course

Course Credit:  3

This course considers the history of art produced in the Americas from the mid-1940s to the present, with special emphasis on the artistic contributions of Afro-Latinx, Indigenous, and women artists. Over the course of this semester, we will explore a variety of media including sculpture, photography, installation, architecture, performance, textile, painting, film, graphic and mural art created in Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba and Chile, among other countries. This course will interrogate the idea of “center and periphery” and reevaluate the concept of “Latin American Art” through readings, in-class discussions, museum/gallery visits, and the analyses of selected art forms and artists such as Alfredo Jaar’s billboard A Logo for America installed in Times Square in New York in 1984; Doris Salcedo’s 2003 Untitled public installation consisting of 1,500 chairs stacked between two buildings in Istanbul; and Sandra Monterroso’s video artwork Coloring the strands/Bleaching the strands produced in 2011, among many others. Some of the themes that will be discussed in this course include gender, sexuality, nationality and identity, modernity and coloniality, and political activism.