In strong ink, artists illustrate figures and scenes in black and white, illuminating a nuanced history of marginalized communities. Through prints, artists tell their stories and call out for justice, and with the help of modern technology, art historian Bruno Pinheiro presented their pieces so an audience can listen and learn.
Pinheiro, an art historian stationed as a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard A. Lauder Center for Modern Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, led the show as he walked a digital audience through a remote museum of print works depicting the struggles and triumphs of connecting members of marginalized communities on Friday, Sept. 19, hosted by the University of New Mexico Latin American and Iberian Institute.
The virtual presentation featured various Mexican and African artists, including sculptor and graphic artist Elizabeth Catlett, specialist in drawing and engraving Jesús Escobedo and more who made art depicting issues surrounding anti-racism and social injustices in the 1940’s and 1950’s.
Pinheiro previously stayed at UNM as a Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar in August 2024. During this time, he used the UNM Center for Southwest Research to create a presentation entailing the anti-racist solidarity in the Taller de Grafica Popular Pictorial Collection, Pinheiro said.
The Taller de Grafica Popular collection is made of artistic posters, notecards, serials, prints, calendars and fliers that focus on issues from the 1940s to 1960s, relating to labor, national socialism, fascism, agriculture and the nationalization of the petroleum industry.
This topic is one of the subchapters of his dissertation, and now, his developing book manuscript on circulation of Afro-Latin American Artists in modernist institutions, he said.
“I believe that we still have a long debate to be done, especially in Latin America, in terms of inequality in social justice, especially racial injustice,” Pinheiro said.
The presence of Afro-Latin Americans, Indigenous Latin Americans and Latin-American Institutions are important to express being able to show their social identities in their artwork, Pinheiro said.
This line of research is meaningful because we as a society must reflect on the strength of societal institutions, Pinheiro said.
“We still have a lot of work to be done, both in research, but also thinking about the structure of our institutions. I believe they are not only meaningful but also urgent for us,” Pinheiro said.
Lexis Lovato is a beat reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @lovatolexis
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