Bogotá Fair ArtBo Is Staying Strong in Its 15th Year, Despite Simmering Tensions in the Region

“This is just the kind of thing
that sets ArtBo apart,” said Colombian collector Eduardo Salazar,
excited to find a video work at the Bogotá art fair by María
Teresa Hincapié, a Colombian performance artist who died in 2008
and whom he called “our Marina Abramović.” The piece,
Intempestivas
(1992), was created in
collaboration with artist José Alejandro Restrepo and her son,
Santiago Zuluaga, courtesy of Buenos Aires gallery Rolf
Art. 

Intempestivas is a
timely work for the 15the edition of ArtBo, which is open through
September 22. Through Restrepo’s images, Zuluaga’s guitar sounds,
Hincapié’s physical performance, and a stack of video monitors showing rapidly
cycling images, including licking flames, it references political
tensions, and is a reminder that the fair is taking place against the backdrop
of a possible renewal of violence by members of the guerrilla
group Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia.

One of the group’s leaders
recently released a video proclaiming a return to war against the
government, disavowing a
peace accord struck three years ago, which mostly brought to an end
a war that had lasted a half century and claimed nearly a quarter
of a million lives. A remaining armed faction continues to murder
government officials throughout the country while trafficking in
guns and drugs, and has linked up with other deadly rebel
groups. 

But in Bogotá, the nation’s
high-altitude capital, which at the moment remains untouched by the
conflict, the fair launched a lively opening on Wednesday. In
attendance were groups from Tate, Ballroom Marfa, and the Museum of
Contemporary Art Panama, as well as curators like
Inés Katzenstein, director
of MoMA’s Research Institute
for the Study of Art from Latin America, and the Museum of Fine Art
Houston’s Latin American art curator Mari Carmen Ramírez. Former
president César Gaviria, whose daughter María Paz Gaviria is the fair’s director, also
made an appearance, along with President Iván Duque.

The flow of international
visitors came despite the fair having moved its dates from October
to September to avoid coinciding with elections taking place next
month, at which time businesses close early and alcohol isn’t
served.

The fair’s 76 dealers have
brought work that’s priced as low as a few hundred dollars, like
the delightful collages by Puerto Rico’s Manuel Mendoza Sánchez,
which are available for $700 at San Juan gallery Embajada, to
big-ticket secondary-market works, like a painting by Colombia
native son Fernando Botero, at Bogotá’s Galería La Cometa for an
asking price of $400,000. “Sometimes art fairs get caught in
the middle,” Salazar said. “Here, you find great heat with works by
the masters, as well as with avant-garde contemporary
artists.”

With some exceptions, sales have
been a slow burn, but collectors were inspired by the high quality
of the work on view. Boston-area collector Julian Fisher compared
the fair to a small version of the Spanish fair ARCO Madrid, citing
the “incredible array of art from around the Spanish-speaking
world,” she said. “What impresses me is the staggering price range,
and the technical quality of the works is very good throughout.”
Indeed, the fair has extensive representation of galleries from
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, along with some
Europeans. American dealers, on the other hand, have been mostly
absent.

Other works also allude to the
region’s violence. Bogotá gallery Beatriz Esguerra Arte is showing
local artist Pedro Ruiz’s bold, five-foot-long painting
Displacement #204
(2019), which shows a man in a
loincloth piloting a canoe, surreally transporting a giant tract of
lush, green jungle. The piece refers to the forced displacement of
millions of Colombians through decades of conflict, a subject that
resounds with a number of other artists showing at
ArtBo. 

“Colombia has fantastic art and
great stories to tell in terms of politics and geography and in so
many ways, and hasn’t quite been discovered,” said
Esguerra, who has shown in every edition of the fair to date,
during the fair’s VIP preview on Wednesday. By the end of Thursday,
she reported having sold two dozen works.

As perhaps suited an event based
on international trade—only about half ArtBo’s buyers are
Colombian, according to Paz
Gaviria—several artists took on commerce itself as a subject in
their work

Herlitzka + Faria, of Buenos
Aires, is displaying several works by Candaleria Traverso, a young
Argentinian artist concerned with global commerce especially as it
moves through informal economies. She sews into large banners
pieces of synthetic fabric that is used to bag up bundles of
clothes that make a circuitous international journey from the First
World, where they are exported to Asia for recycling before winding
up with street vendors in Latin America; central to each abstract
banner is the geometry of an Inca-style stepped
pyramid. 

“ArtBo is doing a great job of
increasing the Colombian collector base in a country that doesn’t
have such a tradition of collecting,” said Feria, who has
participated in most editions of ArtBo. 

Alejandro Sánchez, an artist in
his 30s, is showing wall-hung relief sculptures of tiny, molded
resin shipping containers arranged in a grid, bringing
international channels of trade into Minimalist order but with
eye-candy colors, at Bogotá’s Galería La Cometa. Angela Espita, the
gallery’s special projects manager, points out that such containers
have harbored not only goods but also migrants coming to Latin
America. The works are on offer for $6,500. By Thursday, the
gallery had sold a half-dozen works by contemporary artists at up
to $7,000, and one work for $20,000.

Art fairs can be exhausting, and
visitors could do worse than to sit on the floor and relax with a
cup of tea with artist Manuel Mendoza Sánchez. Embajada’s booth is
lined with the artist’s very funny vases, which are covered with
imagery on themes ranging from Michael Jordan to the popularization
of yoga to albino animals. (By day’s end Thursday, Rivera had sold
a handful of collages and a few vases at up to $2,200.) They’re
inspired by the ancient function of similar ceramic vessels used to
transport commodities as well as, through their decoration, to tell
stories. 

Over a spicy brew, the artist
explained that tea appeals to him as an ancient commodity that may
have been transported internationally in containers such as these
as part of the earliest global trade. The drink went down smoothly
as we sat at the center of a modern-day international
bazaar. 

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