José Luis Falconi, PhD

Academic Publications

Publications

“Ad Usum, ad hoc (Or how to use this book)” In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.) Pedro Reyes’s Ad Usum: To Be Used

2018
The Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University (FAS) and Harvard University Press Cambridge, MA
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“Eleven Thesis on the Relation Between Art and Society (circa 2015)”

2014
In: José Luis Falconi, Jorge Munguía and Lucia San Román (Eds.), Notebook on Time (Citizen Culture)
Santa Mónica Art Museum
Santa Monica, CA
pp. 4-10
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“The Smooth Mechanism of Relics (Notes on the Efficiency of Nostalgia)”

2007
In: Svetlana Boym (Ed.) Nostalgic Technologies
CGIS/Provost Office for the Arts, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
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“Doble Margen: ¿Es acaso posible la contemporaneidad desde la periferia?” [Double Margin: Is it ever possible to have contemporaries in the periphery?]

2016
In: Sergio Rojas (Ed.) Actas de la Conferencia Regional Latinoamericana de Arte
Universidad de Chile
Santiago de Chile, Chile
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“Stitched by Fire: The Thread of Sparks of Santiago Escobar Jaramillo’s Colombia, Tierra de Luz”

January - June 2012
In: Antípoda14: Antropología y temporalidad; Antípoda- Revista de Antropología y Arqueología Universidad de Los Andes, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Departamento de Antropología
Bogotá, Colombia
No 14, pp. 233 – 243
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“Back in the Picture (On the Place of Aesthetics in Democratic Life), José Luis Falconi interviews Doris Sommer”

March 2015
In: Atlántica: Journal of Art and Thought. Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) N.55
Gran Canarias, Spain
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“Carlitos Way: Or the Artist as Framework, circa 2000 AD”

2008
In: Raphaela Platow (Ed.) Carlos Amorales: Discarded Spider
Contemporary Arts Center
Cincinnati, OH
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“Exacto exceso: A propósito de Nelly Richard” [Exact Excess: On Nelly Richard]

2022
Introduction to Alejandra Castillo, Nelly Richard and Miguel Valderrama (Eds.) Crítica y Política: Conversaciones con Nelly Richard (Second Edition)
Santiago de Chile, Chile
Editorial Palinodia, Chile
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“Nathalie Goffard, o un paisaje parecido a uno mismo” [Nathalie Goffard or a landscape almost resembling oneself]

2019
Epilogue In: Nathalie Goffard Bascuñan (Ed.) Intramuros. Palimpsestos sobre arte y paisaje Editorial Metales Pesados
Santiago de Chile, Chile
[In Spanish]
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“The Temptation of Eden: Landscape Architecture in the Andean Region Nowadays, a Portfolio”

October 2017-April 2018
With Javiera Infante (PUCP-Lima) In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.) Cuadernos Inter.cambio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe
Universidad de Costa Rica Vol. 15. N. 2. Special Section
San José, Costa Rica
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“No Me Token; or, How to Make Sure We Never Lose the * Completely”

October 2013
In: Guggenheim Museum UBS MAP Global Initiative
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Stitched by Fire: The Thread of Sparks of Santiago Escobar Jaramillo’s Colombia, Tierra de Luz”

January-June 2012
In: Antípoda14: Antropología y temporalidad; Antípoda- Revista de Antropología y Arqueología
Universidad de Los Andes, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Departamento de Antropología. No 14, pp. 233-243
Bogotá, Colombia
Learn more

“Tractable Times-Afterword”

2006
In: José Luis Falconi and Gabriela Rangel (Eds.) A Principality of its Own
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
Learn more

“The Political Economy of Latin America: New Visions”

June, 2020 - May 2021
With James A. Robinson.
For the: World Bank’s Latin America Vision 2040 project
Learn more

“Contra-Memoria: Entre el recuerdo y la historia oficial. Una conversación con José Guillermo Nugent” [Counter Memory: Between Remembrance and Official History. A conversation with José Guillermo Nugent]

August 2019
In: [cuatro treintatrés] Journal Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Artes, Departamento de Artes Visuales. No 02
Santiago de Chile, Chile
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“What is the Use of Calling Antanas Mockus an Artist?”

2017
In: Carlo Tognato (Ed.) Cultural Agents Reloaded: The Legacy of Antanas Mockus
Harvard University Press/Cultural Agents Initiative, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
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“No Me Token; or, How to Make Sure We Never Lose the * Completely”
[Reprinted in English to be included in: A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art

2021
Leonardo Anreus, Robin Greeley and Megan Sullivan
Wiley-Blackwell, Boston, MA
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“(What about) The Other Latinos? (Introduction)”

August 2007
In collaboration with José Antonio Mazzotti. In: José Luis Falconi and José Antonio Mazzotti (Eds.)
The Other Latinos David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
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“Repairing Symbolic Reparations: Assessing the Effectiveness of Aesthetic Memorialization in the Inter-American System of Human Rights”

March 2020
Contributor with Robin Greeley, Michael Orwicz, Ana Maria Reyes and Fernando Rosenberg
The International Journal of Transitional Justice
Volume 14. Issue 1, March 2020
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Introduction to Robin Greeley (Ed.) La Interculturalidad y sus imaginarios: Conversaciones con Néstor García Canclini

2018
Gedisa (Spain), ArtLifeLaboratory and Palinodia (Chile), pp. 5-10
Mexico City, Madrid, Boston and Santiago de Chile
[In Spanish]
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“Historiographical Tai Chi (The Game)”

2014
In: Janet Dees, Irene Hoffman, Candice Hopkins, and Lucia San Román (Eds.) Unsettled Landscapes; SITElines. 2014 New Perspectives on Art of the Americas
Site Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
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“No Me Token; o Cómo Asegurarnos a nunca perder el * por completo”

2014
In Kaypunku. Vol. 1.
Universidad San Marcos
Lima, Perú
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“El orden, las órdenes de Ollanta Humala” [The order, the orders of Ollanta Humala]

June 2006
In collaboration with Martín Oyata. In: Revuelta. N.3
Universidad de las Américas
Puebla, Mexico
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“Las Moradas: 1947-1949”

2009
In: Rita González (Ed.) Número Cero N.5. Special Magazine Project of the Second Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
San Juan, Puerto Rico
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“Las Moradas: 1947-1949” [Translated from English]

2009
In: Rita González (Ed.) Número Cero N.5. Special Magazine Project of the Second Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
San Juan, Puerto Rico
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“La solitaria búsqueda de las definiciones, en torno a la última poesía de P. Granados” [The Solitary Exercise of Definitions: The Poetry of Pedro Granados] [Translated to the Portuguese]

October 2000
In: Agulha, Jornal do Poesia
Fortaleza, Brazil
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“Exacto Exceso: A propósito de Nelly Richard” [Exact Excess: On Nelly Richard]

2020
in Alejandra Castillo, Nella Richard and Miguel Valderrama (Eds.)
Crítica y Política. Second Edition
Editorial Palinodia
Santiago de Chile, Chile
[In Spanish]
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(There Is No) Friendly(er) Fire; Postscript to "Stitched by Fire"

2019
(Translated from the Spanish) in:
Santiago Escobar (Ed.) Colombia, tierra de luz
Universidad de Caldas
Manizales, Colombia
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“Ad Usum, ad hoc (Or how to use this book)”

2018
In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.)
Pedro Reyes’s Ad Usum: To Be Used
The Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University (FAS), Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
Learn more

“Fernell Franco: Alquimista de la Imagen” [Fernell Franco: Alchemist of Images]

July 2016
Panorama Internacional (Entrevista)- [Interview on the Photography of Fernell Franco] In: Revista Enfoque Visual N. 11-35
Bogotá, Colombia
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“Illegible Futures (or the Writings on the Wall), On Edgar Orlaineta’s Work”

2015
In: Gonzalo Ortega (Ed.) Registro 04. Espacio Tiempo
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Monterrey, N.L., Mexico
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“Bill of Rights (Or How to Use Bills Rightly)”

2014
In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.)
The Great Swindle: The Works of Santiago Montoya’s
Halcyon Gallery
London, England
pp. 83-93
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“Stitched by Fire: The Thread of Sparks of Santiago Escobar Jaramillo’s Colombia, Tierra de Luz”

2019
In: Antípoda14: Antropología y temporalidad; Antípoda -Revista de Antropología y Arqueología, Universidad de Los Andes, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Departamento de Antropología, Bogotá, Colombia
January-June 2012
E.9.12.a.1. Reprinted in Santiago Escobar (Ed.) Colombia, tierra de luz Manizales, Colombia, Universidad de Caldas
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“Techniques for Leaving an Apartment: The Extraordinary Ordinariness of Jorge Mario Múnera’s Photography”

2010
In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.) Portraits of an Invisible Country. The Photographs of Jorge Mario Múnera
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
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“Las Moradas: 1947-1949”

2009
[Translated from English] In: Rita González (Ed.) Número Cero N.5. Special Magazine Project of the Second Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
San Juan, Puerto Rico
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“Carlitos Way: Or the Artist as Framework, circa 2000 AD”

2008
In: Raphaela Platow (Ed.) Carlos Amorales: Discarded Spider
Contemporary Arts Center
Cincinnati, OH
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“The Ghost that Worked for the Machine: On Barry Freedland’s Signs of Identity”

December 2007
In: Southeastern College Arts Conference Review, Volume XV, N. 2. pp. 176-181
Atlanta, GA
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“Bluriness in Focus”

2004
In: José Luis Falconi, Adál Maldonado (Eds.) Out of Focus Nuyoricans
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
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“Cualquier parecido con la realidad es pura coincidencia. A propósito de Materia Común de Ximena Garrido-Lecca e Ishmael Randall Weeks”

2020
In: Cubo Abierto, Revista del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima. No. 3. Año 2.
Agosto-Noviembre, 2020
Lima, Perú
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“A Glossary for Tania Bruguera”

2018
In: Lucía San Román and Susie Kantor (Eds.) A Lexicon Interpreted
Yerba Buena Cultural Center
San Francisco, CA
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Ximena Garrido-Lecca “How Simultaneous is Our Belatedness?”

