Section Annual Reports
Visual Culture Studies Section / Annual Report LASA 2023-2024
1. Sumario de la Reunión de Negocios
Durante LASA 2024 se llevó a cabo la reunión de negocios el día 14 de junio con la presencia de 12 miembros de la Sección. Se dio el reporte financiero de la sección y se comentó la importancia de ser más activos, así como invitar a personas que tuvieran interés en el tema de Cultura Visual y los campos afines. Así mismo, también se discutió el rumbo de la sección, por lo que se convocó a elección de los espacios vacantes del consejo.
2. Resultados de las Elecciones
Dado el retiro antes del vencimiento de ciclo, dos miembros del consejo, Cristina Luna Tamayo y Alex Fattal, se postularon para ser los nuevos co-chairs. En la convocatoria abierta eran los únicos que se presentaron. Debido a que no hubo otros que se presentaron, los dos fueron seleccionados y guiaron la Reunión de Negocios 2024. De igual forma, con el termino de ciclo natural, habían tres vacantes en el equipo del Consejo y se mandó una convocatoria el 18 de junio vía correo electrónico con una encuesta en la que se obtuvieron 3 respuestas para las tres vacantes.
- Angeles Donoso
- Gisela Canepa
- Andrea Garcia
La próxima reunión se llevará a cabo el día 29 de julio para definir quién ocupará el cargo de secretario/tesorero, así como los planes para el primer año de gestión del consejo.
3. Ganadores de los premios:
Afro-Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for Best Article, Co-sponsored prize with the Association for Latin American Art
Matthew Rarey, “Leave No Mark: Blackness and Inscription in the Inquisitorial Archive.” In Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World, ed. Steven Nelson and Huey Copeland (Washington: National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, 2023): 34-55
Selection committee: Jessica Gordon Burroughs
2024 Visual Culture Studies Section Book Prize Co-Winners
Carolina Sá Carvalho, Traces of the unseen Photography Violence and Modernization (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
Sean Nesselrode Moncada, Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity in Venezuela
Selection committee: Alex Ungprateeb Flynn and Alexander L. Fattal
2024 Visual Culture Studies Section Essay Prize Winner
Cole Rizki, “ Gore Aesthetics: Chilean Necroliberalism And Travesti Resistance”
Selection committee: Cristina Luna Tamayo, Nicolás Diáz Letelier
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During LASA 2024, the business meeting was held on June 14 with the presence of 12 members of the Section.
The section's financial report was given and the importance of being more active was discussed, as well as inviting people who were interested in the topics. Likewise, the direction of the section was also discussed, so an election was called for the vacant spaces on the council.
The call was sent on June 18 via email with a survey and there were 3 responses for the three vacancies.
- Angeles Donoso
- Gisela Canepa
- Andrea Garcia
The next meeting will be held on July 29 to define who will occupy the position of secretary/treasurer, as well as plans for the first year of the council's management.
The section winners are the following:
Afro-Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for Best Article, Co-sponsored prize with the Association for Latin American Art
Matthew Rarey, “Leave No Mark: Blackness and Inscription in the Inquisitorial Archive.” In Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World, ed. Steven Nelson and Huey Copeland (Washington: National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, 2023): 34-55
2024 Visual Culture Studies Section Book Prize Winner
Carolina Sá Carvalho, Traces of the unseen Photography Violence and Modernization.
2024 Visual Culture Studies Section, Book Prize Joint Winner
Sean Nesselrode Moncada, Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity in Venezuela
2024 Visual Culture Studies Section Essay Prize Winner
Cole Rizki, “Gore Aesthetics: Chilean Necroliberalism and Transvestite Resistance”
Visual Culture Studies Section / Annual Report LASA 2022-2023
1. A summary of the business meeting including the number of people that attended, topics discussed and conclusions.
The VCS Section business meeting was held in a hybrid format with members attending in person in Vancouver (West Meeting Room 121) and via Zoom on May 26, 2023, and was attended by 5 members. It was chaired by Meghan Tierney (outgoing co-chair of the VCS section). As the Secretary/Treasurer was unable to attend, Meghan Tierney delivered the report on the section balance, which as of May 15, 2023, was $ 2,217.05. This number reflects the minimal expenses for in-person meetings in the past several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of our expenses have been linked to our prizes as well as defraying the costs of memberships (LASA and VCS Section) and attendance at LASA for participants in our sponsored panels.
The results of the section’s prizes were then announced (see below for full information). The meeting then turned to a discussion of our activities at the current LASA congress. This included a review of the pre-Congress session “Spatial and Environmental Praxis in Contemporary Latin American Visual Culture” (23 May 2023) that was organized by Elize Mazadiego, chaired by Camilla Sutherland, University of Groningen and included presentations by Camilla Sutherland, University of Groningen; Sophie Halart, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Paul R. Merchant, University of Bristol; Elize Mazadiego, University of Bern; and Cecilia P. Fajardo-Hill (independent).
On Thursday, 25 May 2023 another section-sponsored session “From Dictatorships to Buen Vivir in Chilean Art and Culture” was organized and chaired by Lorna Dillon (University of Cambridge), , and featured the following presentations: “Resurgimiento del bordado de arpilleras: hitos políticos” by Erika Silva (Universidad de Valparaíso); “Textile Art and Performative Protest in Chilean Environmental Activism” by Lorna Dillon (University of Cambridge); “La comunicación visual en el marco del movimiento estudiantil chileno: el cartel socio-político de los colectivos gráficos y sus estrategias de mediatización multimodal en 2011 y 2018” by Augustin Villena (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and “The Contested Space of the Villa San Luis de Las Condes in Santiago” by Patricia Vilches. Cristián M. Opazo served as discussant.
The second of the section-sponsored sessions, “Latin American Image Forms: Impure Practices, Frames and Media” took place on Saturday, May 27, 2023. The session was organized and chaired by Jessica Gordon-Burroughs, and featured the following presentations: “A Buzzing in My Ear: Letters on Salt and Honey” by Jessica Gordon-Burroughs (University of Edinburgh); “Mancha, pliegue, y borradura en la obra de Eugenio Dittborn,” by Joaquín Barriendos-Rodríguez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)); and “Rostros en suspenso: The Post-Cinematic Populism of Colectivo Los Ingrávidos,” by Thomas E. Matusiak (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw).
Next, the chair acknowledged the work of Jessica Gordon-Burroughs in organizing an event, “Latin American Video Art in the VIVO Media Arts Archive: A Response in dialogue with Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda’s Research on Women, Art, and the Periphery,” co-sponsored by the Visual Culture Studies and Film Studies sections of LASA with VIVO Media Arts in Vancouver. The event, held on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 from 5 to 11pm (PT) included a recorded introduction by Jessica Gordon-Burroughs, live introductions to the archive and exhibitions and offered extended screening access to LASA members through a link to the end of the Congress and beyond (until 28 May 2023) (http://archive.vivomediaarts.com/latin-american-video-art/).
Regarding section council elections, Meghan Tierney announced that the Section elections would be held virtually and offered the extended call for participants to self-nominate via Google form by an extended deadline of 29 May 2023, after which elections would be held. The results are noted below.
Finally, Meghan Tierney announced the 2024 Congress that will be held in Bogotá, Colombia and that members should look for a call for proposals for two section-sponsored sessions allotted to the VCS section based on the number of current section members.
2. The results of the Section’s elections.
As noted above, we issued a call for nominations virtually with an extended deadline of 29 May for the positions of Secretary/Treasurer and two at-large Council Member positions as Stephanie Pridgeon agreed to move into the position of Co-chair. We received one nomination for the Secretary/Treasurer position and two nominations for two open at-large Council Member positions.
Instead of holding a full election, the Secretary/Treasurer (Alex Fattal) and at-large Council Members (María Cristina Luna Tamayo and Alex Ungprateeb Flynn) were confirmed by acclamation, being the sole nominees for the positions. The resulting Council is listed below:
VCS Section Council members:
Co-chair: Lorna Dillon / University of Cambridge (2022-2024)
Co-chair: Stephanie Pridgeon / Bates College (2023-2025)
Secretary/Treasurer: Alexander Fatal / UC San Diego (2023-2025)
Council Members:
- Jessica Gordon-Burroughs/ University of Edinburgh (2022-2024)
- María Cristina Luna Tamayo / Texas A&M University (2023-2025)
- Alexander Ungprateeb Flynn / UCLA (2023-2025)
3. A review of the activities and plans for the coming term.
As in previous years, the VCS section aims to continue to organize a pre-conference workshop and sponsor at least two section panels at LASA, given the success of both formats of section activity. The VCS section will also continue to award a prize for the best book and best essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies and to collaborate with the Association of Latin American Art on the Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for Best Article.
