Arte al día Writes about Americas Society's Upcoming Exhibition Telenovela

Americas Society (New York) will open Telenovela on September 9, 2026, an exhibition exploring how contemporary Latin American artists have engaged with the visual and conceptual richness of telenovelas, the most widely circulated Latino cultural product of the postwar period. The exhibition sets out to show that soap operas constitute an enduring pan-American phenomenon that transcends geographic borders, social stratification, and cultural categories.

Curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Art at Americas Society, the exhibition examines the telenovela's profound cultural, social, and political relevance across the Western Hemisphere, positioning it as a serious subject of research within art history.

Telenovelas are a fundamental piece of inter-American dialogue. Over the years, productions from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil have become international hits. Americas Society's exhibition examines how, despite having traditionally been associated with lower-prestige forms of cultural consumption, the television serial have enjoyed enormous popularity, helping shape cultural identities and strengthen social bonds by offering an essential platform for discussing personal and collective experiences.

Open to the public through March 2027, the exhibition includes a collaboration with Mexican artist Pablo Helguera, whose ongoing work Instituto de la Telenovela (2007–present) was a pioneering exploration of this subject. Positioned at the entrance to the exhibition, the audiovisual installation — composed of multiple screens integrated among stage elements characteristic of a telenovela set — serves as a prologue to more than fifty works created across a wide range of media, from video art and photography to installation, painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage...

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