2017
In: FLACC. Amsterdam, 2018. FLACC Journal No.16.2
Genk, Belgium
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“The Archeology of the Present: The Wreckage of History According to Jorge Mendez Blake”

2015
In: Gonzalo Ortega (Ed.) Registro 04. Espacio Tiempo.
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Monterrey, N.L., México
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“Futuros ilegibles (o la escritura en la pared), en torno a la obra de Edgar Orlaineta”

September 2018
[Translated from English] In: Gonzalo Ortega (Ed.) Registro 04. Espacio Tiempo
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Monterrey, N.L., Mexico
2015
Reprinted In Spanish
In: FLORAE Magazine 4 (Traducción/Traición) Bogotá, Colombia
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“Irremediable precisión (En torno a Fernell Franco)” [Irremediable Precision (about Fernell Franco)].

March-April 2014
In: Buensalvaje. N 10
Lima, Perú
[In Spanish]
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Cosido por fuego: el hilo de chispas de Colombia, Tierra de Luz, de Santiago Escobar Jaramillo [Translated from English]

2019
In: Santiago Escobar (Ed.)
Colombia, tierra de luz.
Universidad de Caldas
Manizales, Colombia

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“Shiny Pyrrhic Victories; On Cristóbal Lehyt’s If Organizing is the Answer; What’s the Question?”

2010
In: Cristóbal Lehyt (Ed.) If Organizing is the Answer; What’s the Question?
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Carpenter Center for Visual Studies, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
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“Two Double Negatives”

2008
In: Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (Eds.) The Meaning of Photography
Yale University Press, pp 130-147
New Haven, CT
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“Off-Shootings”

2008
In: AFA02
Galería AFA
Santiago de Chile, Chile
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“The Smooth Mechanism of Relics (Notes on the Efficiency of Nostalgia)

2007
In: Svetlana Boym (Ed.) Nostalgic Technologies
CGIS/Provost Office for the Arts, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Learn more

Essay reprinted as “Bluriness in Focus: On Adál Maldonado”

2010
In: Black Renaissance Noire. Institute of African-American Affairs at New York University. Volume 8, Issue 2/3. pp. 10-12. Summer 2008.
Essay Selected as a Document of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art – International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts
Houston, TX
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“(No hay) Fuego (más) amigo; Postscriptum a “Cosido por Fuego” [(There Is No) Friendly(er) Fire; Postscript to "Stitched by Fire"]

2019
In: Santiago Escobar (Ed.) Colombia, tierra de luz
Universidad de Caldas
Manizales, Colombia
[In Spanish]
Learn more

“A Glossary for Tania Bruguera”

2018
[Translated into Spanish and published as “Léxicon interpretado” in: Lucía San Román and Susie Kantor (Eds.) Hablándole al Poder
Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
Mexico City, México
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“Los Márgenes del Fuego: Andrés Sierra, volición y lo abyecto en la fotografía actual” [The Margins of Fire: Andrés Sierra, volition and the abject in contemporary photography]

2016
In: Premio Bienal - Salón Colombiano de Fotografía
Salón Colombiano de Fotografía
Medellín, Colombia

“La arqueología del presente: El naufrágio de la historia según Jorge Méndez Blake”

2015
[Translated from English] In: Gonzalo Ortega (Ed.) Registro 04. Espacio Tiempo
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Monterrey, N.L., Mexico
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“To Pay the Bills with Bills (or how to keep cash flowing)”

2014
In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.) The Great Swindle: The Works of Santiago Montoya’s
Halcyon Gallery
London, England
pp. 9-17
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“Conscientious Objector: Non-Objects as Index in Darío Escobar’s Sculpture”

2013
In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.)
A Singular Plurality: The Works of Darío Escobar
Department of History of Art and Architecture (FAS), Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
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“Amnesia: A Memoir. (Remembrances of Karen Miranda’s photography)”

January 2012
In: Karen Miranda Rivadeneira Other Stories/Historias Bravas
Real Art Ways
Hartford, CT
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“Las Moradas: 1947-1949”

2009
In: Rita González (Ed.) Número Cero N.5. Special Magazine Project of the Second Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Learn more

“Dos dobles negativos”

October 2013
[Translated from English]
In: Papel Máquina. N. 8
Santiago de Chile, Chile
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“Off-Shootings”

December 2011
In: AFA02. Santiago de Chile, Chile, Galería AFA 2008.
Reprinted in English and Spanish in: IV International Conference of Photography, “Más allá de la reportería” [Beyond Photojournalism].
Fotográfica Bogotá 2011, FotoMuseo, Bogotá, Colombia
[Original in English; translated into Spanish and French]
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“Resources of the Real: Latin American Photography at the Americas Society, 1967-2006.”

