After Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Latin American magical realism became very popular in literature and the arts throughout the world, including Taiwan. Magical realism is not the personal creation of Garcia Marquez, however; it is part and parcel of life in Latin America.

Magical Latin America

According to Tseng Chang-sheng, a commentator on art and culture who has spent more than ten years in Latin America, the region features a unique mixture of Catholicism, indigenous beliefs, the romantic Latin temperament, and an American-style consumer culture. Political life there features sudden military coups and tumultuous democratic elections. Space-age technology exists right alongside locust plagues. It is from this patchwork quilt of a society that magical realism has sprung.

In fact, political and economic uncertainty are precisely what drive people to seek eternal truth in literature and art. Says Tseng, "This makes Latin American artists much more socially and politically conscious than their counterparts in Europe and North America. They also enjoy a lot more trust than politicians do."

Latin American art has been a part of the mainstream for nearly 20 years now, yet the nations of Central America remain, as before, outside the limelight. Central America is relatively close to the United States geographically, and remittances from relatives in the northern colossus are important to the economy in many of these countries. The impact of the United States and its culture is everywhere to be seen. Compared with Brazil, Argentina, and other South American countries, a distinctive local style is not readily apparent in the art of Central America. Even the magical realism that is being overdone elsewhere is nowhere in evidence.

Happy outside the mainstream

Most of the 13 artists participating in this exhibit are relatively young, having been born in the 1950s and 60s, and they have all received training in modern Western art. Their works, however, do not follow the mainstream, nor are they stridently political. There are no slogans, no emphasis upon ethnicity. In Tseng's view, the best thing about this exhibit is that "these new-generation Central American artists naturally and faithfully reflect the inner world of people living in a society outside the mainstream. We get a glimpse of the local character of such a place. The exhibit has a very approachable and friendly feel."

The first thing you see upon entering the exhibit is... bananas everywhere! They are the main theme of a series of works by Guatemalan painter Moises Barrios. In one work, a banana graces the cover of a popular magazine. Another painting parodies the work of Piet Mondrian, one of the most famous representatives of rationalism. Mondrian's canvas with nothing but a single color divided by a few straight lines becomes a banana peel, with a few dark splotches here and there against a yellow background. The Central American countries are often referred to disparagingly as "banana republics" because of the importance of bananas as a cash crop and export item. In making bananas the theme of this series, Barrios turns the pejorative term on its head and uses it as a means of ridiculing mainstream Western culture. In another of his paintings, a bunch of banana-colored dinosaurs engage in mortal combat amidst a bunch of bananas. With a humorous brush and heavy heart, Barrios satirizes the unending power struggles that take place in this "banana republic."

The works of Honduran painter Xenia Mejia are infused with a sense of the danger of life. For her, the city is a place of increasing violence where any activity at all is risky. One must be on guard every day against youth gangs, rapists, and robbers. The beauty of the world is a thing of the past. In the color of dried blood, she shows us faces bitten by rats, violated people and cities, and electrocuted horses.

Women to the fore

Another salient feature of this exhibit is that nearly half of the artists are women. In the opinion of Tseng Chang-sheng, Latin American women are not as pushy as the career-minded women of other Western cultures, nor are they reined in by patriarchal authority like their counterparts in the Far East; included in their nature is the nurturing mother, the deeply feeling woman, and the wild animal. Although men hold the political and economic power in Latin America, it is women who constitute the foundation of culture and family. They are very expressive of their personalities, as the visitor to this exhibit will certainly see.

The most famous woman artist in this exhibit is Priscilla Monge. In her work on videotape, The Makeup Lessons, a man is teaching a young woman how to apply makeup to make herself more beautiful, but beauty in this case is measured against a Western standard. The woman only shows three-quarters of her face to the camera, but when the long lesson finally finishes and she turns toward the camera, she peers out from a face that is ugly beyond belief.

Another of the exhibit's female artists, Regina Aguilar, contemplates the encroachment of cloning technology upon motherhood. A huge, semi-transparent tube-shaped organ jiggles ever so slightly as the light emanating from within suggests pregnancy, but it is a "solo" pregnancy that requires no second individual.

Some female artists concentrate on the problems that women have faced throughout time, while others focus on their own personal situations. Patricia Belli reproduces photographs in which she and her grandmother appear together, as a means of showing the connectedness between their two lives.

Finding that "inner voice"

This exhibit addresses a wide range of topics, including the status of women in society, the impact of science and technology, the sense of individual identity, and personal memories. According to Tseng Chang-sheng, "The exhibit is of consistently high quality, and doesn't leave the visitor feeling intimidated." He feels that artists in Taiwan would benefit if they could adopt a bit of this unpretentious attitude.

There are many parallels between Taiwan and Central America. Neither place is in the global mainstream, both are struggling to establish their place in the international community, and older, more established artists dominate the market. As the Taiwanese economy has taken off in recent years, our artists have begun to receive financial support, and are now showing their work abroad more frequently. Some younger Taiwanese artists, anticipating that people abroad might be attracted to Taiwanese art out of curiosity about "the new kid on the block," intentionally cater to this expected attitude as they seek to create a style that emphasizes Taiwan's position on the margin of international society. Others strive anxiously to find new ways to make noise and attract attention from abroad. In the process, they lose sight of who they really are.

Although most artists in Central America receive a Western-style arts education, unlike their Taiwanese counterparts they keep their distance from Western thought. They do not go out of their way to emphasize the fact that they come from Central America, nor do they try to present themselves as something exotic. Nevertheless, in their honest probing of the enigmas and indignities of human existence, they end up showing us the true face of Central America.

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Due to political and economic instability, artists in Central and South America tend to show great concern for social issues in their work. Shown here is Bananasauros, in which Guatemalan painter Moises Barrios depicts dinosaurs skirmishing over a bunch of bananas. This work implies criticism of the constant power struggles that occur in "banana republics." (courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

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Patricia Belli of Nicaragua has usesd stockings, bits of cloth, and other materials to piece together Tears Nest, a work which laments the trials that women have had to endure over the ages. The active presence of many powerfully expressive women artists is a distinctive feature of the Central American art scene. (courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

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The verdant jungle teems with life, and man finds a niche for himself amidst it all. An air of nostalgic longing for hometown and memories from the past permeates Black Paradise, a work by self-trained painter Celia Lacayo. (courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

Patricia Belli of Nicaragua has usesd stockings, bits of cloth, and other materials to piece together Tears Nest, a work which laments the trials that women have had to endure over the ages. The active presence of many powerfully expressive women artists is a distinctive feature of the Central American art scene. （courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum）

The verdant jungle teems with life, and man finds a niche for himself amidst it all. An air of nostalgic longing for hometown and memories from the past permeates Black Paradise, a work by self-trained painter Celia Lacayo. （courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum）