Artists throughout Latin America have long used graphic posters as a form of storytelling, cultural celebration, political expression, and resistance. A new exhibit at WaterFire Arts Center features roughly 100 posters from across Latin America, spanning more than 70 years. Morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with the curators of the exhibit, Jose Menendez Lopez and Tatiana Goméz Gaggero.
TRANSCRIPT:
Luis Hernandez: The exhibit is called “Graphic Voices of Latin America: Latin American Posters.” I just want to get a sense from both of you, what’s the mission of this exhibit? What’s the story you’re trying to tell?
Jose Menendez Lopez: For this show in particular we were looking at how we can look at ways in which to narrate the history of Latin America through its graphics, through its posters. … We divided it or curated it by different themes. The first theme was a celebration of graphic design, a celebration of materiality, of letter forms, of color, of material, of technique. But then we move into, or we like to take the visitors through what we call the everyday posters, which are the posters that you find in perhaps in every home or some homes and most homes, at least where I grew up, whether we had, you know, a reproduction of screen prints or festival posters about everyday life. From there, we go into cultural posters, but then we celebrate music, food, writings, readings, literature, and those popular icons that make our Latin American culture so rich and diverse. And as we move on, we also talk about the political influences that the continent has had through its time to its relationship with the United States, its relationship with other players such as Russia. For in this case, what are those relationships that continue to write themselves as we move forward today?
Tatiana Goméz Gaggero: And how the poster is used to mobilize people as well, like to create awareness or point out certain issues in the community.
Hernandez: Where did this idea come from? Where did you get the idea for the show?
Goméz Gaggero: So this project, “Graphic Voices of Latin America,” is part of our research project, Gráfica Latina, which you can actually check out at graficalatina.com, which is a research project that we’ve been working on for more than 10 years at this point, since we were students in grad school. And it pretty much grew from or was born as a response to the lack of representation of Latin American graphic design in academia. We didn’t really see too much of the work of Latin American designers or artists when we went to school. And we started doing the research and one of our professors told us, well, if you don’t see it, why don’t you bring it up, right? Like why don’t you dig into it? And as professors, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 10 years. And it’s now turned into this digital and mobile print collection of posters, which means that we do have the print posters and we own them and we have the possibility of taking them anywhere. And that’s why we started doing pop-up exhibitions, and this is the, “Graphic Voices of Latin America” is the first big show.
Hernandez: Let’s talk about the political expression that you have in the posters. Maybe there’s a story or two that you have about the role that posters play in political activism and resistance over the decades, considering everything from what’s happening in Cuba, what’s happened in Venezuela? You can go across the board, but I don’t know if you have a story or two to share.
Goméz Gaggero: So the “NO” poster was designed in 1988, as part of a marketing campaign supporting the referendum to vote no to the dictatorship, or the like the continuation of the dictatorship in Chile. And it’s like this very bold “NO” with a beautiful rainbow that speaks about the hope of a better future. And it’s just an incredible poster, and I think it says very much with very little means.
Menendez Lopez: It’s just a great example how this material or a media, a communication medium can be used for not just advertising, but also for bettering the lives of people. Or for changing the lives of societies and communities within.
Hernandez: There’s a fascinating story you told me about a print shop in Cali, Colombia that is still printing using very old technology. I don’t know if there’s something you could describe about that, because we live in such a digital world with laser printers and they’re using block print in the old style.
Menendez Lopez: What is so striking about La Linterna is that they are a collective. They’re different artists coming from all over the world to print with them. But they print by hand. They have typographic blocks, like you say, wood type. They have their letters, but they also make their own letters, and they carve them. And they do the illustrations and the linoleum cuts. Also, maybe the artists are also doing projects in the computer, but they still go, even though they designed it in the computer, they still go and do them by hand, right? So it’s a reversal of a process that you will think of, why would I have to make it by hand if I can make it in the computer? Well, because there’s a slowed down process. There’s a moment where you can teach, just teach people, but also learn in every stage of the game. You can learn something different. Whether it’s technique, whether it’s color overlays, whether it’s paper structure, whether it is, you know, it’s just the surprising effects of just doing something by your hands, right? And putting it out there for the people.
Goméz Gaggero: And also how it looks like when the result of a digital print has nothing, like, it’s just so far away from what you get from a real letterpress print. There’s the combination of colors, and there’s just the layering, and there’s just a life to them that you cannot replicate on a digital printer.
Hernandez: Are posters in Latin America still used the same way they have been used over the decades? Because I keep thinking, we live in the social media world. Do we still have posters?
Goméz Gaggero: Well, it’s coming back.
Menendez Lopez: I think that it’s very much alive. The poster can serve a really important function in a place. And that is to connect people through tactile, connect people in the street.
Goméz Gaggero: We think it’s actually a very important way to engage with community in times where ephemera, you know, it lasts like a glance of a second.
Menendez Lopez: 24 hours.
Goméz Gaggero: While scrolling through social media.
Menendez Lopez: ”The time of the poster is always now,” that’s what Irene Delano said once, a printmaker there in Puerto Rico. And I think that whenever there’s a challenge, or whenever there’s something to celebrate, or whenever there’s something to share with others, or whenever there’s an event where you want people to come, there’ll always be a poster.
“Graphic Voices of Latin America: Latin American Posters by Gráfica Latina & La Linterna” is on now through March 23 at the WaterFire Arts Center.
