Now in its fifth consecutive year, Merrill Lynch arteaméricas is opening its upcoming edition at the Miami BeachConvention Center, where it will run from March 16 through March 18, 2007.

Anthropology is the science of otherness. Photography –which emerged almost at the same time, during the 19th century– has been the means of reproduction par excellence that contributed, and still contributes, to fossilize the identity of the Other.

A shadow theater in which the protagonists are jungle animals is what the Peruvian artist Grimanesa Amorós (Lima, Peru, 1962) features in her site-specific public art project Frente Feroz (Ferocious Front).

The power of Graciela Iturbide´s photographs resides in their ability to transform common characters and situations into a lyrical language of symbols that transcends “Mexican-ness”, thus conveying a particular vision of universal issues, such as identity, poverty, and the beauty of nature.

If the advent of photography introduced the possibility of an “end of painting”, the rapid advance of digital technology has given rise to the questioning on how fast the overabundance of images can be assimilated, given the speed at which these can be reproduced and globally disseminated.

Cosmococa Programa in Progress – Quasi-Cinema CC1 Trashiscapes (1973) is a multimedia installation conceived in New York by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) in collaboration with the filmmaker Neville D’Almeida (1941), as part of his series Quasi-Cinemas, participative spaces that transcend the cinematographic experience and call into question the contemplative nature of the art object.