Project
Brief History
On-site 1: Carlos Motta
MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York
Jun 28–Sep 14, 2009
Brief History, (2005-2009), the first solo project in a New York museum by Colombian-born, New York-based artist Carlos Motta, consists of a black vinyl mural and an edition of two newspapers. This installation is part of the SOA Cycle (2005-2009) a project through which the artist examines the School of the Americas (SOA)-a Cold War institution sponsored by the U.S. government to train Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency tactics and military strategy, originally established with the aim to prevent the spread of communism in Latin America.
The large black image in the lobby titled SOA: Black and White Pain-ting # 15 (2005-09) was appropriated from a Colombian newspaper and depicts a group of soldiers advancing with guns drawn. This abstracted and de-contextualized image confronts the viewer with a war scene but does not reveal who is fighting against whom. The newspapers, which are free for visitors to take, respectively present a brief history of U.S. interventions in Latin America and a history of leftist guerrillas in the same region, both spanning the years of the Cold War. Brief History engages a history of "enemy" ideologies.