4. The names of the Section’s grantees:
The Visual Culture Studies Section Prize Committee, which this year consisted of Jessica Gordon-Burroughs (University of Edinburgh), Stephanie Pridgeon (Bates College), Meghan Tierney (Ursinus College), and Bethany Wade (Sacred Heart University), worked with members of ALAA (Association of Latin American Art) and previous winners Elize Mazadiego (University of Bern) and Alex Fattal (UC San Diego) to determine the following awards:
Association of Latin American Art / LASA-Visual Culture Studies Afro-Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for Best Article
Lapin Dardashti, Abigail. “Abstracted Resistance: Third-Worldism in Rubem Valentim’s Afro-Brazilian Symbolism, 1963–66.” Art Journal 80, no. 3 (2021): 56-77.
Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Honorable Mention
Serafini, Paula. Creating Worlds Otherwise: Art, Collective Action, and (Post)Extractivism. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2022.
Winner
Lucy Bell, Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, and Patrick O’Hare. Taking Form, Making Worlds: Cartonera Publishers in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022.
“The co-authored book Taking form, Making Worlds: Cartonera Publishers in Latin America is an interdisciplinary study of a grassroots, transnational publishing movement known as cartonera, which originated in Buenos Aires in 2003 and spread to other parts of Latin America. The book is notable for the authors’ collaborative approach to researching and writing; an aspect that mirrors the cartonera ethos.
The focus of the book is on a network of collectives in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico that produce a broad spectrum of cardboard-bound books, such as experimental artists’ books, children fiction and community-led advocacy. The book works on many levels: tracing the distinct contexts in which cartonera is practiced, the unconventional forms of production, consumption and distribution, and the generative elements of this movement. Based on their fieldwork and active participation in the collectives, the authors analyze the books’ diverse meaning and purpose as art, literary and social form. Taking form, Making worlds establishes cartonera as significant to critically rethinking conceptions of art and literature, and a modality to “make worlds” otherwise. Bell, Flynn and O’Hare effectively map out a network of relations that develop vis-à-vis the cartonera’s basic material (discarded cardboard) and the impact this has on Latin America’s social and cultural worlds. The book effectively argues for cartonera’s value in challenging hegemonic systems of art. It also opens another perspective on the ways Latin American art can be socially transformative in the 21st century. The book is a welcomed contribution to the literature on Latin American visual culture, art history, cultural studies and literature.”
– Dr. Elize Mazadiego, Assistant Professor in World Art History, University of Bern
Best Essay in Latin American Visual Cultures Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Honorable Mention
Paola Uparela; “Yo llana estoy” o el despliegue de una virginidad queer. Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies / Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades 48, no. 1 (2022): 53–74. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/jgendsexustud.48.1.0053
Winner
Nicolás Díaz Letelier. “Trapped Present, or the Capture(d) Affect of Imprisonment.” Current Anthropology 63, no. 2 (2022): 225–31. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/719787
“Díaz Letelier’s article “Trapped Present, or the Capture(d) Affects of Imprisonment” brings us into the temporal worlds of Complejo Penitenciario Isla de Pascua, which is often touted as “the happiest prison in the world,” paradoxical a framing as that may be. We glimpse lives interrupted by a carceral regime, one where tinkering, boredom, and flights of the imagination open folds in time where prisoners languish in an island of isolation on an island in the middle of the Pacific. In the quest to “do something” the ethnographer enters with a camera to be shared, creating photographs that give aesthetic and mnemonic grist to a form of time that is being killed and killing at the same time. The images are of a collective authorship, not credited either to an inmate or the ethnographer. The result is a provocative visual essay about and contribution to the study of the temporality of captivity.”
– Alexander Fattal, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego
Annual Report LASA 2021-2022
1. A summary of the business meeting including the number of people that attended, topics discussed and conclusions.
The VCS business meeting was held via Zoom on May 6, 2022 and attended by 12 members. It was co-chaired by Ernesto Capello and Meghan Tierney. As the Secretary/Treasurer was unable to attend, Ernesto Capello delivered the report on our section balance, which is $ 3,708.04. This number reflects the minimal expenses for in-person meetings in the past several years due to the Coivd-19 pandemic. Most of our expenses have been linked to our prizes as well as defraying the costs of memberships and attendance at LASA for participants in our sponsored panels.
