How a constellation of Latin American artists explored the body, power, and emancipation—and expanded the meanings of feminist art.

In The Political Body, art historian Andrea Giunta explores gender and power in the work of Latin American artists from the 1960s to the present. Questioning the social place of women and proposing alternative understandings of biological bodies, these artists eroded repressive systems and created symbolic strategies of resistance to dictatorships, racism, and marginalization.

Giunta presents close readings of works—paintings, films, photography, multimedia art, installations, and performances—by a myriad of artists spanning from Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay to Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. Examining themes of visibility, subjectivity, empathy, and liberation, The Political Body tells the story of an ongoing revolution, providing an active intervention in the history of feminist art in and beyond Latin America.

Books in the Studies on Latin American Art series encompass studies of art history and cultural practices emerging from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the Latin American diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. International and cosmopolitan in scope, the series seeks to address the production, exhibition, and dissemination of art in and between countries and continents. This series is proudly supported by a gift from ISLAA.