The Eighth Annual Symposium of Latin American Art

A Matter of Time: Chronodissidence in the Americas

ISLAA is delighted to present the Eighth Annual Symposium of Latin American Art, “A Matter of Time: Chronodissidence in the Americas.” Held on April 12 and April 13, 2024, the Annual Symposium will be hosted by ISLAA for the first time since the program was established in 2016. RSVP here.

This year, the symposium is titled “A Matter of Time: Chronodissidence in the Americas” featuring poet, essayist, playwright, and professor Leda Maria Martins as its keynote speaker. “A Matter of Time: Chronodissidence in the Americas” invited proposals from artists, activists, graduate students, and emerging scholars whose work channels flexible, nonlinear, and otherwise “errant” temporalities. The symposium welcomes scholarly and artistic considerations of time as matter, method, and approach. The theme expands on Miguel A. López’s concept of chronodissidence (introduced in an essay on Peruvian artist Teresa Burga), which he defines as “practices that subvert, differ from, or dismantle… the dominant model of time that turns asymmetrical power regimes into apparently normal routines.” Seeking critical responses to the ways art and visual culture trouble time’s encoding of racialized, colonial, and gendered logics, “A Matter of Time” will open a conversation around unfixed temporalities that evince plurality, experimentation, and resistance.

KEYNOTE LECTURE
Leda Maria Martins, "Inscribing Spiral Time and Memory as a Subversive Ecology System: Disrupting Colonial Knowledge."

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

Day 1
Friday, April 12, 2024

2:30 PM – Registration

3:00 PM – Panel 1 | "Locating Time, Placing Time: Geographies and Temporal Framings of Space"

Respondent: Luis Carranza, Professor of Architecture and of Art and Architectural History, Roger Williams University

"Idealization and Inadequacy: From José Sabogal to las barriadas"
Madeleine Aquilina, PhD candidate, University of Michigan

"Looping Violence and Temporal Insurgencies in Colombian Contemporary Art"
Nicole Cartier Barrera, independent researcher

"When I Am Not Here, Estoy Allá: Visualizing Expansive Space-Time in Caribbean Diasporic Memory"
Kaillee Coleman, PhD student, Tulane University

5:00 PM – Tour of Threads to the South by Olivia Casa, Curator and Exhibition Program Manager, ISLAA

6:00 PM – Cocktail reception


Day 2
Saturday, April 13, 2024

9:30 AM Registration

10:00 AM – Panel 2 | "Against the Colonial Grain: Indigenous Temporalities and Potential Histories"

Respondent: Carla Macchiavello, Associate Professor of Art History, Borough of Manhattan Community College, the City University of New York

"Indigenous History and Material Culture and its Absence in the Historiography of 19th Century Central American Art: Rethinking Colonial Historical Narratives through the Case of Totonicapán"
Leonardo Santamaría Montero, PhD student, Cornell University

"Prácticas transtemporales del Futurismo Andino y su resultado en el arte andino reciente"
Alan Paul Poma Macedo, independent artist

"Against the Arrow of Progress: Gê Viana’s Traumatic Updates"
Susana Costa Amaral, PhD candidate, New York University

12:00 – 2:00 PM BREAK

2:00 PM – Panel 3 | "Spilling Over: Ornament, Excess, and Unfixed Temporalities"

Respondent: Celiany Rivera Velázquez, Research Associate at Centro, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College

"Boa Baroque: Temporal and Corporal Intersections between Tupinambá and Jesuits in the 17th-Century Amazon"
Mateus Carvalho Nunes, postdoctoral researcher, Universidade de São Paulo

"Death Is a Drag: Performatic Encounters and Gambiarra Rhythms"
Gustavo Haiden de Lacerda, PhD student, McGill University

"Yanomami Cosmology and the Time of Hojarasca in the Work of Sheroanawë Hakihiiwë"
Elvira Blanco, PhD candidate, Columbia University

4:00 PM – Keynote by Leda Maria Martins, Professor of Literature, Arts and Sciences, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

The Symposium will be held in-person at ISLAA. RSVP here.

