Erotic Modernity. Alexander Apóstol's "Ensayando la Postura Nacional"

• In Event: Qué puede un cuerpo: arte y sexualidad en las encrucijadas de lo nacional (1950-1990)

Abstract

The role of visual arts and homoerotism in the construction of Latin American nationhood will be explored by this presentation through the case study of Alexander Apóstol’s (1969) project Ensayando la Postura Nacional. These photographs and videos appropriate and restage in a contemporary tone the 1950s paintings of Pedro Centeno Vallenilla, official artist during Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in Venezuela who aimed to represent the racial and cultural diversity of the young Nation. Emphasizing on the homoerotic and kitsch features of Centeno Vallenilla’s paintings, Apóstol comments on the sexualized role of South American caudillo in the conformation of paternalistic societies, the failure of the racial cohabitations mythology, and more broadly on the failure of the modernist project. Incorporating Eve Sedgwick’s concept of homosociability and Robert McKee Irwin’s study of Mexican masculinities and the construction of nationalism in Latin America during the Nineteenth Century, the presentation will try to bring light to Apóstol’s critique of modernism by focusing on his use of nationalism, race, eroticism, gender, and art history as a narrative. This is how the series’ sarcasm deconstructs not only the idea of modern male nation, but more broadly puts into question the art historical canon of Latin American modern art, eternally negotiating its identity with the art centers to only achieve what Apóstol would call “a transvestite identity.”

Author

• Aime I Iglesias Lukin, Rutgers University