2006
In: José Luis Falconi and Gabriela Rangel (Eds.)
A Principality of its Own
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press
Cambridge, MA
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Back blurb

2019
for Lyle Rexer’s The Critical Eye (Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography)
Intellect Books
London, England
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Blurb

2011
for William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies
for Lima Book Fair, July
Lima, Perú
[In Spanish]
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"Pedro Reyes: Ad Usum / To Be Used"

Ad Usum: To Be Used is the second volume in the series Focus on Latin American Art and Agency, which is dedicated to contemporary cultural agents, a term that is perhaps best understood through the words of Reyes himself: “changing our individual habits has no degree of effectiveness” as “progress is only significant if you start to multiply by 10, by 100, by 1,000.”

Rather than merely illustrate his work, this collection of images, interviews, and critical essays is intended as an apparatus for multiplying the possibilities when art becomes a resource for the common good.

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“Eleven Thesis on the Relation Between Art and Society (circa 2015)”

In: José Luis Falconi, Jorge Munguía and Lucia San Román (Eds.), Notebook on Time (Citizen Culture)

Notebook on Time is a project by Buró-Buró in collaboration with Lucía Sanromán and José Falconi, poet and art critic, whose introductory text offers a presentation of eleven theses around art practices operating in the public realm in an attempt to transform how we think and live.

Rather than merely illustrate his work, this collection of images, interviews, and critical essays is intended as an apparatus for multiplying the possibilities when art becomes a resource for the common good.

Learn more

“The Smooth Mechanism of Relics (Notes on the Efficiency of Nostalgia)”

In: Svetlana Boym (Ed.) Nostalgic Technologies

“Doble Margen: ¿Es acaso posible la contemporaneidad desde la periferia?” [Double Margin: Is it ever possible to have contemporaries in the periphery?]

In: Sergio Rojas (Ed.)
Actas de la Conferencia Regional Latinoamericana de Arte Universidad de Chile

“Stitched by Fire: The Thread of Sparks of Santiago Escobar Jaramillo’s Colombia, Tierra de Luz”

In: Antípoda14: Antropología y temporalidad; Antípoda- Revista de Antropología y Arqueología

Read the full article

Back in the Picture (On the Place of Aesthetics in Democratic Life)

In: Atlántica: Journal of Art and Thought. Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) N.55

José Falconi interviews Doris Sommer

Read the full interview

“Carlitos Way: Or the Artist as Framework, circa 2000 AD”

In: Raphaela Platow (Ed.) Carlos Amorales: Discarded Spider

Mexico City-based Carlos Amorales is known for the flat, iconic imagery of his Liquid Archive of digital images, which inform his work in video animation, painting, drawing, sculpture and performance. This publication accompanies the artist’s 2008 exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati.

This catalog presents a wide selection of works from 2003, including installations, drawings, video stills, exhibitions views, generously reproduced and presented in a clearly designed catalogue by Mevis & van Deursen. Exploratory essays and biographic information are also included alongside a conversation between Amorales and Joan Jonas.
 

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“Exacto exceso: A propósito de Nelly Richard” [Exact Excess: On Nelly Richard]
Introduction to Alejandra Castillo, Nelly Richard and Miguel Valderrama (Eds.)

Crítica y Política: Conversaciones con Nelly Richard (Second Edition)

It’s said that in conversation what speaks is what’s common, taking its place among that which is always at stake. Criticism and Politics seeks to stage the commonality of criticism. It demands a continuous exercise of confronting the present in which the word and the body that pronounces it are knotted together. 

Following the format of conversation, letting itself be guided by the interplay of questions and answers, of placements and displacements, this book seeks to make apparent Nelly Richard’s thoughts on the areas of her work that have made her body of criticism one of the most important in Latin America. 

Divided into four chapters, the book successively addresses the state of criticism, feminism, art, and politics in the neoliberal landscape of Chilean society. At the same time, while the present is questioned through an active practice of thought, Criticism and Politics can be considered an astounding exposition of the seasons and routes that Nelly Richard’s work has traversed up to the present day.

 

“Nathalie Goffard, o un paisaje parecido a uno mismo”

Epilogue In: Nathalie Goffard Bascuñan (Ed.) Intramuros. Palimpsestos sobre arte y paisaje

Publishing House Metales Pesados

 

"The Temptation of Eden: Landscape Architecture in the Andean Region Nowadays, a Portfolio"

In: José Luis Falconi (Ed.)
Cuadernos Inter.cambio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe

Read the article [ Spanish]

“No Me Token; or, How to Make Sure We Never Lose the * Completely”

In: Guggenheim Museum UBS MAP Global Initiative

The article is included in: A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, (Eds.) Leonardo Anreus, Robin Greeley and Megan Sullivan

Wiley-Blackwell, Boston, MA

“Tractable Times-Afterword”

In: A Principality of its Own

This collection of critical essays examines distinctive moments of the Americas Society’s visual art program and its impact on the formation of a Latin American market in the United States. Founded in 1965, the Americas Society has played a pivotal role in Latin American art, from Pre-Colombian to modernism.

