Contemporary Art Studies Program: New artistic practices in Ecuador 2005-2010.

In the equator of the last three decades, the arts, science, cultural expressions, humanities, public education, cultural services, have been run over, to the extreme of their almost annihilation. Not only have government budgets have been reduced but also the lack of public policies in these areas that has caused a state of generalized precariousness, so that the country will need great efforts to overcome the effects of this era. However, the contemporary artists of Ecuador not only have creatively account for the bad times that society has suffered but, in the countercurrent, they have been able to produce a questioning, critical art, uncomfortable to the status quo, although it does not arrive sufficiently, even, towards great audiences, but a look on the artistic production of our time can help to understand the social, economic, economic, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural, political, cultural political, cultural, economic, cultural, cultural, cultural political, cultural, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural, economic, economic, economic, cultural political, cultural, cultural, cultural political ones that have not been disagreed in recent years can be understood. The transformations of sensibilities, the production, circulation and reception of visual arts in these five years are as powerful as extraordinary, to the point that, in this brief chronological time, the field of art has expanded much more than in several decades. For example, we have traveled, not without serious childbirth pains of the aesthetics of the objective image (painting, sculpture), towards other aesthetics that produce images-knowledge, action, relationship, context, situation etc. and, more recently, we are facing the emergence of the so-called and image, virtual, which moves, without limits, by the networks of the cyber space, without losing strength to question, interrogate and unblock. And, what is more, the new artistic practices have been connected with everyday life, concerns for the environment, gender issue, social and political organization, the situation of peripheries in the globalized world, critical reflection on technologies, etc. This set of transformations, new practices, sensibilities, circuits, etc. configure, as a whole, the space of contemporary art. So, contemporary is not only what occurs at this time or at this time, but rather an extensive, varied, different, alternative, critical of artistic practices that have exploded the visuality known so far. However, despite this creative, new, different presence that demonstrates that art has not died but has been deeply transformed, in the country the theoretical, historical and critical research on contemporary art is almost non -existent. So if we want to investigate the transformations that contemporary art in Ecuador has lived and experienced, as well as those that society lived, it is to undertake an investigation that interconnects these spheres and allane the path of an indispensable self -reflection in the discipline.

IX RESEARCH PROJECT COMPETITION, IV RESEARCH PROGRAM COMPETITION AND IV POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECT COMPETITION