This conversation will feature works by four Latinx scholars who are expanding and challenging traditional ways of thinking about art history and aesthetics through new approaches, methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches with Leticia Alvarado, author of Abject Performances, Karen Mary Davalos, co -editor of Self Help Graphics at 50, Jillian Hernandez, author of Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment and Tatiana Reinoza, author of Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory. Moderated by Arlene Dávila.
Participants
Leticia Alvarado is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Brown University. Her work has been supported by the Smithsonian, Ford Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. She is the author of Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2018) as well as numerous publications in academic journals, the award-winning museum catalogue Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, and is forthcoming in The Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media. Her current book project, Cut/Hoard/Suture: Aesthetics in Relation, received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Karen Mary Davalos is Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She has published widely on Chicana/o/x art, spirituality, and museums. Among her distinctions in the field, she is the only scholar to have written two books on Chicana/o/x museums, Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora (2001) and The Mexican Museum of San Francisco Papers, 1971-2006 (2010), the Silver Medal winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Reference Book in English. Her research and teaching interests in Chicana feminist scholarship, spirituality, art, exhibition practices, and oral history are reflected in her book, Yolanda M. López (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), the recipient of two awards: 2010 Honorable Mention from the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies and 2009 Honorable Mention from International Latino Book Awards (Nonfiction, Arts–Books in English). She serves on the Board of Directors of Self Help Graphics and Art, where she is assisting in the capital campaign for this legendary Chicana/o – Latina/o arts organization. Her latest book, Chicana/o Remix: Art and Errata since the Sixties (NYU Press 2017), is informed by life history interviews with eighteen artists, a decade of ethnographic research in southern California, and archival research examining fifty years of Chicana/o art in Los Angeles since 1963. With Constance Cortez (UTRGV), she launched a post-custodial web portal, Mexican American Art since 1848, that compiles relevant collections from libraries, archives, and museum throughout the nation.
Jillian Hernandez studies the autonomous aesthetics, genders, and sexualities of Black and Latinx people. Her scholarship crosses the fields of art history, performance, gender, ethnic, Latinx, and Black studies, and is informed by her work as a community arts educator, curator, and cultural producer. Her book Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment, published by Duke University Press, traces how the body practices and art making of Black and Latinx women and girls are intertwined, and how they complicate conventional notions of cultural value and sexual respectability through creative authorship. She is an Associate Professor in the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research at the University of Florida. Her articles have appeared in venues including Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Art Journal, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Visual Arts Research, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies, among others. She recently curated the exhibition Liberatory Adornment, which featured projects by Yvette Mayorga, Kenya (Robinson), and Pamela Council at the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College. The Minneapolis StarTribune recognized the show as one of the top ten exhibitions of 2021. Dr. Hernandez is currently working on a second monograph entitled High Maintenance: Radical Femininity and the Transformation of Value.
Tatiana Reinoza is an art historian who specializes in contemporary Latinx art and the history of Latinx printmakers in the United States. She received her Ph.D. in art history from The University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Notre Dame. Reinoza has contributed to many scholarly publications on the history of Latinx printmaking including ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965-Now. In addition, she co-curated Hard Fought: Sam Coronado’s World War II Series at the Benson Latin American Collection and All My Ancestors: The Spiritual in Afro-Latinx Art at the Brandywine Workshop's Printed Image Gallery. She is currently a Getty Scholar, in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.