Quote by Marta Traba: “Art that does not disturb the comfortable is decoration, not art.”

Real art challenges the status quo, unsettles assumptions, and forces people to confront what they would rather ignore. Work that merely pleases or decorates has abandoned one of art's most important functions. The measure of art's value is partly whether it disturbs those who need to be disturbed.

Traba was writing during a period when Latin American art was deeply engaged with political resistance, as military dictatorships spread across the Southern Cone and Central America. The question of whether art could — or should — serve political ends was fiercely debated, and Traba took a clear position: art that evaded politics was morally compromised.

Argentine art critic and novelist, one of the most influential art critics in twentieth-century Latin America, whose writing challenged both European artistic dominance and politically complicit art. She was expelled from Colombia for her criticism of US cultural imperialism and her support of student movements.