The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica, and Mira Schendel
Oct 17, 1999 – Jan 23, 2000
Encompassing approximately one hundred works, this exhibition examined the work of five artists—Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica, and Mira Schendel—who created innovative, highly influential work in Latin America from the late 1950s through the 1970s. Constituting a major chapter in the history of modernist art, these artists rejected traditional disciplinary boundaries and cultivated experimental, collective practices instead, including with interactive art objects, architectonic constructions, and other experimental interventions in space.
The exhibition highlighted the Latin American practice of Antropofagia (Anthropophagy), meaning a cannibalization of imperialist European cultural traditions within a local context. The Experimental Exercise of Freedom thereby revealed how these aesthetic practices came to be invested with a utopic, sociopolitical dimension informed by the global politics of the time.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
The Experimental Exercise of Freedom: Lygia Clark, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Hélio Oiticica, and Mira Schendel was organized by Rian Carvajal and Alma Ruiz, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.