South American Political Perspective Shapes New Exhibit at Broad Museum

Editor's Note: According to a story published Tuesday by ArtNews, Carla Acevedo-Yates, who currently serves as associate curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, will join the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago as curator on July 1. For the Broad, Acevedo-Yates has organized solo exhibitions of work by Johanna Unzueta, Claudia Peña Salinas, Duane Linklater, and others. Most recently, she curated the forthcoming exhibition “The Edge of Things: Dissident Art Under Repressive Regimes," which is the subject of the following story.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Carla Acevedo-Yates was no stranger to the effects of colonization and the politics of the territory, and she soon developed an intense interest in these aspects of her world.

Acevedo-Yates wrote a lot of poetry and short stories when she was younger, thus appreciates the importance of storytelling. Her interest in art soared when she discovered its persuasive power and how it can shape one's view of life's events.

“I began thinking about how art communicates things that words can’t,” Acevedo-Yates said.

And for the past five months, she has been creating an exhibition to reflect her point of view. “The Edge of Things: Dissident Art Under Repressive Regimes,” which opens Saturday at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum and runs through Jan. 5, 2020, comprises artwork from the southern cone of South America from the 1960s to the 1980s. (The opening reception is tonight, May 31, from 6-8 pm.)

Before becoming an associate curator at the Broad, Acevedo-Yates (above) served residencies in Chile and Brazil and analyzed art from the 1960s through the 1980s, a time period that fascinated her due to the changes and new ideas that occurred then.

“It was a time where people were really thinking about how we can make this world a better place,” said Acevedo-Yates, who has been a curator at Broad for the past three years.

She also realized that many aspects of that era are also prevalent in today’s world.

“I really think that the political climate in the United States, and thinking about how politics have become so polarized, makes it really interesting to see how artists in other geographies and other decades have responded to difficult political situations,” Acevedo-Yates said.

‘Exhibitions such as these are like learning opportunities’

While making this exhibition, Acevedo-Yates intertwined the artistic and historical aspects of this time period.

The exhibition features photography, sculpture, installation, performance and more, along with historical context in the form of a timeline and information throughout the exhibition.

“I think that exhibitions such as these are like learning opportunities,” Acevedo-Yates said, “so I’m hoping that people come and leave the exhibition with a sense of what it was like to live at that time.”

The art was produced in South America, so Acevedo-Yates, along with MSU students and Broad employees, had to figure out the safest way to ship the art to East Lansing. Despite the struggles, she was determined to receive the art that she thought will make the biggest impact.

“There are some artists that I personally love, and that I think have made an impact on art history, and I think those voices are really important to bring into the museum,” Acevedo-Yates said. “A lot of [the art] are personal choices of mine, and others I chose to see how we can build a dialogue in this space, so some works speak to other works, and there might be different artists that never met thinking in very similar ways, working with similar materials, and they didn’t know each other.

"I thought it was really interesting to put them together in conversation in the space.”

Fresh eyes and a fresh perspective

Acevedo-Yates sees the importance of bringing these stories to East Lansing because of the perspective it gives to visitors, who may not realize the connections between art and activism and the connections of East Lansing to other places around the world.

“This shows how there’s a blurring of the lines between art making and activism, or social work,” Acevedo-Yates said, “and there’s a lot of that in the exhibition, in the sense that a lot of artists were navigating the fluid lines between art-making and social and political activism.”

Acevedo-Yates, and everyone coordinating this exhibition, is looking forward to bringing a new perspective and learning opportunity to this community, and she hopes everyone can understand the effect of art on societal change.

“Art is not just something that’s pretty. It’s not just something that is pleasing to the eye. It actually has a very important role in society,” Acevedo Yates said. “I want the main takeaway to be that art is an exercise in freedom, and that art-making can allow the possibility for a better future, and [it can] really gather people together to think about how we can make our world a better place.”