Precarious Materialities and Artistic Production

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

From the refuse collages of Argentine painter Antonio Berni to Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica’s motto “on adversity we thrive”, the concept of precariousness in Latin American art has defined both a material limitation and a creative engine and one which, in recent years, has increasingly gained currency in the mapping of the region at an international scale. This interdisciplinary panel approaches precariousness from the place that materiality occupies in the construction of art’s social meaning. As the realm of uncertainty, insecurity and instability, the precarious not only articulates itself as the opposite of stable and complete idealities, but also locates affects in their material conditions of production. Moreover, while objects entail an interweaving of material and abstract relations, precariousness sheds light on the gaps between these two realms.

Sub Track

• Art and Architecture

Session Organizers

• Sophie Halart de la Forest, University College London

• Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, University of Cambridge

Chair

• Cynthia A Francica, The University of Texas at Austin

Individual Presentations

• La obra como objeto: precariedad en las poéticas argentinas actuales - Constanza Ceresa, Universidad de Chile

• Precariousness and Affective Materiality in Chilean Contemporary Art - Sophie Halart de la Forest, University College London

• The Pillar of Light in Mexico City and the Precariousness of Transparency - Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, University of Cambridge

• EPS Huayco, artistic recycling, and biopolitics in 1980s Lima - Dorota M Biczel, University of Texas/Austin