Telenovela
On view: September 9, 2026 through March 27, 2027
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Art at Americas Society is pleased to present Telenovela, an exhibition which explores the cultural significance of telenovelas across the Western Hemisphere through the lens of visual art. With over 50 artworks produced between the 1970s and the present day, the exhibition demonstrates that telenovelas are an enduring Pan-American phenomenon that transcends geography, social stratification, or cultural categories.
Telenovela posits that the genre has been instrumental in conveying Latin American social, political, and economic values to inter-American audiences, while serving as a cultural touchstone for individuals throughout the region. Telenovelas are the most circulated cultural product of postwar Latin America, and a key part of inter-American dialogue with shows from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil becoming Hemispheric hits. Subverting traditional discourses through their use of camp, telenovelas subtly challenge the boundaries of class, gender, and taste in the largely rigid and machista societies of the Americas.
Telenovela includes a commission by Pablo Helguera, whose ongoing relational aesthetics work Instituto de la Telenovela (2002–present) pioneered the exploration of the topic through its many international presentations.
The artists participating in this exhibition include: Alexander Apóstol, Amelia Bande, Miguel Calderón, Sol Calero and Dafna Maimon, Stephen Callis, Leslie Ernst, Rubén Ortiz-Torres, and Sandra Ramírez, Déborah Castillo, Leda Catunda, Alex Červený, Phil Collins, Miriam Inez da Silva, Wilson Díaz, Andrés Duque, Enrique Flores, Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante, Julio Galán, Dalton Gata, Camilo Godoy, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Martine Gutierrez, Pablo Helguera, Katalina Iturralde, Christian Jankowski, Maripaz Jaramillo, Silvan Kälin, Leandro Katz, Juan David Laserna, José Leonilson, Lolo y Lauti, Daniela Lovera and Juan Nascimento, Arnulfo Luna, Antonio Manuel, Lucas Michael, Jessica Mitrani, Luis Molina-Pantin, Rachelle Mozman Solano, Vik Muniz, Hélio Oiticica, Yoshua Okón, Bernardo Oyarzún, Wanda Pimentel, Luciana Pinchiero, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, Abigail Reyes, Reynaldo Rivera, Fátima Rodrigo, Daniela Rossell, Marco Rountree, Stefan Ruiz, Teresa Serrano, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Yvonne Venegas, Erika Verzutti, Francesco Vezzoli, Márcia X and Aimberê César, and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto.
In anticipation of the exhibition, Americas Society hosted four virtual convenings among specialists on telenovelas from April 4 to October 3, 2025. These meetings, organized and moderated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin and Mariano López Seoane (CCS Bard), facilitated scholarly exchange that informed the planning of Telenovela.
The exhibition is accompanied by two printed publications: an exhibition catalogue and a scholarly reader. Telenovela: A Reader is co-edited by Iglesias Lukin and López Seoane, and compiles artworks, archival documents, and multidisciplinary essays exploring telenovelas from the perspectives of art history, sociology, anthropology, comparative literature, performance studies, and visual studies.
An active schedule of public programming, including a symposium, two engaging performances, and an evening of telenovela karaoke, will also accompany the exhibition.
The exhibition will be on view from September 9, 2026 to March 27, 2027.
Curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin.
In "Maria TV", Valenzuela hired fifteen domestic workers to learn a script in the style of a telenovela episode and recorded their rehearsals. The resulting video documents the maids practicing their lines and grappling with the challenge of embodying their own livelihood through a fictionalized role. The women are unconvincing actors by design, demonstrating the distance between television and the real people it dramatizes. Valenzuela conceived Maria TV out of his interest in class representation across mass media, particularly how low- and middle-class workers are presented for upper-class consumption. The portrayal of service workers in telenovelas is a notable point of contention. Maids are recurring stereotypes in these shows, used as plot devices or as one-dimensional background characters rather than complex human beings. Despite their closeness to actual events, the melodrama of telenovelas often distorts their connection to the real world. Valenzuela exaggerates this phenomenon in the performance he constructed for Maria TV.
Rodrigo Valenzuela
"Maria TV," 2014
HD video, 17:15 min.