Why resist?

Latin America, as a constant throughout its history, continues to experience its political and social development amid confusion and violence. Resistance has been a constant for centuries of expropriation, looting, poverty and helplessness. This repression has been fueled by psychosis and sponsored by destabilization mechanisms through the media, which, led by dirty government and business strategies, make us a breeding ground for problems that sometimes seem insurmountable.

Not only does the geographical dimension and our turbulent history unite us, but also the cultural interaction and the model of the State that governs us. Through the years, the people, students and artists have used all kinds of tools to express their discontent and rejection of the corrupt and repressive conditions established.

That is why we believe that meeting is key to knowing that we are not alone and being able to recognize that the Latin American struggle is one. We seek to exercise the generation of dialogues and discussions that bring us closer to create proposals and not complaints.

There is a common narrative that we must be able to weave together as Latin Americans. Our looks, tasks and knowledge can contribute to construction, questions and possibilities of understanding and change.

About us

The Bienal en Resistencia (BeR) is a proposal by Proyecto 44 and CARTI (Central de Artivismo e Innovación), both projects from Guatemala, led respectively by Maya Juracán (curator and activist) and Gustavo García Solares (communicator and audiovisual narrator). In 2019 and from the plurality of their efforts, they worked in a community curatorship in conjunction with Numa Dávila (Guatemalan anthropologist who works from her body and identity as a non-binary person), Daniel Garza Usabiaga (Mexican curator and historian) and Lucía Ixchiuy ( activist for indigenous peoples in Guatemala) for the conception of the network of actions and works that make up this event in different parts of Guatemala City, Quetzaltenango and Chichicastenango.

In the convulsed world of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have summoned a new team of curator allies to select social actors and artists to participate in the second edition, with the main space to intervene in the public space and the digital space as space public.

What we want?

«The Biennial in Resistance» seeks that the whole country breathes art! An art that hybridizes with political activism, a necessary exercise for a broad and concrete reading of our region, with our open scars and with those resistances that, despite oppression, emerge from tenderness as a sense of community that makes us continue believing in the utopia of the long-awaited systemic change.

A biennial that wanders between art and the social, as fragmented borders that generates intersectional dialogues through a social event of art that crosses historical memory, public space, diverse identities, native peoples ... going hand in hand of those whose main interest is to restore the social fabric.

"The Biennial in Resistance" seeks to favor other narratives and challenge the ways of doing and conceiving. The Biennial in Resistance was born from the need to remove art from traditional and elitist places to facilitate access to artistic and cultural experiences for the entire population, as a means of information, empowerment and citizen construction in a state of law.

What have we done?

We developed the first edition (2019) in Guatemala and convened artists from all over Latin America using the art platform to generate, in community, dialogues with the ability to highlight problems, themes and social exercises. We conceive as 'art in resistance' anyone who comes forward in a complaint or criticism, which makes visible the government and business impositions, but also all that art that revitalizes, agrees and generates dialogues that support the resistance of the peoples, to seek well a particular fight.

Outstanding results and achievements

Application of 150 social groups, activists and artists from all over Latin America.

Participation of 40 social groups, activists and artists from all over Latin America in the first edition.

Development of two self-managed biennial editions with the participation of social and cultural actors from Latin America.

To be recognized as a popular, street and accessible biennial that has a coherent link with its context.

Have massive participation and assistance of diverse people in all its activities, even populations that do not frequent galleries and museums.

Materials or products made

Catalog of the biennial in resistance

Videos and artistic productions

More than 50 art productions on public roads.

Highlights during the process

The works in the public thoroughfare caused a lot of impact, as did the community processes in Chimaltenango and San Pedro Sacatepéquez, in which the spectators activated more spaces to involve more members of the community.

Possible changes during the work process: in the second edition of the Biennial in Resistance, all the artists will be changed as it is a process by convocation, this leads us to be diverse and place different visions in the narrative.

Developed values

Participation

Endurance

Reappropriation

Identity assessment

Otherness

Dissent

The work of this Biennial as an action of spinning discursive ensembles, full of speech acts, symbolic, poetic, political and cultural practices, gave rise to changing the rhythm of the present to observe, in public and private spaces, the daily life of resistance, which implies strength, tension, denunciation, but also joy, inventiveness, good living, pleasure, tenderness.

The Biennial in Resistance had this transnational character, a condition that tends to appear only in institutional initiatives with the necessary budget to present a program that includes international artists. Several projects gathered in this biennial showed shared regional problems that serve to alert about similar political and social processes.

In this way, during the month of October 2019, more than 40 artists from Latin America, especially from Central America, were summoned to the Resistance: Colectivo Loco Sapiens (Colombia), Djassmin Morales / Elda Figueroa (Guatemala), De Mendoza Taca (Guatemala), Mariano González Chavajay (Guatemala), Rafael González Chavajay (Guatemala), Aiza Samayoa (Guatemala), Marilyn Boror (Guatemala), Colectivo Mórula (El Salvador), Antonio Bravo Avendaño (Mexico), Colectivo Lemow (Guatemala), Anarkiperreo (Guatemala), Allan Raymundo (Guatemala), Luis González Muy (Guatemala), Fidel Caté Tuc-tuc (Guatemala), Miguel León (Guatemala), Esvin Alarcón Lam (Guatemala), René Leonel Vásquez Maldonado (Guatemala), Discordia Travesti (Guatemala), Alejandra Garavito Aguilar (Guatemala), UTOPIX (Venezuela), Inova Walker Morera (Costa Rica), Darex (Guatemala), Fredy Jeremías Araujo / Ernesto Cartagena (El Salvador), Misha Orlandini (Guatemala), Gala Berger (Argentina) ), Bryan Castro (Guatemala), Susana Sánchez Ca rballo (Guatemala), Mario Santizo (Guatemala), Wildredo Orellana (Guatemala), Lucía Rosales (Guatemala).

If you want to know more about «The Biennial in Resistance» we invite you to http://www.labienalenresistencia.art/

If you want to know more about us, we invite you to

https://carti.center/proyectos

https://es-la.facebook.com/proyecto44/