LATIN AMERICAN FORUM, FALL 2022

LATIN AMERICAN FORUM, FALL 2022

Eroticisms and Subversion in Latin American Art

Thursday, September 29, 6 PM EDT
Live on Zoom
In English

Feminist and queer activists, artists, and writers have long harnessed the forces of the erotic to energize and power their interventions. Presented by the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and organized in conjunction with the exhibition Eros Rising: Visions of the Erotic in Latin American Art at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), this panel will examine the political applications and subversive potential of eroticism in contemporary Latin America through three case studies.

Reflecting on recent feminist activism in Latin America, the scholar, writer, and activist Cecilia Palmeiro will discuss the prospect of politicizing pleasure and eroticizing politics. In his presentation, the artist and writer Duen Sacchi will interrogate our erotic connections to the past, insinuating the possibility of an “ero-historiography” vis-a-vis colonial trauma and the pleasure of resistance. For his talk, the artist, writer, and lawyer Jorge Sánchez will address the intersection between Latinx and queer/cuir perspectives in the Americas. The panelists’ presentations will be followed by a discussion moderated by Mariano López Seoane and Bernardo Mosqueira, the curators of Eros Rising.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Mariano López Seoane is a writer, researcher, and curator based in Buenos Aires and New York. He is currently the director of the Graduate Program on Gender and Sexuality at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Argentina. He also teaches Latin American literature, cultural studies, and queer studies in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. López Seoane has curated and coordinated public programs for the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Buenos Aires International Book Fair, and Art Basel Cities. He has written extensively on contemporary Latin American literature and arts, focusing on the cultures of sexual and gender dissidents in the Americas, Latin American instances of queer studies and queer activism, and figurations of drug culture and drug-related violence in Latin American narrative, film, and visual arts. His publications include the volume of essays Donde está el peligro. Estéticas de la disidencia sexual (2022) and the novel El regalo de Virgo (2017).

Bernardo Mosqueira is a curator and writer based in New York and Rio de Janeiro. He is the ISLAA Curatorial Fellow at the New Museum. He is also the founder and artistic director of Solar dos Abacaxis, an institution for experimentation in art, education, and social transformation in Rio de Janeiro, and since 2011 he has directed Premio FOCO ArtRio, a national award for emerging artists. Mosqueira previously organized the performance festival Venus Terra and worked as a curator at Galeria de Arte Ibeu. Mosqueira has been curating exhibitions, editing books, teaching, and contributing texts to art publications since 2010; was awarded the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi in 2017; and cofounded Fundo Colaborativo, the first emergency fund for artists in Brazil, in 2020. His recent exhibitions include Miriam Inez da Silva at the Museu da República, Brasília (2021); Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro: Eclipse at the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2021); and Daniel Lie: Unnamed Entities at the New Museum, New York (2022).

Cecilia Palmeiro is a scholar, writer, and activist. She holds a doctoral degree in Latin American literature and teaches at New York University in Buenos Aires and at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Argentina. She holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures from Princeton University and specializes in contemporary Latin American cultural studies, with special attention to Argentine and Brazilian literature and gender studies. Palmeiro’s main interests are critical theory, intellectual history, and the relationship between art and politics. She has written a range of articles on contemporary Argentine and Brazilian literature and gender issues; has translated contemporary Brazilian literature into Spanish; and has published the books Desbunde y felicidad. De la Cartonera a Perlongher (2011), Correspondencia (2016), and Cat Power. La toma de la Tierra (2017). Palmeiro is also a founding member of the Ni Una Menos collective and an organizer of the International Feminist Strike.

Duen Sacchi is a Guaxu (trans) artist and writer who grew up in Aguaray, Gran Chaco, where he learned the arts of fire, words, and dyes. He sold beer, cleaned houses, traced roads, danced, and migrated. Sacchi completed the Independent Studies Program at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art in 2015. He is part of the artistic team Río Paraná. He published Ficciones Patógenas (Brumaria, 2018/Rara Avis, 2020) and is currently guest editor at Terremoto. Sacchi actively participates in the transvestite and trans feminist, anti-racist, and Indigenous movements. He lives between the bush and the banks of the Río de la Plata.

Jorge Sánchez is an artist, writer, and lawyer from Puerto Rico, living in New York City, and serves as the curator in the Arts and Culture Team at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies of Hunter College. He is also the curator and arts coordinator of the University of Pennsylvania and The Mellon Foundation multidisciplinary initiative “Dispossessions in the Americas: the extraction of bodies, land, and heritage from la conquista to the present.” Sánchez has a double BA from Tufts University, a JD from Rutgers School of Law, and an MFA from New York University, and is admitted to the NY and NJ bars. His writings, photographs, and curatorial projects address Latinx, HIV/AIDS, queer/cuir perspectives, and sexual dissidence.


DUKE HOUSE EXHIBITION SERIES

The Duke House Exhibition Series brings contemporary art to the walls of the Institute’s landmarked James B. Duke House. (Website in Construction).

EVENTS CALENDAR

Photo Credits: María Magdalena Campos Pons, Bin Bin Lady, The Papaya, 2005. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco