1984: Space-Time Capsule

Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities

Grossman and Anderson Art Galleries at Tufts University
900 Jefferson Drive, SW
Washington, D.C.

Dates: January 20 – April 24, 2022

1984: Space-Time Capsule is a feathered steel frame geodesic dome, a home and a shelter for the precarious transnational archives of Central American peoples. It is also a thank you note to the artists, curators, writers, editors, galleryists, activists who participated in Artists Call, particularly Coosja van Bruggen, whose papers are also sheltered inside. It is a gift of generosity containing the labor and the revived cultural memory of an immigrant community that engaged in stitching feathers in an industrial context in Los Angeles. It is a reminder that our immigrant lives are filled with beautiful moments, ancient knowledge, dreams for the future.

Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities focuses on the seminal 1980s activist campaign, Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America. Growing out of the friendships, solidarity networks, and political organizing amongst artists and activists such as Daniel Flores y Ascencio, Lucy Lippard, Doug Ashford, Leon Golub, and Coosje van Bruggen, the campaign resulted in exhibitions, performances, poetry readings, film screenings, concerts, and other cultural and educational events in over 27 cities across the United States and Canada.

The exhibition highlights Artists Call’s history through a selection of activities and works from the 31 exhibitions and over 1,100 artists who participated in New York City including major works from Josely Carvalho, Leon Golub, Hans Haacke, Tim Rollins and KOS, Nancy Spero, Claes Oldenburg, Zarina, Jimmie Durham, and Juan Sanchez, alongside the original edition of the Reconstruction Codex (1984), created by Sabra Moore and nineteen collaborators (including Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Emma Amos, Camille Billops, Nancy Spero, Virginia Jaramillo, and Helen Oji, among others) well as an expansive collection of Latin Mail Art, including contributions by Lotty Rosenfeld and Edgardo Antonio Vigo, amongst many others. The exhibition also references Artists Call’s legacy today in new forms of inter-American solidarity networks and visual alliances through a selection of works including Benvenuto Chavajay, Sandra Monterroso, Carlos Motta, Muriel Hasbun, Fredman Barahona & Christian Dietkus Lord, Antena Aire, Antonio Serna and new commissions by Beatriz Cortez and Naeem Mohaiemen.

Organized by TUAG Curator Abigail Satinsky and Erina Duganne, Associate Professor of Art History, Texas State University. Major Support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Studies on Latin America (ISLAA). Fully illustrated catalogue published by Inventory Press.