The book brings together a cross-cultural group of art historians and curators, including Alexander Alberro, Alexander Apóstol, Beverly Adams, Cecilia Brunson, Luis Camnitzer, Thomas Cummins, Andrea Giunta, Nicolás Guagnini, Paulo Herkenhoff, Anna Indych-López, Luís Pérez Oramas, John Pruitt, Mary Scheider Enriquez, and Sofía Sanabrais, who discuss the relevance of the institution’s intricate relationships with art, economics, and politics.

Essays address the emergence of site-specific practices such as Gego’s Reticulárea and neo-avant-garde manifestations such as the Fashion Show Poetry Event conceived by E. Costa, J. Perrault, and H. Wiener; Marta Minujin’s happenings; Michael Snow’s photographs; David Siqueiros’ monographic show; and the notion of landscape in the Western Hemisphere, among other significant topics. A Principality of Its Own explores the achievements, frictions, and experiments that modeled the institution from the Cold War to the present.

Buy on Harvard University Press

 

 

“The Political Economy of Latin America: New Visions” With James A. Robinson.

For the: World Bank’s Latin America Vision 2040 project

Latin American under-development has been fundamentally determined by a political economy syndrome of clientelism and state weakness which inhibits the provision of basic public goods. What are the origins of this equilibrium, reasons for its persistence, and possible ways out?

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Watch the keynote lecture 

“Contra-Memoria: Entre el recuerdo y la historia oficial. Una conversación con José Guillermo Nugent”

In: [cuatro treintatrés] Journal

Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Artes, Departamento de Artes Visuales. No 02, Santiago de Chile, Chile

August 2019

Learn more [Spanish]

“What is the Use of Calling Antanas Mockus an Artist?”

In: Carlo Tognato (Ed.) Cultural Agents Reloaded: The Legacy of Antanas Mockus

Cultural Agents Reloaded: The Legacy of Antanas Mockus systematically reflects on the practices and legacy of one exceptional cultural agent Antanas Mockus. His accomplishments as twice mayor of Bogotá, Colombia bear witness to the potential of creative, symbolic practices as a trigger for social change. His failures, in turn, demonstrate what happens when cultural agency and epistemic legitimacy take divergent paths.

Mockus’s example motivates us to further revise and sharpen our understanding of what cultural agency is in the present day, bringing into focus some of the most formidable challenges that public humanities face when they travel South and struggle to become genuinely global.

Buy on Harvard University Press 

“No Me Token; or, How to Make Sure We Never Lose the * Completely”

Included in: A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, (Eds.) Leonardo Anreus, Robin Greeley and Megan Sullivan

In-depth scholarship on the central artists, movements, and themes of Latin American art, from the Mexican revolution to the present

A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art consists of over 30 never-before-published essays on the crucial historical and theoretical issues that have framed our understanding of art in Latin America. This book has a uniquely inclusive focus that includes both Spanish-speaking Caribbean and contemporary Latinx art in the United States. Influential critics of the 20th century are also covered, with an emphasis on their effect on the development of artistic movements.

By providing in-depth explorations of central artists and issues, alongside cross-references to illustrations in major textbooks, this volume provides an excellent complement to wider surveys of Latin American and Latinx art. Readers will engage with the latest scholarship on each of five distinct historical periods, plus broader theoretical and historical trends that continue to influence how we understand Latinx, Indigenous, and Latin American art today. The book’s areas of focus include:

  • The development of avant-garde art in the urban centers of Latin America from 1910-1945
  • The rise of abstraction during the Cold War and the internationalization of Latin American art from 1945-1959
  • The influence of the political upheavals of the 1960s on art and art theory in Latin America
  • The rise of conceptual art as a response to dictatorship and social violence in the 1970s and 1980s
  • The contemporary era of neoliberalism and globalization in Latin American and Latino Art, 1990-2010

With its comprehensive approach and informative structure, A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art is an excellent resource for advanced students in Latin American culture and art. It is also a valuable reference for aspiring scholars in the field.

Buy on Wiley

 

 

 

“(What about) The Other Latinos?" Introduction

In: José Luis Falconi and José Antonio Mazzotti (Eds.) The Other Latinos

The Other Latinos addresses an important topic: the presence in the United States of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants from countries other than Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Focusing on the Andes, Central America, and Brazil, the book brings together essays by a number of accomplished scholars.

Michael Jones-Correa’s chapter is a lucid study of the complex issues in posing “established” and “other,” and “old” and “new” in the discussion of Latino immigrant groups. Helen B. Marrow follows with general observations that bring out the many facets of race, ethnicity, and identity. Claret Vargas analyzes the poetry of Eduardo Mitre, followed by Edmundo Paz Soldán’s reflections on Bolivians’ “obsessive signs of identity.” Nestor Rodriguez discusses the tensions between Mexican and Central American immigrants, while Arturo Arias’s piece on Central Americans moves brilliantly between the literary (and the cinematic), the historical, and the material. Four Brazilian chapters complete the work.

