Rethinking Folk Art

Tuesday, March 4th at 4pm GMT

Rethinking Folk Art brings together a panel of early career scholars, Lucía Abramovich (San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, US), Sonali Gupta Agarwal (Himalayan Institute of Cultural and Heritage Studies, Kullu Valley, India), and Gabriela Germaná (Florida State University, Florida, US), thinking critically about the term ‘folk art’ and how it has been applied, interpreted, and subverted over time and in different geographic and regional contexts. Abramovich , Gupta Agarwal, and Germaná will reflect on how they have engaged with this concept in their work and research in museums, academia, and communities of practice.

Register here.

Wednesday, Feb. 10

After the Hurricane: Art, Race, and Climate Change in the Modern Caribbean

Joseph R. Hartman, University of Missouri – Kansas City, part of the Bodies in Crisis 1 Session 

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 10-10:30 EST

Session Link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/8377

Down to Earth: Womxn Artists and Ecological Practices in Latin America

Chair: Madeline Murphy Turner, The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 10-10:30 EST

Session Link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7556

Papers: 

• Carlota Di Liscia, Blood, Spit, and Tears: Performing Gender and Ethnicity in Sandra Monterroso’s “Lix Cua Rahro/Tus tortillas, mi amor”
• Florencia San Martin, Inhabiting the Waters: The Art of Mapuche Artist Sebastián Calfuqueo
• Gillian Sneed, Opossum Resilience and Dry Twigs: Ecofeminist Cuir Camp in Contemporary Latin American Video Performance
• Madison C. Treece, Embroidering Politics: Maya Cosmologies Influence in “Zapantera Negra” 

Love in times of crisis: Reparative Art Histories

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 2:00-2:30 PM
Session Link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7989

ALAA-Relevant papers:

• Mya Dosch: “Signs of Life: Teatro Ojo against Spectacular 1968 in Mexico”

Thursday, Feb. 11

Georgina G. Gluzman: “Home Is Where the Heart Is”: Foreign Women Artists in Argentine Art History” (paper), part of the session CAA-Getty Global Conversation I: The Migration of Art and Ideas (chair: Georgina G. Gluzman)

Thursday, February 11, 2021, 10-10:30 EST

Session link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7586

Nourish and Resist: Food and Transatlantic Feminisms in Contemporary Caribbean Art

Co-chairs: Hannah Ryan and Lesley A. Wolff 

Thursday, February 11, 12-12:30PM EST

Papers:

-Shana Klein, “Pulling Back the Peel: Exploring the Unsavory History of the United Fruit Banana in Contemporary Art”

-Tashima Thomas, “Botanical Feminisms: From Ethnogenesis to Edible Desire”

-Maria Elena Ortiz, “Food Markets and Power”

-Cristina Molina and Vanessa Centeno, “Forbidden Foods”

Session link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7152

How Exhibitions and Collections Have Shaped the History of Art of Brazil

Chairs: Paulina Pardo Gaviria; Paula Victoria Kupfer, University of Pittsburgh

Discussant: Elena Shtromberg, University of Utah

Thursday, February 11, 12-12:30PM EST

Papers:

-Fernanda Mendonca Pitta, “An Ancient New World: The 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris and “the Birth” of Brazilian Indigenous Art”

-Camilla Querin, “Revolutionary Popular Art: How Two Centers for the Promotion and Production of Popular Art Shaped the Development of Contemporary Art in Brazil”

-Sonia Angela de Laforcade, “Between the Exhibition and the Courtroom”

-Mari Rodriguez Binnie, “On Vertices and Ruptures: The 1977 Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte”

Session link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7903 

Creative Cartographies & Inherited Aesthetics: Craft, Tradition, and Labor in Modern and Contemporary Fine Art Practices

Thursday, February 11, 6:00-6:30 pm EST

Chair: Erin L. McCutcheon

Discussant: Ella S. Mills

Papers: 

• Karen Cordero, “Revaluing Feminine Trajectories and Stitching Alternative Genealogies in the Work of Yohanna Roa”
• Imogen Hart, “Althea McNish: Designs Without Borders”
• Penny C. Morrill, “Matilde Poulat: Discovering Her Nahua Past in Silver”
• Tatiana Reinoza, “Racial Performance and the Maternal: Restaging Central America in Rachelle Mozman’s Photographs”

