Politics and Conceptualism: Expansions

• In Event: The Expansion of the Arts I: Conceptualism

Abstract

My presentation analyses the work of Chilean artist, political activist and radical feminist Lotty Rosenfeld (b.1943) in light of recent discussions on Conceptual Art in the broader Americas as well as in relationship to discussions on the expansion of the arts. I want to follow the argument made already by a number of critics (Ramirez, Camnitzer, Giunta) on the political dimension of conceptualism in Latin America, understanding dematerialization and non-object practices as necessary in light of Chile’s military dictatorship and its becoming the laboratory for a Neoliberal economy. But I also want to place conceptual practices in Chile such as Rosenfelds’ within a more expanded art scene, playing close attention to the work of poets like Parra, Lihn, Martínez and Lira who, from the 1950’s had begun to take leave from language making their way into the visual realm. I argue that these earlier expansions were fundamental for the emergence of conceptual art practices in Chile like Rosenfeld’s. I will end by exploring the ways in which work such as Rosenfeld’s consequently became fundamental for the emergence of a renewed avant-garde literary practice in the 1980’s and 1990’s, in light of the cultural production of late capitalism.

Author

• Natalia Brizuela, University of California/Berkeley