The results of the section’s prizes were then announced (see below for full information).
The meeting then turned to a discussion of our activities at the current LASA congress. This included an announcement of an ongoing screening event titled “Between a Flower and a Bomb: Latin American Short Films / BAMPFA Collection.” This was organized by Jessica Gordon Burroughs in collaboration with the San Francisco Cinematheque and BAMPFA and included virtual screenings of three films from the BAMPFA collection.
We also recapped the section sponsored roundtable “Activismo visual: el movimiento chicano en las fotografías de La Raza” which was organized by Ed McCaughan and coincided with the inauguration of Galería de la Raza’s new space in San Francisco as well as an exhibit about the newspaper “La Raza” at the Galería. Besides Ed McCaughan, the roundtable featured Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana; Katynka Z. Martinez, San Francisco State University; Ani Rivera, Galería de la Raza; and Devra Weber, University of California, Riverside. Luis Garza unfortunately was unable to attend.
Finally, Meghan Tierney shared details of the upcoming session that she had organized entitled “Transnational Collecting & Collections of Latin American Visual-Material Culture” which also included the participation of presenters María José Jarrín, Aix-Marseille Université; Allison Caplan, University of California, Santa Barbara; Andrew Roddick, McMaster University; and Donna Yates, Maastricht University. Lori B. Diel, Texas Christian University acted as a discussant.
The Co-Chairs, Ernesto Capello and Meghan Tierney, then reported on a series of conversations that have been developing within the broader world of LASA sections concerning questions of governance within LASA. These have led to congresses of section chairs as well as an ongoing dialogue with the LASA executive council. They have also fostered discussion about transparency in LASA’s use of its funds as well as the desire to foster a more inclusive and anti-racist culture across the association. They also reported on the possibility of LASA developing an “Amigos de LASA” pseudo-membership category still under development that could be more flexibly applied at lower costs. Attendees noted that this could add to the potential for greater collaboration with artists, curators, and visual culture practitioners in the future.
Finally, the Co-Chairs announced that the early date of the LASA congress led us to decide to hold our elections virtually and called for participants to self-nominate by May 23rd, at which point elections would be held. As noted below, these were held at that time.
2. The results of the Section’s elections.
As noted above, we issued a call for nominations virtually with a deadline of 23 May for the positions of Co-Chair, Secretary/Treasurer and two at large positions. We received one nomination for the co-chair position and two for open council member positions and Bethany Wade agreed to move into the Secretary Treasurer position for the remainder of her term on the council (2022-2023). Instead of holding a full elections, the co-chair (Lorna Dillon) and at-large committee members (Stephanie Pridgeon and Jessica Gordon-Burroughs) were confirmed automatically, being the sole nominees for the positions. The resulting Council is listed below:
VCS Council members:
Co-chair: Meghan Tierney/Ursinus College (2021-2023)
Co-chair: Lorna Dillon/ University of Cambridge (2022-2024)
Secretary/Treasurer: Bethany Wade/Emory University (2022-2023)
Council Members: Sara Garzón/University of Vermont (2021-2023); Jessica Gordon-Burroughs/ University of Edinburgh (2022-24); Stephanie Pridgeon/ Bates College (2022-24)
3. A review of the activities and plans for the coming term.
As in previous years, the VCS section aims to continue to organize a pre-conference workshop and sponsor at least two section panels at LASA, given the success of both formats of section activity. The VCS section will also continue to award a prize for the best book and best essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies and to collaborate with the Association of Latin American Art on the Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for Best Article. Building on the success of our networking events in 2020-2021, we are planning further opportunities for section members to informally meet and network which unfortunately were not extensively pursued in 2021-2022 due to ongoing pressures from the Covid-19 pandemic. We were excited to learn about the possibility of the Amigos de LASA initiative and hope this can lead to new options for practitioner collaborations.
4. The names of the Section’s grantees:
The Visual Culture Studies Section Prize Committee, which this year consisted of Tamara Walker (University of Toronto), Ernesto Capello (Macalester College), Meghan Tierney (Ursinus College), and Bethany Wade (Emory University), worked with members of ALAA (Association of Latin American Art) and previous winners Jessica Gordon-Burroughs (University of Edinburgh) and Carolina Rueda (University of Oklahoma) to determine the following awards.