The Eighth Annual Symposium of Latin American Art is organized by Ana Luiza de Abreu Claudio and Luise Malmaceda (Columbia University), Suzie Oppenheimer and Laura C. Suárez Rodríguez (the Graduate Center, City University of New York), and Cristalina Parra and Joseph Shaikewitz (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University). The faculty advisors are Jerónimo Duarte-Riascos, assistant professor in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University; Anna Indych-López, professor of art history at the Graduate Center and the City College at the City University of New York; and Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Blanca Serrano Ortiz de Solórzano, project director at ISLAA, offers additional advisory support.

ABOUT THE ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM OF LATIN AMERICAN ART

Established in 2016, the Annual Symposium features graduate students, scholars, and artists who present original research and discourse on Latin American and Latinx art and visual culture. This international event is supported by ISLAA and organized by graduate students at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; the Graduate Center, City University of New York; and Columbia University. For further information or any questions, please contact latamartsymposium@gmail.com.

PARTICIPANTS

Madeleine Aquilina

Madeleine Aquilina is a PhD candidate in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan. She is currently writing a dissertation on postwar social housing in Peru and its imbrication in questions of indigeneity. Her research has been supported by the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the International Institute at the University of Michigan. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Research Award. Additionally, she is an active member of the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Michigan.

Elvira Blanco

Elvira Blanco is a PhD candidate in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University, where she is writing a dissertation titled “Imaginaries of the Common in Contemporary Venezuela (2010–2022).” Her work focuses on the Greater Caribbean region and combines political theory and history, film and visual studies, studies in popular religion, and ecocriticism. Blanco’s writing has been published in journals such as A Contracorriente, Ciberletras, and Trópico Absoluto, and she currently serves as acting managing editor of Revista Hispánica Moderna.

Luis E. Carranza

Luis E. Carranza is an architect and historian whose research work and teaching focuses on modern architecture and art in Latin America, with an emphasis on Mexico. He is currently a professor at Roger Williams University, an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and a visiting professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He obtained his BArch from the University of Southern California and his PhD in architectural history and theory from Harvard University. His publications include Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, Utopia, with Fernando Lara (University of Texas Press, 2015), Radical Functionalism: A Social Architecture for Mexico (Routledge, 2021), and Ephemeral Architectures and Falsified Cities: Utopian Visions for Latin America (forthcoming). His current research addresses the radical work of the Mexican architect Carlos Lazo for Mexico’s Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (Department of Communications and Public Works) and his interest in planning, biopolitics, and the design and production of “civilized caves” as new housing prototypes. Additionally, Carranza is cocurator of the Barragán Gallery at the Vitra Design Museum.

Nicole Cartier Barrera

Nicole Cartier Barrera is a researcher, writer, and curator who, through collaborative and independent editorial projects, investigates contemporary visual culture in Latin America, exploring notions such as the construction of the political other, the ethical implications of the representation of violence, and strategies for collective memory reconstruction. She holds a master of visual studies from the University of Toronto, and her most recent project, Guía para los afligidos y desobedientes (A Guide for the Afflicted and Defiant), can be found at www.guiaparalosafligidos.com.

Mateus Carvalho Nunes

Mateus Carvalho Nunes is a curator, writer, and postdoctoral researcher born and raised in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon. Currently based in São Paulo, Carvalho Nunes holds a PhD in art history from the Universidade de Lisboa and is a postdoctoral fellow at the Universidade de São Paulo and at the Getty Foundation. His research focuses on cultural hybridisms in the architectural and artistic production in the Colonial Amazon, particularly in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Pará. Nunes is a guest lecturer at the Universidade de São Paulo and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, where he teaches about contemporary art in the Brazilian Amazon and Brazilian Baroque.