The editors hope that this introductory work will inspire others to continue these initial inquiries so as to construct a more complete understanding of the realities of Latin American migration into the United States.

Buy on Harvard University Press

 

 

“Repairing Symbolic Reparations: Assessing the Effectiveness of Aesthetic Memorialization in the Inter-American System of Human Rights”

In: The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 165-192

The power of memorialization is widely recognized as a form of symbolic reparation aimed at overcoming deep social divisions in the aftermath of mass violence. Yet memorialization as a juridical tool of repair lacks systematic conceptual elaboration, and its potential remains underutilized. This often results in ineffective, even detrimental monuments, and in programmatic failures to integrate memorial practices into multilayered strategies for justice and social reconciliation. This article explores three case studies from the Inter-American Human Rights System in order to examine the strengths and shortcomings of existing approaches to memorialization. We then offer recommendations for expanding the reparative and transformative capacities of symbolic reparations. We conclude by summarizing our observations on how the fundamentally expressive nature of symbolic reparations provides a potentially powerful tool of repair and transformation.

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Introduction in:

Robin Greeley (Ed.) Interculturalidad y sus imaginarios: Conversaciones con Néstor García Canclini

ART LIFE LAB in conjunction with PALINODIA (Chile) and GEDISA (Spain) announces the publication of La interculturalidad y sus imaginarios: Conversaciones con Néstor García Canclini [Interculturality and its imaginaries. Conversations with Néstor García Canclini],  edited by Prof. Robin Greeley during the Guadalajara Book Fair 2018.

The volume is part is of the series “Dialogues” of Palidonia, directed by Prof. Jose Luis Falconi, and concludes a four year effort to produce the most comprehensive set of interviews to famed anthropologist and cultural critic Nestor Garcia Canclini on his distinguished career, his main contributions to the many fields he has worked on, and his legacy for Latin American thought.

Interculturality and its imaginaries. Conversations with Néstor García Canclini has two intertwined objectives: to trace the history and development of García Canclini’s multilevel intellectual effort, and to open it to new ideas and frontiers.

The second in the Conversations collection, the book is part of a series that explores the role of the intellectual in contemporary society through dialogues with influential scholars from Latin America who have assumed that role as a mandate to act as pioneers in new and influential models of critical practice.

This book takes the form of a series of extended dialogues between García Canclini and Robin Greeley, together with colleagues from various disciplines and professions: Alberto Quevedo, Andrea Giunta, George Yúdice, Eduardo Nivón, Juan Villoro, Claudio Lomnitz, and Rossana Reguillo.

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“Historiographical Tai Chi (The Game)”

In: Janet Dees, Irene Hoffman, Candice Hopkins, and Lucia San Román (Eds.)
Unsettled Landscapes; SITElines

Published by SITE Santa Fe on occasion of the inaugural SITElines Biennial, Unsettled Landscapes.
Unsettled Landscapes was curated by Janet Dees, Irene Hofmann, Candice Hopkins, and Lucía Sanromán. The exhibition, featuring 47 artists from 14 countries, looks at the urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas – from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego. Through three themes – landscape, territory, and trade – this exhibition expresses the interconnections among representations of the land, movement across the land, and economies and resources derived from the land.

Edited by Lucy Flint, Foreword by Irene Hofmann, Introductory Essay by Janet Dees and Irene Hofmann, Catalogue Essay by Candice Hopkins and Lucía Sanromán, Additional essays by José Falconi, Richard William Hill, Lucy R. Lippard, and Matthew J. Martinez, Contributions by Christopher Cozier, Julieta González, Eva Grinstein, and Kitty Scott.

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About the exhibition 

 

 

“No Me Token; o Cómo Asegurarnos a nunca perder el * por completo”
[In Spanish]
In: Kaypunku. Vol. 1.

Revista Kaypunku

“El orden, las órdenes de Ollanta Humala” [The order, the orders of Ollanta Humala]

In: Revuelta. N.3

In collaboration with Martín Oyata

 

“Las Moradas: 1947-1949”
In: Rita González (Ed.)
Número Cero N.5.

Special Magazine Project of the Second Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan

Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
San Juan, Puerto Rico
2009

“La solitaria búsqueda de las definiciones, en torno a la última poesía de P. Granados”
[The Solitary Exercise of Definitions: The Poetry of Pedro Granados]

In: Agulha, Jornal do Poesia

[Translated to the Portuguese]

Read the essay [In Spanish]

“(No hay) Fuego (más) amigo; Postscriptum a “Cosido por Fuego” [(There Is No) Friendly(er) Fire; Postscript to "Stitched by Fire"]

In: Santiago Escobar (Ed.) Colombia, tierra de luz
(Translated from the Spanish)

Colombia, tierra de luz (Colombia, Land of Light), consisted of a series of symbolic acts of support for victims of violence and those who are displaced in different parts of Colombia, through the media of photography and art. It was a voice that confronts all the silence and lack of interest in those who have been marginalized and affected by the armed conflict over more than half a century. The selection of locations for the interventions reflected Colombia’s rich variety of multicultural groups, regions, landscapes, climate, historical context, traditions and celebrations, geopolitics, as well as social problems and different armed groups. 

