticipated new focus on contemporary Latin American artists, probably you could say of the conceptual bent. The exhibition is organized around four themes- Subliminal Structures, Embodied Identities, Staged Irony, and Individual and Social Violence. The exhibition highlights the artists' response to social and global upheavals and how they have affected Latin America. What is interesting for me, is how we up here in Alta California can view and experience what the world feels like from down there , el sur from these photographs. Some of my favorites include, Jonathan Harker's Panama: Paraiso Tropical, the artist plays with our expectations of the tropical and exotic in postcards featuring the artist himself in mundane scenes around Panama, Luis Molina Pantin's Narco-Arquitecture mansions and fantasy parks around Colombia, Oscar Muñoz in Aliento ( Breath) about the transience of life, the violence and memory of those lost to it, is a beautiful installation of mirrors, that literally requires your breath to be complete.

Panama:Tropical Paradise by Jonathan Harker