Session Link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7819

Towards the “Concrete Transaction”: Global Methods for Art in Capital

Chairs: Avigail Moss and Ellen C. Feiss

Thursday, February 11, 12-12:30PM EST

-Uneven and Combined Development, Art History, and Concrete Totality

• Ciaran Finlayson
• -Berni: Art and Hegemony
• Karen Benezra
• -From Democratic Pluralism to Corporate Hegemony: US Art after 1943
• Angela L. Miller, Washington University in St. Louis
• -Racial and Economic Inequality: the SFMOMA and the Private Fisher Collection
• Nizan Shaked, California State University, Long Beach

Session Link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7187

Friday, Feb. 12

Peru’s Bicentenary: Identity Fractures in a Period of Transition from the colonial to the Republican Era

Friday, February 12, 10:00 – 10:30 am EST

Chairs: Verónica Muñoz-Nájar and Katherine Moore McAllen

Discussant: Natalia Majluf

Papers:

• Elena Phipps, Andean Seventeenth-Century Black Uncus worn for Corpus Christi and the Left-spun yarn that Empowers them.
• Leslie Todd, Confronting Racialized Narratives of Sculptural Production and Consumption in Eighteenth-Century Quito.
• Grace Alexandrino Ocaña, Migrants, Murals and Metropolitan Identities: Public Spaces and Urban Heritage Aesthetics as Struggles for Historic Lima.

Session link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7974

How Exhibitions and Collections Have Shaped the History of Art of Brazil

Chairs: Paula V. Kupfer (University of Pittsburgh) and Paulina Pardo

Discussant: Elena Sthromberg (University of Utah)

Thursday February 11, 12pm–12:30pm EST

• – Fernanda Mendonca Pitta, “An Ancient New World: The 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris and ‘the Birth’ of Brazilian Indigenous Art”
• – Camilla Querin (University of California, Riverside), “Revolutionary Popular Art: How Two Centers for the Promotion and Production of Popular Art Shaped the Development of Contemporary Art in Brazil”

– Sonia Angela de Laforcade, “Between the Exhibition and the Courtroom”

– Maria Teresa Rodriguez Binnie (Williams College), “On Vertices and Ruptures: The 1977 Projeto Construtivo Brasileiro na Arte” 

Arts of the Screen in Latin America, 1968-1990

Friday, February 12, 4:00 – 4:30 pm EST

Chairs: Daniel Quiles and Benjamin Murphy

Papers:

-Paulina Pardo Gaviria, “Lent for Exhibition Only: TV Screens at the São Paulo Biennial”

-William Henry Schwaller, “Argentina Intermedios: A two-night show and a fitting descriptor of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 1970s”

-Dorota Biczel, “From Screen to Shroud: Burying the Criollo Republic with Juan Javier Salazar”

-Agustin Diez Fischer, “Out of the Human and into the Screen: Leopoldo Maler and Television in the 1970s”

Session link: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7646

Revisting the Popular in Latin American Art

Friday, February 12, 6:00 – 6:30pm EST

Chair: Megan Sullivan

Discussant: Ana María Reyes

Davida Fernandez-Barkan, “Arte Popular’s International Legacy: The Case of Mexican Muralism”

Laura Moure Cecchini, “‘Artists Must Live with their Eyes Open: Antonio Berni, The Andean Baroque, and Latin American Popular Art”

Harper Montgomery, “The Liberation and Development of Popular Art: A Modernist

Polemic for El Museo del Barro”

Cristobal Barria Bignotti, “The Sense of Touch in the Apprehension of Popular Art”

Saturday, Feb. 13

Architectural Sculpture in the Ancient and Early Modern Periods 

12:00 am – 12:30 am EST

Chairs: Gretel Rodriguez and Meghan Rubenstein

Patricia Alexander Lagarde, Tulane University “Sculpting with the Sun: Phenomenology of Light in Architectural Sculpture at Chavín de Huántar, Peru”

Breton Adam Langendorfer, University of Pennsylvania, “Achaemenid Syntax: Architecture, Metalware, and Imperial Modularity”

Aileen Ajootian, University of Mississippi, “Roman Architectural Sculpture at Ancient Corinth: New Discoveries”

Gregor A. Kalas, University of Tennessee, “Repossessing the Sculptures on the Arcus Argentariorum in Early Medieval Rome”

In this pandemic environment, numerous museums have been adding virtual tours, walk-throughs, or discussions to their websites, such as this example from the Blanton Museum of Art. The link below provides an opportunity for Latin American colonial art history students and aficionados alike to enjoy a meditative moment with Ray Williams, Director of Education and Academic Affairs at the Blanton as he guides viewers through the visual narrative of “Our Lady of Cocharcas.” Enjoy!