Kaillee Coleman

Kaillee Coleman is a PhD student in the Latin American studies and art history program at Tulane University. Her research focuses on contemporary Caribbean art and cultural production, with a special emphasis on the Black Atlantic and diaspora studies. She holds an MA in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and undergraduate degrees in art history and interdisciplinary art (with specializations in visual art and theatre) from Seattle University. From 2021 to 2022, she was the recipient of the US Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship in Haitian Creole. Additionally, she was the 2022–23 recipient of the William J. Griffith Award for Outstanding Teaching Assistant in Latin American Studies, awarded by the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. In addition to her research, Coleman works as an associate editor for Keywords for Black Louisiana, as a curatorial assistant at the Newcomb Art Museum, and as an archival assistant and metadata specialist for the forthcoming Stone Center for Latin American Studies Centennial Project, which celebrates 100 years of Latin American programming at Tulane University.

Susana Costa Amaral

Susana Costa Amaral, originally from Brazil, has lived and worked in New York since 2018. Costa Working at the crossroads of performance and politics, critical race theory, visual arts, and queer studies, Costa Amaral believes academia can be a place where ethical alliances foster anticolonial strategies. She holds an MA in performing Arts and a BA in communication and culture from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Costa Amaral is currently a doctoral candidate at New York University in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In her upcoming dissertation, “Despite Brazil: Contemporary Art in the Age of the Far Right,” Costa Amaral asks a group of young Brazilian artists how their work intersects with questions of time, movement, and corporality. She has presented her research at conferences, art residencies, and exhibitions across Latin America, Europe, and the US. In 2022, Costa Amaral was a visiting fellow at the Global Research Institute in Berlin. In 2024, she will join the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University as a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow. At the time of this symposium, over 32,975 Palestinians have been killed as a consequence of the Israeli assault on Gaza, a war supported and financed by the US, and Costa Amaral thinks this too is worthy of note.

Gustavo Haiden de Lacerda

Gustavo Haiden de Lacerda is currently a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill University, Montreal. He obtained both his MA and his BA in language studies from the Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Brazil. Situated at the intersections of queer theory and psychoanalysis, his doctoral research investigates assemblages of queerness, death, and photography and their impacts on aesthetic and political regimes. In between media and art, Gustavo’s previous projects have analyzed the discursive and affective dimensions of different materialities, including literature, cinema, and mourning writings in digital networks. His work has been published in academic journals and books, with a forthcoming book chapter, “Between Silence and Silencing, Stories are Told,” slated for publication in the Handbook of Queer Death Studies (Routledge).

Carla Macchiavello

Carla Macchiavello Cornejo is an art historian and educator, born in Santiago and based in New York. Her research focuses on Latin American contemporary art, exploring networks of solidarity and resistance, migrant identities in video art, artistic pedagogies, and art practices aimed at social and environmental change. Her work has been published in international journals, catalogues, and books. She serves as coeditor for the periodical Más allá del fin/Beyond the End for Ensayos, a nomadic research collective dedicated to the political ecology of Tierra el Fuego. She is part of the creative team of Turba Tol Hol Hol Tol, which represented Chile at the 59th International Venice Biennale in 2022. That year, she co-edited its “rumors” and book, Turba Tol Hol-Hol. Macchiavello Cornejo is coeditor of Dismantling the Nation: Contemporary Art in Chile, with Florencia San Martín and Paula Solimano, a book that takes as its point of departure a radical criticism against the nation-state of Chile and its colonial, capitalist, heteronormative, and extractivist rule, proposing alternative forms of inhabiting, creating, and relating in more fluid, contingent, ecocritical, feminist, and caring worlds.

