CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Latin American Art discourse has been built upon the exclusion of women artists. They are no more than 20% in Latin American art exhibitions. Nevertheless, it is commonplace to affirm that women artists and their works have been ?recognized?. This common assumption not only eliminates any possibility of analyzing radical works that have been completely left out of Latin American Art narratives, but also completely eliminates any possibility of considering feminism?s historical construction in Latin American Art. The de-activation of women?s interventions in Latin American Art can be observed throughout the construction of its entire history. Women?s contributions have been erased not only from 19th Century historical accounts, but also from Modernism?s patriarchal narrative. In the history of Argentina?s Concrete Art, for example, Lidy Prati?s avant-garde proposals have not been analyzed along with those of Tomás Maldonado. He is considered to be the an intellectual and an innovator, while she has been cast as ?the wife of?, who suffered depression following their divorce, the author of abstract works that are not recognized with the same innovative status. However, Prati developed co-planar visual forms at the same time that Maldonado was representing shaped canvases. While Maldonado abandoned art in the mid-fifties only to take it up again later by way of repetitive formulas, Prati developed a series of drawings and paintings that integrated subtle issues of space and perception during the sixties. In recent years, the introduction of gender perspectives has generated possibilities for analyzing feminism?s interventions. However they were discredited for whatever that they failed to see or enunciate during their own historical timeframe. These critics were exacerbated from queer conceptual frames. The most recent perspectives discredit preceding ones along with any possibility for a historical analysis of them. This is the kind of analysis that this paper is proposing. The feminism enunciated at the end of the sixties and the begining of the seventies arose in tension with other lines of political discourse. This occurred primarily in relation to armed militant political organizations? agendas, where feminism?s demands were displaced by those of the revolution. In a certain sense, it could be said that women?s claims were questioned, infiltrated by revolutionary politics? practices and discourse. Similar to what had happened when art?s avant garde movements were faced with making a choice between art and politics, early feminist groups were questioned in political terms in some Latin American contexts. This was particularly visible in Argentina and Colombia where certain art groups were interrupted by violence and dictatorship. This text proposes to analyze tensions between political activism and artistic activism in Argentina and Colombia. The focus will be on a comparative analysis of different intervention strategies in two films by Argentinean María Luisa Bemberg and paintings and texts by Colombian Clemencia Lucena.

enviar mensaje