Inaugural Association of Latin American Art / LASA-Visual Culture Studies Afro Latin American/Afro-Latinx Scholarship Prize for Best Article
Valerio, Miguel A. “Architects of Their Own Humanity: Race, Devotion, and Artistic Agency in Afro-Brazilian Confraternal Churches in Eighteenth-Century Salvador and Ouro Preto.” Colonial Latin American Review, vol. 30, no. 2, 2021, pp. 238–271.
Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Finalists:
Fattal, Alexander L., and Doris Sommer. Shooting Cameras for Peace: Youth, Photography, and the Colombian Armed Conflict. Translated by Andy Klatt and Ramírez María Clemencia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press, 2020.
Pridgeon, Stephanie. Revolutionary Visions: Jewish Life and Politics in Latin American Film. Latinoamericana. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021.
Winner:
Mazadiego, Elize. Dematerialization and the Social Materiality of Art: Experimental Forms in Argentina, 1955-1968. Foro Hispánico, Volume 62. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2021.
Elize Mazadiego’s Dematerialization and the Social Materiality of Art analyzes a post Pop-art moment in Argentina that showed the advent of a new age of dematerialization in the 1960s¬ –understood as new art appearances neighboring the “ephemeral qualities of ‘real experience’” and new experiences with the changing material status of the object– in the context of the discontinuous process of the country’s modernization. The book begins with the last years of Perón’s government before the coup that would overthrow him, showing how artists opposed the isolation of art from life by actively engaging the world around them, and ends in 1968, a year that shows a transition into a more politically charged art.
The book establishes a dialogue between these new practices in synchrony with other international artistic developments, highlighting the changing status of the art object internationally, thus, helping to effectively reposition Latin American art into a less peripheral plane.
Dematerialization and the Social Materiality of Art is a thorough study that traces and analyzes the trajectory of developments, interpretations, and debates regarding art dematerialization and includes an impressive selection of pictures from that time. It is a welcomed contribution to the study of these art practices and experiments that emerged in Argentina in the 1960s in particular and to the scholarship written about Latin American visual culture in general.
- Dr. Carolina Rueda, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma
Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Honorable Mention:
Lapin Dardashti, Abigail. “Abstracted Resistance: Third-Worldism in Rubem Valentim’s Afro-Brazilian Symbolism, 1963–66.” Art Journal 80, no. 3 (2021): 56-77.
Winner:
Flores, Tatiana. ““Latinidad Is Cancelled”: Confronting an Anti-Black Construct.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 3, no. 3 (July 2021): 58–79.
Tatiana Flores “‘Latinidad Is Cancelled’: Confronting an Anti-Black Construct” is a tour de force in the reconceptualization of the geopolitical framing of Latinamericanism, in broad terms, and its counterpart of “latinidad,” more specifically. Flores redefines the limits of “Latin America” in relation to (and against the discursive framing of) current anti-racist movements, which, in her argument, replicate, if unintentionally, an internalized national frame rooted in US exceptionalism. At the same time, she detects a parallel, if inverse, movement in which “latinidad” has likewise historically erased blackness with equal force. Building on an important scholarly tradition informed by Walter Mignolo, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Julio Ramos, among others, in Flores’ brilliant essay, Latin America’s outlines and conceptual reach are redrawn within a hemispheric model operating in the shadow of the legacies of transatlantic slavery and the plantation societies that it engendered and sustained.
Flores hereby reframes the stakes of the discussion surrounding the intellectual tradition of Latin Americanism but also of North American anti-racist movements. She astutely illuminates their respective blind spots and limitations, but also reassesses their enduring power, breathtakingly illustrated through key readings and re-readings of works by Afro-Latinx artists and their corresponding politics of representation. As such, in this key essay, in which art history, visual culture, and multiple intellectual histories and traditions intersect and intertwine, Flores boldly reads with and against the grain of the tumultuous epoch in which we find ourselves as scholars and citizens. Opening up new horizons of critical possibility, Flores’ essay marks a significant, and, in this committee’s view, disciplinarily redefining, contribution to the field of Latin American visual culture.
