Mesotica, Inc.
No Banana Republic
(The Contemporany Visions of Central American Artists)
For years, Central America was little more than the narrow strip of land between North and South America: a land of volcanoes, jungles, banana plantations, exotic landscapes and guerilla warfares. As far as universal imagery is concerned, the advent of postmodernism and the winds of globalizations brought the isthmus a series of noteworthy changes. A significant group of artists, curators, collectors and, more recently, gallerists, though small in number, began to build a new artistic drive in the region that was largely immersed in the contemporary. Mediums and languages that had never been used here before, such as video, photography and performance began to be widely used, though not completely accepted by the public. Nevertheless, this group was the starting point for many of the artistic endeavors of contemporary Central American artists.
Mesotica Inc. comprises artists from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Its principal curatorial scope challenges the stereotype of what art in this part of the world should reflect: post card images of paradisiacal beaches, exotic macaws and parrots, orchids and bananas.
The works represent a complex and varied reality which, in most cases, responds to situations that are the antipodes of the clichéd images of paradise. Mesoamerica ponders on the reality of life itself and the rejects the image that the other has created of it. The works, nevertheless, maintain their distinctive tropical flavor, scattered with irony and marinated with humor.
John Nadador
