GUATEMALA DISPATCH

Welcome to Guatemala City, home to one of Latin America’s most exciting art scenes, and one of its best-kept secrets. Here, a group of artists and curators have been using art as an effective tool for addressing past traumas, and as a way of building a alternative future. (As the CIA notes on their own website, the US was involved—along with the United Fruit Company—in supporting a 1954 coup against Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz. This culminated in a civil war that paralyzed the country for 42 years, and which ended only with the peace accords of 1996).
Here pictured, NuMu, the Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, which is housed in a giant concrete eggshell that previously served as an egg store. NuMu is a project by artists Stefan Benchoam and Jessica Kairé, and since its opening in July 2012 has featured exhibitions of work by artists including Federico Herrero and Mario García Torres.

Continue reading here:
http://blogs.guggenheim.org/map/dispatch-guatemala-city/