Dr. Jessica Gordon-Burroughs, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Latin American Studies and Visual Culture, University of Edinburgh (UK)
Annual Report LASA 2020-2021
1. A summary of the business meeting including the number of people that attended, topics discussed and conclusions.
At the VCS business meeting, which was attended by 23 members, the election of the new VCS executive committee members were made by acclamation and the prizes of the VCS section were announced. The Council reported on activities over the previous year, including virtual member social/networking events as well as an initiative to develop a new prize in collaboration with the Association for Latin American Art of the College Art Association. Finally, the assembled members considered possible future activities including expanding collaborations with artists and practitioners alongside expanding our web presence and marking the 10th anniversary of our initial organizing meeting at next year’s congress in San Francisco.
2. The results of the Section’s elections.
VCS executive committee members:
Co-chair: Ernesto Capello/Macalester College (2021-2022)
Co-chair: Meghan Tierney/Ursinus College (2021-2023)
Tamara Walker/U Toronto (2021-2022)
Giuliana Borea/University of Essex (2021-2022)
Bethany Wade/Emory University (2021-2023)
Sara Garzón/Cornell University (2021-2023)
There was one nomination for the co-chair position (2021-2023) available on the section’s executive board and one nomination for an at-large committee member (2021-2023). Instead of elections, the co-chair (Meghan Tierney) and at-large committee member (Sara Garzón) were confirmed by acclamation at the VCS business meeting during the virtual LASA congress in May.
3. A review of the activities and plans for the coming term.
As in previous years, the VCS section aims to continue to organize a pre-conference workshop and sponsor at least two section panels at LASA, given the success of both formats of section activity. The VCS section will also continue to a prize for the best book and best essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies. Building on the success of our networking events in 2020-2021, we are planning further opportunities for section members to informally meet and network. We are also hoping to expand our web presence by developing a more intricate website to build on our already existing social media presence (our Facebook group currently has over 1,400 members and regularly serves as a locus for announcements and networking). We are also hoping to be able to bring more of our network formally into the section, perhaps through developing new options for practitioner collaborations.
4. The names of the Section’s grantees.
The Visual Culture Studies Section Prize Committee, which this year consisted of Ernesto Capello (Macalester College), Meghan Tierney (Ursinus College), Tamara Walker (University of Toronto), and Talía Dajes (University of Utah) worked with previous winners Jennifer Jolly (Ithaca College) and Lesley Wolff (Texas Tech University) to determine the following awards.
Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Finalists:
Karen Benezra. Dematerialization: Art and Design in Latin America. Studies on Latin American Art, 2. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020.
Carolina Rueda. Ciudad Y Fantasmagoría: Dimensiones De La Mirada En El Cine Urbano De Latinoamérica Del Siglo Xxi. Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2019.
Winner:
Ángeles Donoso-Macaya.
The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices Under Chile's Dictatorship. Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2020.
The Insubordination of Photography demonstrates the power of scholarship to bring a field into being. Far more than a study of documentary photography in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, this book animates the diverse practices of photography, from photographic production and distribution to efforts to archive, copy, even reembody photos of disappeared loved ones. Ángeles Donoso-Macaya’s efforts to reconstruct the field of Chilean photography—a field that its very practitioners at times doubted—brings together a range of archival, oral history, and photocopied publications to create a testimony to Chilean photographers’ use of their art as a tool of resistance. Even blank-space placeholders for photographs in censored journals are reinvested with significance, as we are led to understand the importance of Chilean photography, as much for its visible absences as its persistence under conditions of censorship, surveillance, and deprivation. Ángeles Donoso-Macaya draws readers in with her highly engaging and at times surprising account of this period and has made a welcome contribution to the literature on Latin American and Chilean visual culture, history, photography and art history. -- Dr. Jennifer Jolly, Professor of Art History at Ithaca College
Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Finalists:
Cole Rizki. “Familiar Grammars of Loss and Belonging: Curating Trans Kinship in Post-Dictatorship Argentina.” Journal of Visual Culture 19, no. 2 (August 2020): 197–211. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412920941905.
Alena Robin. “Antonio Enríquez, Felipe Pastor Y San Ángel Predicando: Un Cuadro Desconocido En La Colección Del Museo Regional De Guadalajara.” Anales Del Instituto De Investigaciones Estéticas 42, no. 117 (Sept 2020): 259-87. https://doi.org/10.22201/iie.18703062e.2020.117.2733.
Winner:
Jessica Gordon-Burroughs.
“The Pixelated Afterlife of Nicolás Guillén Landirán: Migratory Forms.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 59, no. 2 (2020): 23 42. doi:10.1353/cj.2020.0001.
