Curated by Amanda Carneiro, “Histórias latino-americanas” [Latin American Histories/Stories] opened on September 4, 2026, and will run through January 31, 2027, at the Pietro Maria Bardi Building of Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) in São Paulo, Brazil. The exhibition brings together works by 148 artists “to examine how the idea of Latin America was constructed and continues to be contested today.”
Artists with Caribbean roots represented in the exhibition include Belkis Ayón, Firelei Báez, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Coco Fusco, Wifredo Lam, Daniel Lind-Ramos, Hiram Maristany, Sénèque Obin, Pepón Osorio, Carlos Raquel Rivera, Rubén Rivera Aponte, and Rafael Tufiño. [See full list at https://masp.org.br/exposicoes/historias-latino-americanas. Also see our previous posts MASP (Brazil) presents Histórias Latino-Americanas and Forthcoming: Pablo Delano “The Museum…”.]
Description: The theme of the 2026 curatorial cycle, Latin American Histories , will be an international group exhibition occupying five floors of the Pietro Maria Bardi building. Organized into five sections, this extensive exhibition investigates how the idea of Latin America was created and contested over time. The exhibition begins with the processes of colonization, marked by violence and extractivism, and examines the role of the Baroque and the invention of the tropical paradise as image regimes that disseminated colonial power, in order to highlight how these dynamics shaped modernity in the region and to emphasize counternarratives and forms of contestation. It also addresses indigenous and Afro-descendant forms of social organization within communities, such as quilombos, palenques, and cumbes, as well as utopian traditions that fight against authoritarianism, as is the case with the Zapatistas. The exhibition considers the circulation of people, goods, and rhythms in migration and diaspora processes that connect Latin America to other geographies. Finally, it explores indigenous conceptions of endings and renewal, inviting us to imagine possible futures in the face of present crises.
For more information, see https://masp.org.br/exposicoes/historias-latino-americanas
[Shown above: Detail of Firelei Báez’s “Untitled (A Correct Chart of Hispaniola with the Windward Passage),” 2020. From https://www.davidrumsey.com/blog/2020/3/7/firelei-baez-paints-on-rumsey-maps.]