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“Fernell Franco: Alquimista de la Imagen”[Fernell Franco: Alchemist of Images]

Interview on the Photography of Fernell Franco

In: Revista Enfoque Visual N. 11-35

Read the full article [In Spanish]

“Illegible Futures (or the Writings on the Wall), On Edgar Orlaineta’s Work”

In: Registro 04. Espacio Tiempo

Read the magazine

 

“To Pay the Bills with Bills (or how to keep cash flowing)”

In: The Great Swindle: The Works of Santiago Montoya’s

A monograph on the works of the Colombian artist Santiago Montoya (1974). Essays by Jose L Falconi, Professor Robin Adéle Greeley, Christian Viveros-Faune, Professor Miguel Palacios and Justin Ludwig.

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More about the project 

“Techniques for Leaving an Apartment: The Extraordinary Ordinariness of Jorge Mario Múnera’s Photography”

In: Portraits of an Invisible Country. The Photographs of Jorge Mario Múnera

Portraits of an Invisible Country, which bears the name of the exhibit he presented at Harvard in 2004, is the culmination of a five-year collaboration between the photographer and the curator of the show, José Luis Falconi. It comprises a book of essays with insightful reflections on Múnera’s diverse body of work and a series of sixteen photo posters, which together highlight the photographer’s travels within Colombia and his careful depiction of his countrymen and women. Renowned in Colombia as one of the most prolific and influential photographers of his generation, Múnera was the first recipient of the National Photography Award in Colombia in 1998. Since then, numerous international accolades have followed, chief among them as the first photographer to hold the Andrés Bello Chair of the King Juan Carlos Center at New York University.

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“The Ghost that Worked for the Machine: On Barry Freedland’s Signs of Identity”

In: Southeastern College Arts Conference Review, Volume XV, N. 2. pp. 176-181

Read the article 

 

 

“Bluriness in Focus”

In: Out of Focus Nuyoricans

José Luis Falconi discusses Nuyorican photographer Adal Maldonado’s series, Out of Focus Nuyoricans, as a metaphorical depiction of the mutable nature of Puerto Rican identity and nationhood. By choosing to portray his Puerto Rican subjects as blurred, Maldonado’s series highlights how the perception of individuals, communities, and nations as a whole, is dependent on both memory and desire. Falconi concludes that the value of Out of Focus Nuyoricans’ series is that spectators are challenged to consider the sociopolitical and physical conditions that render subjects visible. Ultimately, Maldonado’s photographs and installations do not satisfy the desire to actualize Puerto Rican identity, but instead ask us to take pleasure in beholding subjects that cannot be completely seen.
 

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“Cualquier parecido con la realidad es pura coincidencia. A propósito de Materia Común de Ximena Garrido-Lecca e Ishmael Randall Weeks”
[Any resemblance with reality is pure coincidence. On Materia Comun by Ximena Garrido-Lecca e Ishmael Randall Weeks]

In: Cubo Abierto, Revista del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima

Read the issue [Spanish]

“A Glossary for Tania Bruguera: A Lexicon Interpreted”

In: Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder

Edited with text by Lucía Sanromán, Susie Kantor. Text by José Luis Falconi, Grant Kester, Suzanne Lacy, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Peggy Phelan.

The work of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera (born 1968) researches and performs the ways in which art can be applied to collective everyday life, focusing on the transformation of emotion into political action.

Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder surveys Bruguera’s artworks for the public sphere created between 1985 and 2017, all of which position art as a resource for social change. This collection of works offers the reader a deep understanding of the artist’s strategies for intervening in power. Richly illustrated and including rarely seen documentation of Bruguera’s actions, this volume features texts by José Luis Falconi, Grant Kester, Suzanne Lacy, Cuauhtémoc Medina and Peggy Phelan.

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Ximena Garrido-Lecca
“How Simultaneous is Our Belatedness?”

"The Archeology of the Present: The Wreckage of History According to Jorge Mendez Blake"

In: Registro 04. Espacio Tiempo.

Read the magazine

 

"Futuros ilegibles (o la escritura en la pared), en torno a la obra de Edgar Orlaineta"
Reprinted In Spanish

In: FLORAE Magazine 4 (Traducción/Traición)

Read the magazine [In Spanish]

“Irremediable precisión (En torno a Fernell Franco)” [Irremediable Precision (about Fernell Franco)]

In: Buensalvaje. N 10

Short article on the subject of how unique (and lonely) was the experimentation on the medium of photography of Colombian Fernell Franco during the 1970s and 1980s.

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“(No hay) Fuego (más) amigo; Postscriptum a “Cosido por Fuego” [(There Is No) Friendly(er) Fire; Postscript to "Stitched by Fire"]

In: Santiago Escobar (Ed.) Colombia, tierra de luz

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“Shiny Pyrrhic Victories; On Cristóbal Lehyt’s If Organizing is the Answer; What’s the Question?”