Our Lady of Cocharcas, artist unknown, Peru, 1751, oil on canvas; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, On loan from the Thoma Foundation

Dear colleagues,

As the Executive Committee of the Association for Latin American Art, we affirm Black lives. Most recently, the state-sanctioned murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, David McAtee, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others have again laid bare the specter of white supremacy that pervades not only law enforcement, but also the healthcare, housing, governmental, and educational systems and institutions of the United States. 

We also acknowledge the historical depth of anti-Blackness all over the Américas. We are aware that this is not an issue exclusive to the United States, but rather one that has plagued the entire hemisphere for centuries. We cannot forget the countless victims of Black discrimination and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. Just last May 31st, for instance, Anderson Arboleda, a young Afro-Colombian, was brutally killed by the police in front of his house in Cauca simply for breaking curfew. 

As art historians, we recognize the power of images, especially in our present moment as people across the world consume traumatic photographs and video footage of state and vigilante terror. The visual culture that we are witnessing is but the latest manifestation in a centuries-long history of images of anti-Blackness that demand our study and scholarship. Art history is more relevant than ever in these times. Yet much remains to be done. 

The field of Latin American art history has an unacceptable shortage of Black and Afro-Latinx voices at the university and museum level. This is both a pipeline issue and indicative of systemic discrimination that begins at the K-12 level. Moreover, although vibrant artistic production abounds in Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American communities, these arts remain woefully understudied and underutilized by historians of Latin American art in classrooms, exhibitions, and scholarship. Furthermore, as a community of scholars, this is an opportune time to pursue scholarly analysis of race, oppression, and liberation movements through an art historical lens. 

How can we recalibrate our field and scholarship using the momentum that the present demands of us?

We would like to use this moment as an opportunity to reflect on ways that our field can uplift Black art and Black scholarship, and cultivate new generations of Black and Afro-Latinx scholars by building on the critical foundations that have been laid by scholars, curators, and public intellectuals. We encourage our members to renew their attention to issues of racial injustice and violence in our field. Initiatives are underway that we look forward to sharing with the community shortly. 

#BlackLivesMatter #LasVidasNegrasImportan 

Ananda Cohen-Aponte, President

Ana M. Franco, Vice President

Lesley Wolff, Secretary-Treasurer

CARLOS ALFONZO
WITNESSING PERPETUITY
EXPERIENCE IT VIRTUALLY!

LnS Gallery brings Carlos Alfonzo: Witnessing Perpetuity to a close with a virtual exhibition!

A 3D Virtual Rendering of the Carlos Alfonzo: Witnessing Perpetuity Exhibition

Please click on the photo or link above to view the virtual show. You can enjoy an automated tour by clicking the play button in the bottom left corner. If you want to experience the virtual exhibition without automation, click on the circles on the ground to move throughout the space and click on the colored dots located on the walls to learn more about the artwork. On your computer, you can use the arrow keys and can move forward and backward by using your mouse to look in 360 degrees. You can also use your mouse or track pad to click on the circles and colored dots. If you would like a private tour of the virtual exhibition, please contact us at info@lnsgallery.com to set up your appointment via Zoom.

Exhibition Catalogue features the essay Carlos Alfonzo: Transformative Work from Cuba to Miami and the U.S., by Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON THE EXHIBITION

At the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) website, you can explore more than 8,000 documents of 20th and 21st-century art in Latin America, the Caribbean, and among US Latino communities.

From Carmen Ramírez, Founding Director:

“[…] the redesigned platform more accurately reflects the activities, events, and interdisciplinary programs of the Center and its flagship project, Documents of Latin American and Latino Art (ICAA Documents Project). The user-friendly site facilitates direct, immediate access to the more than 8,000 primary sources and critical texts that make up the ICAA Documents Project. It also encourages users to browse by “author,” “title,” “date” and “topic”; save their results in a “my documents” section; and share them with friends and colleagues. Additionally, the platform allows the ICAA’s vetted partners to upload primary-source materials directly to the site, thereby significantly expanding the recovery process that is a core function of any digital repository.”

Check out the new website here.

Image digitized from: Bardi, Lina Bo. “Bahia: Museu de Arte Moderna.” Mirante das Artes (São Paulo, Brazil), no. 6 (Novembro/ Dezembro,1967): 17- 24.

Good news for those of us who are restricted from accessing hard copies of sources due to library closures. The Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) has digitized several recent catalogs. They are available here in pdf format for easy download!

Introducing, Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest