Home - signaling a dwelling, residence or place of origin - embodies one of the most basic concepts for understanding an individual or group within a larger physical and social environment. Yet home has been a little noted, although prevalent, feature in art since the 1950s, a period in which artists challenged the traditional "object" of the visual arts through the use of material and media culture, new forms, and performative actions and processes. This volume explores works by diverse U.S. Latino and Latin American artists whose engagement with the concept of "home" provides the basis for an alternative narrative of post-war art. Their work brings together an impressive array of formal languages, conceptual strategies, and art historical references with the varied social concerns characterizing both the postwar period in the Americas and an emerging global economy impacting day-to-day life. The artists featured in this volume engage home as both concept and artifact. This can be seen in the use of building fragments or excisions (Gordon Matta-Clark, Gabriel de la Mora, and Leyla Cardenas), household furniture (Raphael Montanez Ortiz, Beatriz Gonzalez, Doris Salcedo, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Guillermo Kuitca), and personal possessions (Carmen Argote, Maria Teresa Hincapie, Camilo Ontiveros), and also in the use of coca leaves as a material base of the American Dream and its economic exchange with Colombia (Miguel Angel Rojas). Within more representational work, home is the re-creation of fraught domiciles (Abraham Cruzvillegas, Pepon Osorio, Daniel J. Martinez), a collage of spaces, styles, and materials (Antonio Berni, Andres Asturias, Jorge Pedro Nunez, Miguel Angel Rios, Juan Sanchez), and a juxtaposition of bodies and place (Laura Aguilar, Myrna Baez, Johanna Calle, Perla de Leon, Ramiro Gomez, Jessica Kaire, Vincent Valdez). In more conceptual work, home is all these things reduced to form-a floor plan (Luis Camnitzer, Leon Ferrari, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Guillermo Kuitca), a catalog of objects (Antonio Martorell, Hincapie), or a housing development plan (Livia Corona Benjamin, Martinez). In the end, home is a journey without arrival (Allora y Calzadilla, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Christina Fernandez, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Julio Cesar Morales, Teresa Serrano). Home-So Different, So Appealing reveals the departures and confluences that continue to shape US Latino and Latin American art and expands our appreciation of these artists and their work.

A beautiful presentation of a new suite of works made for the Menil Collection by Allora & Calzadilla The Puerto Rico-based collaborative duo Allora & Calzadilla created Specters of Noon as a group of seven large-scale works specifically for the Menil Collection. The ensemble is orchestrated around the idea of solar noon, a notion derived from Surrealist texts by Caillois, Cesaire, and others that probe the transcultural mythology of noon-a time when shadows vanish and delirious visions momentarily reign. The works include light projections, guano, ship engines, live vocal performance, and coal. Using the Menil's Surrealist holdings as a point of departure, Specters of Noon is infused throughout with a Caribbean perspective that addresses the instability of environmental and colonial politics; one work is a power transformer damaged in Hurricane Maria that is half-sheathed in bronze. Filled with stunning installation photography and insightful texts both commissioned and reprinted, this volume captures the spirit of Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla's (b. 1971) deeply researched and multifaceted work. Distributed for the Menil Collection Exhibition Schedule: Menil Collection, Houston (September 26, 2020-June 20, 2021)

Exploring cutting-edge techniques and daring themes, many Latin American artists seamlessly intertwine aesthetic refinement with biting critiques of social and political issues. Contingent Beauty assembles major works by more than 20 such artists who have made significant contributions to the global art scene over the past 30 years. Encompassing a variety of media-including painting, drawing, sculpture, and video-the majority of these innovative works are culled from the holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which possesses an exceptional collection of contemporary Latin American art. These objects, while formally sophisticated and alluring, are not ends unto themselves but rather tools intended to heighten viewers' awareness of critical factors that shape the lives of these artists, such as poverty, gender, political repression, the war on drugs, and globalization. In some instances, the "beauty" of these works is contingent upon cultural interpretation. Tensions between beauty and violence, seduction and repulsion, elegance and brutality contribute to the enduring impact of this art and provide a revelatory experience for readers.