Guest lecture, Radboud University Nijmegen, 7 May 2013.
Lecture within the course in modern and contemporary art on art and migration.
Latin American art from the twentieth century is often read as being politically engaged. In part, this can be attributed to the fact that during this period many countries suffered from repressive (military) dictatorships. It is in this milieu of violence and human rights violation (I am referring here to, amongst others, the ‘disappearance’ of bodies, the brutality of the police and military forces, censorship, and open warfare against political opposition) that art was often adopted as a strategy of denouncement and resistance in many Latin American countries. In this lecture I give an overview of a selection artworks from the second half of the twentieth century that have been significant in shaping the Latin American sensibility for ‘political art’. From the action Tucaman Arde in Argentina (1968) to the Chilean artist collective CADA, and more recent practices, including those by Regina José Galindo and Tania Bruguera, amongst others.
Image: Regina José Galindo, ¿Quién Puede Borrar las Huellas? (Who Can Erase the Traces?), Performance, Guatemala City, 2003.
