Pacific Standard Time LA/LA opens today at more than 50 venues across Southern California. A celebration of Latin American/Latino/Chicano art, this series of thematically linked exhibitions explore topics such as luxury objects in the pre-Columbian Americas, 20th- century Afro-Brazilian art, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists.

Exhibitions range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries. While the majority of exhibitions will have an emphasis on modern and contemporary art, there also will be crucial exhibitions about the ancient world and the pre-modern era.

© Jessica Lagunas, Hair Weaving #1

Embracing organizations of all sizes and types—from the largest museums to smaller museums, from university galleries to performing arts centers — Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions and programs will take place across Southern California, from Santa Barbara to San Diego, from Santa Monica to Palm Springs, with opening receptions over the next several days. Info

A group of exhibitions of works by contemporary artists who create new visions, forms, and languages to challenge political and artistic norms, sometimes moving beyond the walls of the museum or gallery is listed under the category, “Critiquing Globalism and Modernism.” Included are two exhibitions that explore Disney’s engagement with Latin American imagery and the response by Latin American artists. Info With Guatemala from 33,000 km: Contemporary Art, 1960–Present, a rich period of artistic production that began during the “long civil war” of the late 1950s and extends to the present day is presented. The first survey of modern and contemporary art from Guatemala, the exhibition includes work by New York artist and DART subscriber, Jessica Lagunas. Info

© Jaime Muñoz, Fin , 2011

According to press materials, “There will be dissonance. There will be art.” At the Ben Maltz Gallery of Otis College of Art and Design, Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas investigates contemporary community-based social art practices in Latin America and Los Angeles. The exhibition features a range of practices that blur the lines between object making, political and environmental activism, community organizing, and performance art, through the work of contemporary artists and collectives from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and the U.S. The social practice artists included in Talking to Action address critical issues such as migration and memory, mapping, environmental problems and policies, gender rights and legislation, indigenous culture, and violence. Info More exhibitions on Art & Activism

Above: Natalia Ariñez, 23 Years Old, Architecture Student (detail), 1999, from the series The Sons and Daughters, Tucumán, Twenty Years Later, © Julio Pantoja (Argentine, born 1961).

With Definitions of Identity, the complex subject of identity, including issues of ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender, and more is explored, including several photography exhbitions on the subject. Point/Counterpoint: Contemporary Mexican Photography, features work by nineteen contemporary Mexican photographers, who explore recent, and often difficult, political, economic, and social realities of contemporary Mexico, at The Museum of Photographic Arts. Info Photography in Argentina, 1850-2010: Contradiction and Continuity emphasizes crucial historical moments and aesthetic movements in Argentina in which photography had a critical role, producing, and at other times dismantling, national constructions, utopian visions, and avant-garde artistic trends. Info Revolution and Ritual: The Photographs of Sara Castrejón, Graciela Iturbide, and Tatiana Parcero brings together works by representative figures of three generations of photographers in Mexico, their careers spanning 100 years. Castrejón, the least known of the three, was one of the few female photographers who documented the Mexican Revolution. Iturbide is known best for her photographs of the daily lives of Mexico's indigenous cultures, while Parcero, a contemporary photographer, splices images of her own body with cosmological maps and pre-Columbian Aztec codices. Info

© Alejandro Cartagena, on view at Kopeikin Gallery

Tell Me A story: Contemporary Mexican Photography, curated by Alejandro Cartagena, features works by Algae Cortes, Fernando Gallegos, Juan Carlos Coppel, Jose Luis Cuevas, Karla Leyva and Mariela Sancari at Kopekin Gallery, which is also featuring images from Cartagena’s new book, The Collective Memory of the Worst Place to Live in the World Today If You Are Not White. Info