Anxieties of Transparency

Panel

Hoffman Boardroom, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), 1103 Biscayne Blvd

Politicians promise to end corruption. Intelligence agencies promise safety. Law enforcers, fairness. Corporations, satisfaction. Museums, bliss. In the name of these promises, everyone surrenders to a culture of surveillance that demands transparency of information from all. Privacy is no longer a right; it is potentially compromising information hidden from the authorities that determines its value. Therefore, privacy has become suspicious. Those who pretend otherwise are subject to scrutiny because without transparency there is no honesty. From omnipresent security cameras to the policing of identities based on race, gender or class, the culture of surveillance produces an anxiety of transparency. The gaze is no longer related solely to the positioning of artist and viewer in the visual and sensorial dialogue that the work provokes, but also determined by its institutional frames. What is to be done? How do visual artists respond to this culture of demanding hypervisibility?

Elvis Fuentes is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at Rutgers University. His research interests focus on the afterlife of Soviet visual culture in Latin America–in particular Cuba and Nicaragua–and the impact of the Cold War in contemporary artistic practices and aesthetics. For over fifteen years, he has served as a curator at art institutions in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the United States. Awarded Grand Prix at the 26th Ljubljana Biennial (2005), Fuentes has curated exhibitions across Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has recently been appointed Chief Curator for the San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial.

Gema Álava, is a Cultural Adviser to the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations. The Smithsonian Institution nominated her artistic project “Verbal Interaction in Museums” for a 2011 SARF Fellowship. Her work explores notions of trust, using language as a medium to investigate the interconnections that exist between public, private, educational and interpretive aspects of art.

Yucef Merhi, is an artist, poet, coder, and a pioneer of Digital Art. Merhi’s work has been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Bronx Museum, New York; Newark Museum, New Jersey; LACMA, Los Angeles; Science World British Columbia, Vancouver; De Appel, Amsterdam; Moderna Gallerija, Ljubljana; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Caracas, among others. He also participated in the official selections of the Sao Paulo – Valencia Biennial, 2007; the 30th Ljubljana Biennial; the 13th Cuenca Biennial; and has received several grants and awards, including a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in Digital/Electronic Arts.

Rodolfo Peraza is a multimedia artist. His research focuses on public space, both virtual and physical, as well as in DataVis of matters related to Internet culture and its footprint in society. He is the founder of Fanguito Estudio in Havana, a VR lab for the development of browser-based VR technology. In 2016 he won the WaveMaker Grant from Cannonball for the project Pilgram: Naked Link 2.0, a 2D visualization of the physical internet infrastructure that connects the US and Cuba.