The numbers of young artists in New York City continues to grow, but space to exhibit their work does not. In response to this, in 1999 El Museo del Barrio initiated the ''The S Files,'' an annual—and hereafter biennial—showcase of young Latino and Latin American artists living in and around the city. Work was picked after an open call for submissions. This year's edition, organized by Deborah Cullen and Victoria Noorthoorn, has 30 artists, most of them in their 20's or 30's.
The most impressive of several photo-based pieces is François Bucher's layered quasi-documentary about the life and death of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a charismatic leftist Colombian leader whose assassination in 1948 incited a period known as ''the violence'' in that country. Mr. Bucher was born in Colombia in 1972; he is a smart, interesting artist. More disturbing is Leticia Stella-Serra's photojournalistic account of her own treatment for ovarian cancer. With its pictures of tubes, medical hardware and bare flesh, the piece is like an in-the-trenches pictorial account of war.
