Artist Fabiano Kueva, recipient of the Cisneros Institute’s 2024 Artists Research Fellowship, presents a performance lecture along with musician Alex Alvear. The event emerges from Kueva’s research project “milnovecientosochentaycuatro,” which is centered on reconstructing the political and aesthetic connections, emotions, and material traces of the Festival de la Nueva Canción Latinoamericana (Festival of Latin American New Song), which took place in Mexico City, Managua, and Quito in 1982, 1983, and 1984, respectively.
Kueva and Alvear will guide the audience through the map of la nueva canción latinoamericana [The Latin American New Song], a music style that emerged in the 1960s and gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, which combined traditional folk music, protest lyrics, and political activism. Nueva canción latinoamericana: memorias y presagios (New Latin American New Song: Memories and Omens) will narrate, sing, and commemorate some of the movement’s defining moments by drawing from a repertoire of both iconic and lesser-known songs, personal and collective testimonies, and archival imagery.
According to Kueva, “Between the 1960s and 1980s, amid emerging subjectivities and social struggles across the continent, people mobilized for social justice and cultural recognition. The individual voice gave way to a collective body, calling people into action in the streets. In this context, la nueva canción latinoamericana stood out as a deeply resonant and magnetic artistic expression crossing borders and challenging repression and censorship. Throughout the region, artists from varied aesthetic and ideological backgrounds created spaces to process mourning and exile, support resistance, and celebrate a utopian vision of equality catalyzed by this musical movement. Its legacy left a complex political and sonic map, filled with popular anthems and emblematic figures, as well as absences of voices and gestures that remained on the margins or outside its borders.”
This event will be presented in Spanish, without translation. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Presenters
Since 1990 Fabiano Kueva has worked at the intersection of art, communication, pedagogy, and social memory, using image and sound technologies. His practice involves public discourse, fluid artistic genres, and crossing disciplinary boundaries. His research revolves around topics such as geopolitics, the revision of “official” narratives, documentary-based approaches, and the creation of community archives, network building, and critical-poetic writing across different media. Kueva received the 2024 Artist Research Fellowship of the Cisneros Institute at The Museum of Modern Art. He lives and works in Quito, Ecuador.
Recognized as a reference and key figure in Ecuador’s music scene, Alex Alvear is known for constantly searching for a distinct sound that combines diverse musical traditions and styles. His most notable projects include Equatorial, which approaches Ecuadorian musical traditions through jazz, tango, and Brazilian music; Mango Blue, music inspired by Afro-Caribbean rhythms and elements of funk, jazz, and R&B; and Wañukta Tonic, his most recent project, which blends rock, blues, reggae, funk, and African music intertwined with melodic motifs and rhythms drawn from Ecuadorian musical traditions. Alvear lives and works in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America is a platform dedicated to stimulating, supporting, and disseminating new understandings of Latin American modern and contemporary art in relationship to broader cultural issues within a global context.
The Institute will present a number of events that examine pressing situations facing Latin America today. We are interested in reflecting on Latin America as part of the larger world, and will create links with debates from further afield.