Feminist Readings of the Past in Recent Argentine Art

GLUZMAN, GEORGINA

Washington D.C.

Conferencia; 2023 Feminist Art History Conference; 2023

American University

In the past decades, the Latin American art scene has intersected radically with feminist and LGBTIQ+ claims, in a context shaped by the massification of gender struggles. From Paola Vega’s project Las promesas to the feminist re-readings of the mythical figure of Argentine politician Eva Perón, one of the main lines of work present in the work of women, queer, and gender-nonconforming artists is the necessity to recover, invent, or reconfigure inherited narratives about the past. These new ways of visualizing feminist histories have sought to unearth the local roots of gender disobedience, to destabilize nationalistic (and masculinist) histories, and to highlight forgotten fragments of the past that, telescoped through our feminist present, take on another importance. This proposal aims to examine a selection of radical artistic practices from the last few decades that deal with alternative and feminist reconstructions of history in Argentine. Women, queer, and gender-nonconforming artists seeking to challenge traditional histories and to foster a local art history that highlights works that desire to re-imagine the (colonial, dictatorial, heteronormative) past will be considered to explore a vibrant art scene.