Momentum: Art & Ecology in Contemporary Latin America is a guide to the relationships between contemporary art and ecology, focusing in particular on the unique contributions of Latin America. The culmination of four years of research, conferences, and seminars conducted by the Cisneros Institute at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, it presents the perspectives not only of artists, art historians, and curators but also of intellectuals from a wide range of key disciplines. This anthology underscores the centrality of Latin American artistic practices that engage with the natural environment.

 

The book includes discussions of how artists imagine innovative relationships with the nonhuman, how they reflect critically on land disputes and colonial legacies, and how they envision the future. Newly commissioned texts illuminate the work of artists who pioneered ecological approaches in the 1960s and ’70s, including Cecilia Vicuña, Frans Krajcberg, Juan Downey, and the artists of the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC); further essays address artists and collectives working today across the region. The book also contains a compilation of vital preexisting texts by anthropologists, Indigenous activists, and architects, framing the work of the artists within the larger cultural and political discussion that defines the present.