The map was part of a larger book " Cosmographie Introductio," authored by Matthias Ringmann who wrote: "Inasmuch as both Europe and Asia received their names from women, I see no reason why anyone should justly object to calling this part Amerige, i.e., the land of Amerigo, or America, after Amerigo, its discoverer, a man of great ability." Previously in 1507, shortly after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci's voyages to present-day Brazil demonstrated that the land was not contiguous to South Eastern Asia, but in fact part of a distinct continent, Waldseemüler published a world map, Universalis Cosmographia, where he called the territory "America." This was not the first time the land mass was included on a world map, and this was also not the first label given to the territory. Terra incognita - unknown lands, was what cartographer Martin Waldseemüler labeled the newly charted super continent to the West of Europe and Africa in his 1513 reworking of the Ptolemy Atlas. The ideological and geographic idea of Latin America is a bit nebulous too.
LA/LA Place + Practice grew out of a series of conversations between local artists, curators and scholars in Los Angeles, including Kelley, Day and Rivas, who recognized that the lack of institutional and academic interest in the field of Latin American art history in Los Angeles prior to this moment, meant that this vast cultural terrain was still relatively uncharted for many institutions participating in LA/LA. Organized by Bill Kelley Jr., Ken Gonzales Day and Pilar Tompkins Rivas, with support from Scripps College, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the San Diego Museum of Art, these discourses underpin many of the PST research initiatives underway and that will feature prominently in exhibitions that will be part of the LA/LA initiative. The recent LA/LA Place + Practice symposium held at the San Diego Museum of Art and at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles brought together Tijuana and Los Angeles activists, artists, curators, and scholars to share their work and reflect on the ways community-based responses to local social, political and economic terrains in the border region and to enrich discourses on diaspora, migration and history in relation to Latin America. It's a question that will be at the center of local and international conversations catalyzed by the Getty's next Pacific Standard Time initiative LA/LA, which will reflect on the social and cultural relationships between Los Angeles and Latin America through a series of research initiatives, exhibitions and publications in collaboration with cultural institutions throughout Southern California culminating in 2017.
What do we mean when we speak of Latin America? Rafa Esparza performs "building: a simulacrum of power" on the site of Michael Parker's "The Unfinished." | Photo: Dylan Schwartz.