Peripheral art and imagination

Peripheral art and imagination

The emerging art of the Global South lies at the heart of the asymmetries that limit our lives. In these places, far from the centres of power, imagination becomes a powerful tool. Here, artists create dystopian cuts that reflect crises and anxieties, transforming reality into something new and meaningful.

These interstitial zones are like vibrant edges, where tropical humidity dilutes dominant discourses. In these spaces, possibilities for expression and creativity are reconfigured. The peripheries of consumer societies are filled with diverse voices: migrants, lateral subjects and those whose lives depend on precarious strategies. In post-colonial contexts, many people are left behind in the distribution of resources, but art emerges as a beacon of expectations.

In these border spaces, creation allows unknown subjectivities and alternative landscapes to emerge. Each work acts as a thread that weaves collective history, dipping into the layers of the past and giving them new life. Aesthetics in these off-centre moments reclaims the naked body from symbolic logics that seek to control and limit.

Creative gestures resonate with broken expectations. They interrupt the monotony of reality and allow personal free flight to express itself in the midst of subalternisation and exclusionary routines. Through art, forgotten memories are activated, overflowing rigid norms, extending the familiar to unsuspected horizons.

Mobilising this silenced energy allows us to recycle lost utopias. Colour returns to forgotten palettes; the body finds its place on a surface that sustains it. By participating in the creation of the meaning of what we see, artists offer us a space for self-creation in the face of fragmented experiences.

In these places in the South, art not only challenges hegemonic narratives; it also acts as a mirror that reflects our everyday struggles and shared dreams. Each work is an act of resistance, a statement that seeks to reconfigure the cultural landscape from its deepest roots.

Creativity thus becomes a vehicle for social transformation. Each stroke is a reclamation of lost space, an invitation to rethink our shared realities. In this collective journey into the unknown, each artist becomes a cartographer of new possibilities, drawing maps that challenge the limitations of the past. The work of art is more than an aesthetic manifestation, it is a celebration of diversity and an invitation to imagine possible futures. From their experience we find a path to connection and hope.

By Yoxi Velázquez: Escena #5. Paisaje 5. La nube, 2013