Leda Maria Martins

Leda Maria Martins is a poet, essayist, playwright, and professor. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) and an MA from Indiana University. Her extensive academic background includes postdoctoral fellowships in performance studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (1999–2000) and Performance and Rituals at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF, 2000). Martins was a professor at UFMG from 1993 to 2018, and at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (1982–92), a visiting professor at the Tisch School of the Arts, and she is currently a visiting professor in the Psychology Department at UFF (2023–24). Additionally, she served as director of cultural action at UFMG between 2014 and 2018. Martins has published books, chapters, and essays in Brazilian and international publications. Some notable works include Performances do Tempo Espiralar: poéticas do corpo-tela (Cobogó, 2021), Afrografias da Memória (2nd revised and updated edition, Perspectiva/Mazza, 2021), A Cena em Sombras (2nd revised edition, Perspectiva, 2023), and more. Under her leadership, the Banco de Desenvolvimento de Minas Gerais established and sponsored the Leda Maria Martins Award for Black Performing Arts in 2017. In 2022, she received the Milú Villela Award in the learning category from the Itaú Cultural Foundation, and in 2023, the Funarte Award for Master of Integrated Arts. Since 2005, she has held the distinguished position of Queen of Our Lady of Mercies of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of Jatobá in Belo Horizonte. 

Alan Poma

Alan Poma is a multidisciplinary artist known for his site-specific projects and performances, which integrate performance, video art, live music, and writing. In recent years, Poma has explored the connection between Andean culture and the avant-garde tradition through his adaptation of the Futurist Russian Opera Victory over the Sun (1913). He investigated these connections during his residency at the Delfina Foundation, which culminated in an installation inspired by P. Wyndham Lewis’s painting Inca with Bird (1933). In 2019 he published “The Andean Futurist Manifesto,” which outlines a methodology for artists to envision Andean futures. Poma has served as visiting faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, leading a seminar on Andean Futurism. Additionally, he has delivered lectures at Emily Carr University (Vancouver), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and Portland State University. Currently, he collaborates with LaPau Gallery from Los Angeles on an experimental opera based on El Pez de Oro, an iconic book within the Indigenous avant-garde tradition of southern Peru.

Celiany Rivera Velázquez

Celiany Rivera Velázquez (she/they; ella/elle) is a Puerto Rican scholar and organizer with in-depth experience in alternative gender and sexuality movements across the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and the US. Serving as a research associate at CUNY-Hunter College's Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Velázquez earned a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. Since 2004, Velázquez has collaborated closely with queer and nonbinary artists from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, exploring Caribbean race and gender performance through the arts. Velázquez directed Queen of Myself: Las Krudas d’ Cuba, a documentary that premiered at the Brooklyn Museum in 2012. In 2018, they founded Circuito Queer (@cirqpr), an NGO promoting collaborations among activist and cultural initiatives by feminist, LGBTQIA+, and cuir leaders in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Velázquez is currently developing a manuscript titled “De un Pájaro Las Dos Patas,” focusing on queer/cuir media and performance in Santo Domingo and San Juan. This work aims to showcase the rise of sexual and body positivity against traditional norms, introducing the concept of “irreverencia cuir” to encapsulate a shift toward inclusive, participatory expressions of cuir joy in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Leonardo Santamaría Montero

Leonardo Santamaría Montero is a PhD student in the history of art at Cornell University. He holds a BA and a Licentiate degree in Art History from the Universidad de Costa Rica, where he will return as a professor after completing his doctoral studies. Santamaría specializes in Latin American art, specifically nineteenth-century Central American visual and material culture, with a focus on Indigenous aesthetics and their representations. His work examines the transformation of Central American visual identities during the transition from colonial to republican rule, with a particular interest in the sociopolitical uses of pre-Columbian objects and contemporary Indigenous material culture in that process. Santamaría has presented his work at conferences such as the Comite International d’Histoire de I’Art World Congress, the Association for Latin American Art Triennial Conference, and the Native American Art Studies Association Conference. Santamaría is currently interning at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, where he recently served as a research assistant in the exhibition by Guadalupe Maravilla: Armonía de la Esfera, working specifically with Cornell’s collections of pre-Hispanic objects.