Social transgression and aesthetic innovation. The political dimension of "light art" in Buenos Aires between 1989 and 1993

Abstract

From 1976 to 1983, a totalitarian régime ruled in Argentina. Its  repressive policies had an peculiar effect on the Buenos Aires artistic field. This period was characterized by artists’ social interactions being reduced to small groups, an arbitrary selection criteria in official institutions and a homogenization of the types of artists and the aesthetics in circulation.  After a return to democracy, a process of alteration took place in Buenos Aires’s cultural field, and gradually opened up this social space, allowing the entrance of other social actors. These newcomers brought their own symbolic universes. I will analyze the different groupings of artists located in Buenos Aires during the transition towards democracy. I will approach this process of transition from dictatorship to democracy by studying the process of emergence of the artists known as “the artists of the Rojas”, which implied an opposition to the leading groups of the time.