Raphael Fonseca joined the Denver Art Museum in 2021 as its first-ever curator of Latin American Modern & Contemporary Art, a position created to showcase, and grow, the museum’s considerable collection of objects from the region.
His most notable move here — so far — was curating last year’s “Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail,” a group show built around the talents of 19 millennial-aged artists from places like Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil.
But Fonseca, who is Brazilian, is also busy working in both South America and Europe. He continues to organize important exhibitions internationally, and has gained a reputation for discovering new voices from across the hemisphere. That work has not gone unnoticed. This month, the well-respected Art Review magazine placed him on its annual “Power 100,” a list of the world’s most important figures in contemporary art at the moment.
We asked him about his work.
Q. So, you are the Denver Art Museum’s first curator of Modern and Contemporary Latin American art. Tell us what you do in that job.
A. I am responsible not only for acquiring artworks related to Latin America, and produced in a timespan that focuses more on the 20th and 21st centuries, but also for organizing exhibitions, publications, and seminars at the museum.
Q. Help us to define Latin American art. Looking at a map, that is a very big area with dozens of countries and multiple languages. In your view, what connects the art of Mexico to the art of Cuba to Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and other places?
A. Latin America is a big fiction; some people would answer that it consists of all countries that were Portuguese and Spanish colonies, while others would affirm that the whole Caribbean is also part of it.
I feel that different colonial histories connect us, but perhaps more than a solid concept, I see “Latin America” as a frame that invites us to discuss it not only in geographical terms, but also conceptually and culturally. More than the artists living in this vast area associated with Latin America, we should also consider all the diasporas around it, including, for example, the Latino/Latine/Latinx community in the United States.
Q. Describe the job of a curator.
A. Curating is all about research, engaging with many people — from artists to collectors — and dealing with a specific space, bringing specific narratives to the audiences. It is a profession that suits people interested in how some images invite us to keep taking another look and can connect with very different layers and intentions of storytelling.
All this magic happens in a specific space — be it a museum space or a website, for example — and the sequence of images and artists we see helps the curators and the audience to comprehend a narrative. It is a mix of historical research, with a bit of anthropology, set design and an editing ability similar to a movie editor.
Q. Can you tell us about your process? What attracts you to an idea for an exhibition? Here, I am talking about group shows.
A. My creative process as a curator is like a sponge; even though I work at the museum with Latin American art, I am deeply interested in all artworks from everywhere. Sometimes, an idea comes from watching a movie or a TV series, and sometimes from visiting an artist’s studio; all my ideas come from very, very banal places.
My academic preparation helps me shape and define a project conceptually. Still, everything points to how art practice can connect with the most mundane aspects of our existence: for example, the exhibition I did in Brazil about the hammocks, their histories, and how it helped shape certain aspects of a “Brazilian” identity.
Q. What type of artists are you eager to work with?
A. I love artists with an experimental trajectory, and I love working with artists who are more experienced than me when it’s a survey solo exhibition. I remember the time I spent with Sonia Andrade, a pioneer in video art in Brazil, and how much I would learn from the visits to her place, having dinner together. She did the video but started with drawing and engraving, and during her career, she experimented with all media.
Q. If you think about the museum’s holdings, what type of work do you hope to add to the current collection?
A. DAM has a broad and significant collection: The institution currently has more than 70,000 pieces. In my department, I have been looking forward to acquiring works in three extensive areas. First, I am very interested in creating a collection of indigenous Latin American art, especially having in mind the pioneering role of the Native Arts department at the museum; this makes all sense. Second, I am looking at artists from my generation — millennial artists — who are still in the first steps of having their works acquired by U.S. museums.
Third, I am looking at different modernist pioneers in the region that could be better represented in museums in this country. The mix between these three layers of interest generates a diverse, dense and audience-friendly collection.
Q. Here is another big question. What is the difference between curating an exhibition in Brazil and curating in the U.S. at a museum, like DAM?
A. Well, museums in the U.S. and museums in Brazil have very different structures, and when I say “structure,” I am talking about budgets, team size and rhythm. In Brazil, for example, we plan huge exhibitions — with more than 100 artists — nine to six months before their openings. In the U.S., due to its more extensive scale, this would be impossible, and these projects could take two to three years.
Most of the museums in Brazil are public and suffer from the fact that their budgets and prominence change from government to government change. In the U.S., of course, most museums have a structure based on the philanthropy and interest of private donors.
Q. I was just in São Paulo last month and saw the biennial group exhibition Videobrasil that you co-curated. It was a big success. There were 60 artists from 38 countries in the lineup. How do you manage a project like that?
A. I don’t know. Videobrasil took almost four years due to many pandemic delays. It is also a particular project because it is based on an open call to which more than 2,000 artists applied. It was huge, full of details and responsibility. But curating, like anything in life, gets more relaxing after you have more experience. So, after doing some other big projects, even if Videobrasil was challenging in some moments, in the end, everything worked well. Of course, having a fantastic team of professionals like we had there helped.
Q. There is something impressive I have noticed when visiting exhibitions in Brazil. People, in general, are knowledgeable about the work and the artists. The conversations I overhear are deep. Is that just in my head or are Brazilians more connected to contemporary art than people in the U.S.? You will not hurt our feelings if you say “yes.”
A. Good question, and I am not sure about it; I wouldn’t say that Brazilians are more connected, but I also can’t give you, yet, the opposite diagnosis because I am pretty new in this country. I feel that, thinking out loud, São Paulo has a great connection with museums, galleries, and the people — not necessarily those who went to university or work with visual arts — really visit venues, discuss, share online and all.
I feel that how people from my city, Rio de Janeiro, deal with this contemporary art scene is quite different. On the other hand, seeing the DAM full of people on our free days impresses me, so it’s tough to measure.
Q. You were recently appointed curator of the 2024 Biennial do Mercosul. What do we need to know about that event?
A. The Mercosur Biennial started in 1997 in Porto Alegre, South of Brazil. It is a city that is close to Argentina and Uruguay. Our edition is the 14th one. We have a title already: it will be called “Estalo,” a Portuguese word that can be translated in English to “snap.”
As you can imagine, we are preparing a project that pays attention to the ephemeral events of life similar to a snap of fingers: sound, body gestures, pop culture, color, music, and anything that metaphorically can relate to “estalo” is in our interests. In a snap of fingers, you can dive into pleasure, or your life can be surrounded by tragedy. This duality is something that interests us.
Q. What can we look forward to from you, at DAM, in the near future?
A. I am working on an exhibition that opens next April and was just announced: a survey exhibition of Sandra Vásquez de La Horra, a Chilean artist who has lived in Germany for two decades and works a lot with drawing and paper sculptures. She was in the last edition of the Venice Biennale, and this will be her first institutional exhibition in the United States.
I am pretty excited about this project and the acquisitions I’ve been making in this field of indigenous Latin American art. Let’s see what we can plan with these artworks in the future.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelancer specializing in fine arts.
