Gerardo Mosquera (born 1945 in Havana, Cuba) is a freelance curator, critic, art historian, and writer based in Havana, Cuba.
He was one of the organizers of the first Havana Biennial in 1984 and remained central to the curatorial team until he resigned in 1989. Since then, his activity has been mainly international, traveling, lecturing and curating exhibitions in 80 countries. Mosquera was adjunct curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, from 1995 to 2009. Since 1995 he has been advisor in the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) in Amsterdam. His publications include books on art and art theory (and a short stories' volume), and 600 articles, reviews and essays have appeared in magazines, including: Art Nexus, Cahiers, Lápiz, Neue Bildende Kunst, Oxford Art Journal, Poliester, Third Text. Among other volumes, Mosquera has edited Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America and co-edited (with Jean Fisher) Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture. His theoretical essays – which have been influential in discussing art’s cultural dynamics in an internationalized world, and contemporary Latin American art – are in English, but have been collected in books in Caracas[1] and Madrid[2] in Spanish, and in Chinese in Beijing.[3] Mosquera was the Artistic Director of PHotoEspaña, Madrid (2011–2013), the Chief Curator of the 4th Poly/Graphic San Juan Triennial (2015-2016), co-curator of the 3rd Documents, Beijing (2016) and co-curator of the Guangzhou Image Triennial (2021).
Early work
Mosquera wearing Hélio Oiticica's parangolé Da adversidade vivemos.
Mosquera obtained his licenciatura in History of Art at the University of Havana in 1977.
Since the early 1970s he was working as art, cinema and theater critic, researcher and journalist in Havana. He published thorough investigations on Servando Cabrera Moreno and Manuel Mendive[4] two Cuban artists who had previously been marginalized for the erotic and religious Afro-Cuban (Mendive) content of their art, and as a result of homophobic cultural policies. Mosquera became the main critic and “ideologist” of the new Cuban art,[5][6] which he supported since its inception. In the 1980s this movement renovated the Cuban art scene, breaking away from official dogmatism and introducing contemporary critical tendencies. It was successful in pushing the Ministry of Culture to open up towards a more liberal cultural policy. Mosquera’s critical writings on the new Cuban art were instrumental to this turn, while he also promoted the new artists internationally.[7] This movement triggered a critical and reflexive inclination that distinguishes Cuba’s arts until today. Mosquera’s work has also always looked beyond Cuba, as can be seen in his book El diseño se definió en Octubre (Design was Defined in October),[8] about Russian avant-garde art and design and its worldly impact, published in Havana in 1989 and Bogotá in 1992.
Havana Biennial
The first Havana Biennial took place in 1984. It became the fourth international biennial (after Venice, São Paulo and Sydney) and the sixth huge international periodic art event to be established —following the aforementioned biennials, the Carnegie International and Documenta. Supported by the Cuban government, it was a vast show, but restricted to Latin America. In 1986 the 2nd Havana Biennial presented the first global show of contemporary art ever: more than 50 exhibitions and events that gathered 690 artists from 57 countries focusing on postcolonial contemporary art and not on traditional and religious practices. The next Biennial edition, in 1989, introduced radical curatorial changes that moved it away from the Venice and São Paulo paradigms, launching a new model that influenced the way in which the new biennials were organized. Transformations included basing the whole event (shows, conferences, workshops, etc.) on a general theme, the combination of a centralized curation that avoided national representations with a decentralized structure involving a constellation of multiple events, the link with the city, and the eradication of awards. Recently, it has become clear that it was the Havana Biennial and not Les magiciens de la terre –an exhibition that was advertised as “the first global show”—, that was initiating the way in which globalization will take shape in art, triggering “a new breed of contemporary biennials born of a global context” (Istanbul, Johannesburg, Gwangju, Lyon, etc.).[9] The Havana Biennial approached for the first time the multiple practices of contemporary art around the world, out of the Western mainstream. Since 1984, Mosquera was Havana Biennial's "leader of the curatorial work",[10] reformulating the premise and methodology of the event, with which his “own aesthetic and intellectual interests became deeply embedded.”[11] He resigned in 1989, immediately after the 3rd Biennial, due to the escalating repression in the cultural sector, and to political contradictions with the Cuban regimen and about the Biennial’s future.[12]
International work
After his resignation to the Havana Biennial, Mosquera was banned to publish, curate and lecture in his country until today, and since then he has been working as a freelance internationally. In 1990 he was a Guggenheim Fellow.[13]
From 1995 to 2009 he was adjunct Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, although his work was seriously hampered by legal constraints due to the United States embargo against Cuba, where he continued to live. Together with Dan Cameron he set off a program at the Museum that introduced a broader international approach in the New York art scene. His radical notion of “the museum-as-hub”[14] transformed the New Museum’s Education Department to include what is called the Museum as Hub, “a new model for curatorial practice and institutional collaboration established to enhance our understanding of contemporary art. Both a network of relationships and an actual physical site…”[15] with an international program of its own. Mosquera's theoretical work pioneered critical discussions about the complex cultural processes of modern and contemporary art from non-mainstream countries, especially in relation to mainstream art, globalization and postcolonial dynamics.[16] He has also contributed to promote an open, multifaceted view on Latin American art, moving away from the identity stereotypes that prevailed in the 1980s[17] – his standings being sometimes polemical.[18] The exhibition Ante America, which he co-curated in 1992 (see below), was a landmark for this new view on Latin American art. Mosquera’s ideas, position and curatorial and editorial practice have been significant in the new scenario of broad international circulation of art.[19][20] He introduced the notion of "from here" to oppose the “appropriation” paradigms – such as the Brazilian idea of “anthropophagy” – that prevailed to discuss postcolonial art’s strategies, conferring it an active role in the construction of global metaculture.[21] The curator's work has lately focused on projects out of the white cube, trying to achieve artistic communication with broader audiences, beyond the art world’s elite.[22] Some examples are his contribution to the Liverpool Biennial, and shows that have tried to create an active dialogue with the public space and to involve people in the streets, as CiudadMultipleCity. Arte>Panamá 2003 (), The Sky Within My House, Contemporary Art in Patios of Quito (), and ¡Afuera! (see all below).
^His essays on Cabrera Moreno and Mendive were later gathered in Gerardo Mosquera, Exploraciones en la plástica cubana, La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1983.
^Lucy Lippard: "Prólogo", in Gerardo Mosquera: Contracandela. Ensayos sobre Kitsch, identidad, arte abstracto y otros temas calientes, Monte Ávila Editores Latinoamericana y Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, 1995, p. 11–20.
^Luis Camnitzer, New Art of Cuba, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
^Rachel Weiss, To and from Utopia in the New Cuban Art, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
^"El Diseño se Definió en Octubre", Editorial Arte y Literatura, Havana, 1989, and Banco de la República, Bogotá, 1992
^Rafal Niemojewski, "″Venice or Havana: A Polemic on the Genesis of the Contemporary Biennial”″, in Elena Filipovic, Mieke van Hal & Solveig Øvstebø (editors): The Bienal Reader. An Anthology on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, Bergen and Ostfildern, Bergen Kunsthall and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010, pp 88-103.
^Rachel Weiss, “A Certain Place and a Certain Time: The Third Bienal de La Habana and the Origins of the Global Exhibition”, Rachel Weiss and other authors, Making Art Global (Part 1). The Third Havana Biennial 1989, London: Afterall Books, 2011, p. 24.
^Weiss, op. cit., p. 67. Gerardo Mosquera, “The Third Bienal de La Habana in its Global and Local Contexts”, in Rachel Weiss, op. cit., p. 70.
^"Gerardo Mosquera". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-09-20.
^Gerardo Mosquera, “Seven Notes on the Museum-as-Hub”, Re-Shuffle / Notions of an Itinerant Museum, New York: Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2006.
^Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (editors): "Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985", Malden, Oxford and Victoria, Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
^Carmen Hernández, "Más allá de la exotización y la sociologización del arte latinoamericano", in: Daniel Mato (coord.): "Estudios y Otras Prácticas Intelectuales Latinoamericanas en Cultura y Poder", Caracas, CLACSO and CEAP, FACES, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2002, pp 167-176.
^Gerardo Mosquera, “Against Latin American Art”, in Contemporary Art in Latin America, London, Black Dog Publishing, 2010, p. 11-23.
^Jean Fisher: "No desde cualquier lugar", in Gerardo Mosquera: Caminar con el diablo. Textos sobre arte, internacionalización y culturas, Exit Publicaciones, Madrid, 2010, p. 9–13.
^Charlotte Bydler, The Global Art World Inc. On the Globalization of Contemporary Art, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala, 2004.p. 253–270
