The Journeys of Intersectionality in Latin America: From Desks to the Streets
Art and Politics in Latin America since 1960
Anna Corrigan
This session attends to the increasing entanglement of the two realms of artistic production and political action in Latin America. As the twentieth century progressed, art moved beyond the walls of cultural institutions to include graphic interventions, information campaigns, and participatory art. Meanwhile, political action became increasingly influenced by public performance, collaborative production, and informal publication techniques.
In his history of political art in Latin America, critic Luis Camnitzer distinguishes between politicized art and aestheticized politics. With this, he describes practices and movements that introduced creative practices into political discourse, on the one hand, and those that attempted to embed creative approaches into political procedures, on the other. In this session, we will consider both how art intervenes in political processes, specifically human rights campaigns and protest movements, and how political forces, in turn, inflect creative forms and expressions. Looking to significant political developments in the recent history of Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay, the session will pay particular attention to three case studies: The stencil arts of the Mexican student movement in 1968; the emergence of the Tupamaros in Uruguay (1967-1971); and El siluetazo in Argentina (1983). With these cases, we will anchor our inquiry into the wider implications of the intersections of art and politics in the region. We will consider the following questions: Where are the boundaries between creative and political action? Where does political art take place? What is the significance of public and/or urban space to these works? What ideals surrounding collectivity, visibility, and solidarity do these projects envision? What (political) work can art do, and what does it fail to do?
From the key theoretical concepts of intervention, memory and representation, our discussion will open on to wider debates that have shaped the entanglement of art and politics in twentieth century Latin America.
Key issues:
• Aesthetics
• Politics
• Intervention
• Representation
• Rupture
• Memory
• Protest
Required readings and Viewing:
• Ranciére, Jacques. "The Paradoxes of Political Art" in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Continuum, 2010, pp. 134-151.
• Camnitzer, Luis. "The Tupamaros" and "Tucumán Arde" in Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation, pp. 60-92.
• Longoni, Ana. "Photographs and Silhouettes: Visual Politics in the Human Rights Movement of Argentina." Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, no. 25, 2010, pp. 5–17. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/657458
• Vázquez Mantecón, Álvaro. "The '68 Impact on the Visual Arts" in 68+50. Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, 2018.
• Imágenes y revuelta: La gráfica del '68 [https://muac.unam.mx/exposicion/imagenes-y-revuelta-la-grafica-del-68]
• El siluetazo: Politics of the Event [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfMkgitSP-U]
Further Readings:
• Amigo, Roberto, et. al. Perder la forma humana. Reina Sofia, 2012.
• Bell, Vikki. The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina. Routledge, 2015.
• Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso, 2012.
• Calirma, Claudia, et. al. Arte No es Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960-2000. El Museo del Barrio, 2008.
• Camnitzer, Luis. On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias. University of Texas Press, 1994.
• Feld, Claudia, ed. El pasado que miramos: Memoria e imagen ante la historia reciente. Paidós, 2009.
• García-Canclini, Néstor. "La participación social del art: El porvenir de una ilusión". Hueso Húmero, 5, 1980.
• Giunta, Andrea. Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties. Duke University Press, 2007.
• Masiello, Francine. The Art of Transition: Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. Duke University Press, 2001.
• Rojo, Juan, Revisiting the Mexican Student Movement of 1968. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.