by Marina Galvani
Art Curator, the World Bank Art Program

[extract from “About Change in Latin America and the Caribbean” by Valeria Gonzáles]

“About change is not simply an art exhibition. It is a visual platform to promote a vibrant dialogue among people in Latin America and the Caribbean, the World Bank, the international community on the achievements and hopes of the region. About change is a clear call for embracing our social responsibility as citizen of this globe. About Change is cultural diplomacy at its best.”
According to Gerard Wajcman, 20th century art can be summed up in two objects: Duchamp’s unadorned ready-made urinal, with which he took away from art all claim to be spiritual, and Malevich’s Suprematist works, which reduced painting to a minimal, non- objective representation, with totally abstract geometric patterns. During the rest of the century, Duchamp outshined Malevich; in the ‘60s even geometry rid itself of metaphysical claims and became instead an instrument to investigate the phenomenology of perception.
In the ‘80s, with the “Neo Geo” movement, there took place a kind of renaissance of geo- metrical painting. The movement was based on the assumption that the idealism of Malevich was utterly impossible, because there is no visual sign, no matter how abstract it may be, that is not already contaminated with design, advertising, and cultural emblems.

Ana Catalina Vicuña is an artist trained in graphic design and certainly well acquainted with Western translations of Zen philosophy and with meditation techniques, and she dedicates her work to up- holding that spirituality. To the ascetic limitation of means proposed by Malevich, she adds the mantric ritual, based on the repetition of minimal gestures. Ana CatalinaVicuña searches for a perfection that cannot be found in the particular details of empirical reality and that can therefore be attained only as an inner refuge.