This article exemplifies and innovates the field of visual culture studies through subject and methodology alike. Gordon-Burroughs provides a rich history of Afro-Cuban film maker Nicolás Guillén Landirán and adeptly interrogates the material life and agency of film and video in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution. She complicates current understandings of the Cuban-diasporic film archive by examining the production and reception of his final video work, Inside Downtown (2001), in terms of the video’s digital materiality and transnational memory. Gordon-Burroughs situates this discourse within the complex dynamics of race as it informs Guillén Landirán’s subjects and reception in the Cuban diaspora, where Afro-diasporic subjects are frequently erased or silenced. This article thus amplifies racial tensions in the Cuban diaspora and problematizes their intervention into cinematic memory and archives. While she raises important complexities within Cuban and Cuban-diasporic cinema, Gordon-Burroughs’s rigorous material and visual analysis also opens up new understandings of these previously invisibilized subjects. Gordon-Burroughs poignantly focuses her analysis on a video, Inside Downtown, in which Guillén Landirán interviews Miami-based artists in exile—a condition that echoes his own position as a Cuban exile. Layers of erasure, diaspora, memory and struggles for visibility thus dynamically intersect in this article, presenting an exciting model for not only cinema studies, but also visual culture writ large in terms of her treatment of subjects, objects, materials, and identities.
-- Dr. Lesley Wolff, Assistant Professor of Latinx and Latin American Art History at Texas Tech University
Annual Report LASA 2019-2020
1. A summary of the business meeting including the number of people that attended, topics discussed and conclusions.
At the VCS business meeting the election of the new VCS executive committee members were made by acclamation and the prizes of the VCS section were announced.
2. The results of the Section’s elections.
VCS exec comm members:
Co-chair: Tamara Walker//U Toronto (2019-2021)
Co-chair: Ernesto Capello/Macalester College (2018-2021)
Talía Dajes/University of Utah (2018-2021)
Giuliana Borea/University of London (2019-2021)
Meghan Tierney/University of Minnesota (2019-2021)
Bethany Wade/University of Pittsburgh (2019-2021)
There was one nomination for the co-chair position available on the section’s executive board. Instead of elections, the co-chair was confirmed by acclamation at the VCS business meeting during the virtual LASA congress in May.
3. A review of the activities and plans for the coming term.
As in previous years, the VCS section aims to continue to organize a pre-conference workshop and sponsor at least two section panels at LASA, given the success of both formats of section activity. The VCS section will also continue to a prize for the best book and best essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies. Finally, in response to a member survey completed in May 2020, the VCS section has initiated attempts to bring our membership together outside of annual conferences and create opportunities to learn more about one another’s research activities. To that end we held a virtual networking event in July, and an online teaching workshop in August, and re-introduced our newsletter. Plans for more installments of the aforementioned activities are in the works for the upcoming academic year progresses.
4. The names of the Section’s grantees:
The Visual Culture Studies Section Prize Committee, which this year consisted of Ernesto Capello (Macalester College), Meghan Tierney (Ursinus College), and Tamara Walker (University of Toronto)
Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Winner
Jennifer Jolly
Ithaca College
Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico: Art, Tourism, and Nation Building Under Lázaro Cárdenas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018)
Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Winner
Sara Garzón
Cornell University
"Manuel Amaru Cholango: Decolonizing Technologies and the Construction of Indigenous Futures." Arts 8, no. 4 (2019): 163
Honorable Mention
Lesley A. Wolff
Texas Tech University
“From Raw to Refined: Edouard Duval-Carrié’s Sugar Conventions (2013),” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 12, no. 3 (2019): 355-374
Annual Report LASA 2018-2019
The Visual Culture Studies Section Prize Committee, which this year consisted of Ernesto Capello (Macalester College), Barbara Mundy (Fordham University), and Meghan Tierney (University of Minnesota).
Best Book in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Winner
Maria de Lourdes Ghidolli
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Estereotipos en negro: Representaciones y autorrepresentaciones visuales de afroporteños en el siglo XIX. Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones, 2016
Honorable Mention
Michele Greet
George Mason University
Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris Between the Wars. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018.
Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies
Presented by the Visual Cultures Studies Section
Winner
Tatiana Reinoza
Dartmouth College
The Island Within the Island: Remapping Dominican York. Archives of American Art Journal 57.2 (Fall 2018), 4-27