Speakers:

• Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, Curator of Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo
• Pablo León de la Barra, Curator at Large, Latin America, Guggenheim Museum
• Karen Marta, Co-editor, Feliciano Centurión
• Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society

On September 30, 2020, Americas Society Visual Arts celebrated the virtual book launch of Feliciano Centurión, the first monograph ever published in any language on the life and work of Paraguayan artist Feliciano Centurión.

Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, curator of Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo—now currently on view again in New York City at Americas Society until November 20—presented the artist and explained his work showing three different phases of the artist's career in the exhibition. Karen Marta, co-editor of the monograph, discussed her editorial and design process for the book. Pablo León de la Barra joined the conversation, contextualizing the value of Centurión's practice among that of artists from Latin America and the United States. The conversation was moderated by Americas Society's Aimé Iglesias Lukin, and it was possible thanks to the support of the Institute For Studies on Latin American Art.

Friends, family, artists, and scholars on Feliciano Centurión each discuss a work by the Paraguayan artist from the exhibition Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo. These remembrances spotlight the artist’s intimate craft, ethics of affection, and the relevance of his art today.

In this mini-documentary, curator Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro and Americas Society Visual Arts Director Aimé Iglesias Lukin talk about Abrigo, the first solo exhibition of Paraguayan artist Feliciano Centurión in the United States.

The short film displays the full collection of Centurión's works in the New York exhibition, which features embroidery and painting on traditional blankets and other domestic items that the artist would buy in Buenos Aires' Garment District. Pérez-Barreiro explains how Centurión approached his identity and life experiences in a novel and political way, shaping art in Latin America in the 1990s. "He's talking about his identity as a Paraguayan immigrant into Buenos Aires, bringing these things that are invisible or considered bad taste and incorporating them very happily and confidently into his work," says the curator. For Lukin, Centurión's blankets serve as a metaphor for the entire exhibition: "[They are] the type of shelter, protection, and community that he was looking as an immigrant artist."

Centurión's works reflect his youth in the tropics, his love experiences in the Argentine metropolis, and spiritual reflections before his untimely death due to AIDS-related illness. "Even when he's diagnosed with AIDS and is facing the disease, he decides to make works that are not traumatic but are a testimony for the future, himself, his loved ones. That is what makes his work so powerful, informative, and at the same time very political," says Lukin.

• Learn more about Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo
• Read the exhibition catalogue for Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo.
• Watch the documentary Feliciano Centurión: Abrazo Íntimo al Natural, directed by Mon Ross (2016).

Documentary: Luisa Leme
Installation Images: On White Wall, Alessandra Medina
Soundtrack: Music of the Americas
"Caçuá," by the Hamilton de Holanda Quintet, performed at Americas Society in New York.
"Vals Op 8 N3," "Petit Pierrot," and "Bicho Feo" by Agustín Barrios Mangoré, performed by Tony Morris at Americas Society in New York.