Amid a triumphant New York triennial, Fort Worth-based curator María Elena Ortiz looks back at her diasporic storytelling efforts—and calls for a bigger Latinx curatorial web.
FORT WORTH—Latinx people make up nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population and are the country’s fastest-growing ethnic group, accounting for 71 percent of the nation’s population growth. The Census Bureau projects that more than 25 percent of the American population will be Latinx by 2060. So what is the biggest challenge facing Latinx artists today?
“The challenge is that we need more. More exhibitions, more curators, more acquisitions,” says Fort Worth-based curator and scholar María Elena Ortiz. “Latinx people are the biggest minority in this country and that doesn’t echo in museums’ cultural programs and collections. To have more of those histories and those narratives in museums, and to nurture that ecosystem is the biggest challenge right now.”
After over a decade of curating, writing, and developing programs at esteemed institutions such as the Pérez Art Museum in Miami and the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, Ortiz joined the curatorial team at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2022 and has since been infusing Texas with new energy and introducing museum visitors to a diverse array of artists and movements.
Ortiz’s curatorial approach is informed by Latin American and African histories, highlighting contemporary artists whose work explores the varying realities of the diasporic experience and Latinx identity.
I’m a big believer that location and your primary audience [are] your biggest resource[s].
During her tenure at PAMM, Ortiz spearheaded exhibitions like The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Caribbean Art (2019), which brought together a group of contemporary artists to imagine the trajectory of the Caribbean region through a variety of multidisciplinary approaches. Since her arrival at The Modern, Ortiz organized Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diaspora Art since 1940 (2024), a group exhibition that expanded the discourse on Afro-Caribbean Surrealism and further negotiated the narratives, influences, and intersectionalities that made the movement what it was.
Most recently, Ortiz has co-organized El Museo del Barrio’s second large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art, Flow States — La Trienal 2024, alongside the Upper Manhattan museum’s chief curator Rodrigo Moura and curator Susanna V. Temkin. The exhibition, which was recently named one of fall 2024’s “10 Most Anticipated Art Shows This Season” by The New York Times, extends the Latinx identity to encompass new geographies that consider the complexity of the diaspora.
When I asked how she and her team approach a large-scale contemporary exhibition like La Trienal, Ortiz stressed the importance of collaboration. “Each of us brought different artists, interests, and approaches to the table,” she says. The essentiality of curatorial teamwork to conceive this exhibition underscores the overwhelming diversity and abundance of histories within Latinx art.
The result was a blend of deeply personal narratives about migration, community, and plurality from artists based in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe, which ultimately connected to larger narratives surrounding Latinx identity. One example of this is Gadiel Rivera Herrera’s collage book titled Asientos de negrxs (2006, 2024), translating to Black seating or settlement, which reflects on his research into the trafficking of the Bantu people from West Africa to Puerto Rico during the slave trade, then ties that act of forced transportation to his own experiences traveling in Africa as well as his daily commute while living in New York. The imagery in his book ruminates on the indefinite diasporas and possible mythologies of the Black identity and its evident ties to the Caribbean.
One primary concern for Ortiz when curating an exhibition is, of course, its geography. “I’m a big believer that location and your primary audience [are] your biggest resource[s],” she explains. “So if you can use that locality as the lens in which you look at your community and a particular subject, that is incredibly enriching.”
No matter where Ortiz is curating—be it Fort Worth, New York, or Miami—she consistently integrates the history of the community into her work. Miami, for example, has one of the largest Spanish-speaking populations in the country and one of the largest Cuban American populations; so, in curating shows like Allied with Power: African & African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection (2020) during her time at PAMM, Ortiz is doing more than highlighting the museum’s recently acquired Cuban, African, and Afro-Latinx artworks—she is celebrating and building upon Miami’s community.
My approach to curating is very momentary, very ephemeral.
“That regionality is a resource and also a way to connect with audiences,” she says. “The Latinx identity is very diverse and everyone has their own priorities.”
Despite her evident authority in the field, Ortiz is more than open to critique. “Personally, my approach to curating is very momentary, very ephemeral. It is a platform in which I hope that anyone can come in and either contest it or build upon it.”
As personal and cultural conceptions of Latinx identity continue to evolve, Ortiz embraces the rapidly changing sociopolitical environment, letting it inform and shape her curatorial practice.
“I don’t see any of my exhibitions as a final project,” she explains. “I see them as a conversation starter.”
In the Southwest, where more than 40 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latinx, expanding structural diversity and furthering representation of people with varied geographic origins are vital to an accurate depiction of the contemporary moment.
“This region is an integral part of the American story and I don’t think people should underestimate that,” says Ortiz.
Melvin Edwards, Mozambique, c. 1974, installation view, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2024, welded steel and powder coating. Courtesy the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Part of Surrealism and Us.
<i>Surrealism and Us</i>, installation view, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2024. Courtesy The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