In: If Organizing is the Answer; What’s the Question?

Read the article 

“Two Double Negatives”

In: The Meaning of Photography

With essays by Geoffrey Batchen, François Brunet, Mary Ann Doane, José Luis Falconi, Robin Kelsey, Douglas R. Nickel, Blake Stimson, and John Tagg, and additional contributions by Lars Kiel Bertelsen, Anne McCauley, Jorge Ribalta, John Roberts, Eric Rosenberg, Eric C. Shiner, and Bernd Stiegler.

Photo essays by Sharon Harper, Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault, Fiona Tan, and Akram Zaatari.

How can we write the histories of photography? How should art history and visual studies integrate the special technical and aesthetic challenges posed by the medium and respond to the intense interest it has provoked in the art world in recent years? In this timely volume, fifteen leading scholars discuss the discipline, practice, historiography, and study of photography, from William Henry Fox Talbot to Louise Lawler, and reflect on the status of photography today. In addition, the book features works by important contemporary artists that probe and illustrate these same issues, together offering new perspectives on the field and what photography means to us in the early 21st century.

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“Off-Shootings”

In: AFA02

 

 

Essay reprinted as “Bluriness in Focus: On Adál Maldonado”

In: Black Renaissance Noire

 

 

“A Glossary for Tania Bruguera”

[Translated into Spanish and published as “Léxicon interpretado” in: Hablándole al Poder]

Edited with text by Lucía Sanromán, Susie Kantor. Text by José Luis Falconi, Grant Kester, Suzanne Lacy, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Peggy Phelan.

The work of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera (born 1968) researches and performs the ways in which art can be applied to collective everyday life, focusing on the transformation of emotion into political action.

Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder surveys Bruguera’s artworks for the public sphere created between 1985 and 2017, all of which position art as a resource for social change. This collection of works offers the reader a deep understanding of the artist’s strategies for intervening in power. Richly illustrated and including rarely seen documentation of Bruguera’s actions, this volume features texts by José Luis Falconi, Grant Kester, Suzanne Lacy, Cuauhtémoc Medina and Peggy Phelan.

Read the book [In Spanish] 

“Conscientious Objector: Non-Objects as Index in Darío Escobar’s Sculpture”

In: A Singular Plurality: The Works of Darío Escobar

One of the most significant Central American artists to be recognized in the contemporary international scene in recent years, Guatemalan sculptor Darío Escobar has captivated audiences with his provocative work, as intense in its format and conceptual inquiry as it is irreverent in its novelty and humor.

Escobar first gained recognition for his clever appropriation of everyday objects gilded in the manner of the Guatemalan baroque. He has since distinguished himself as an artist not only through this shrewd conflation of high- and low-brow culture, but, most critically, through his relentless artistic investigation of what it means, as a Guatemalan, to be “contemporary.” Whether through a strategic accumulation of seemingly ordinary objects, or their delicate re-contextualization in the gallery space, Escobar continually challenges us to reconsider our relation to the myriad of mass-produced objects that encroach on our daily experience and to reflect on our own place in the social, political, and economic systems that sustain this existence.

In A Singular Plurality, essays by important international scholars, critics, and curators provide a critical account of how Escobar’s irresistibly whimsical incisiveness effectively dismantled the hardened opposition between the cosmopolitan and the local, thus setting the stage for our present global cartography.

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“Amnesia: A Memoir. (Remembrances of Karen Miranda’s photography)”

In: Karen Miranda Rivadeneira Other Stories/Historias Bravas

Other Stories is Ecuadorian-American photographer Karen Miranda Rivadeneira’s first monograph.

It focuses on her relationships with the women in her extended family, especially her mother and grandmother. The resulting images exude tenderness and dignity, and incorporate symbols and visual elements subtly that hint at Rivadeneira’s Ecuadorian heritage. Other Stories threads personal and collective narratives that are centred in identity, intimacy, memory, and indigenous knowledge.

The book contains an essay in English and Spanish by Alanna Lockward, a Dominican-German author and independent curator. She is the founding director of Art Labour Archives, an exceptional platform centred on theory, political activism and art.

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“Dos dobles negativos”
[Translated from English]

In: Papel Máquina. N. 8

Papel Maquina Magazine

 

 

“Resources of the Real: Latin American Photography at the Americas Society, 1967-2006.”

In: A Principality of its Own

This collection of critical essays examines distinctive moments of the Americas Society’s visual art program and its impact on the formation of a Latin American market in the United States. Founded in 1965, the Americas Society has played a pivotal role in Latin American art, from Pre-Colombian to modernism.

The book brings together a cross-cultural group of art historians and curators, including Alexander Alberro, Alexander Apóstol, Beverly Adams, Cecilia Brunson, Luis Camnitzer, Thomas Cummins, Andrea Giunta, Nicolás Guagnini, Paulo Herkenhoff, Anna Indych-López, Luís Pérez Oramas, John Pruitt, Mary Scheider Enriquez, and Sofía Sanabrais, who discuss the relevance of the institution’s intricate relationships with art, economics, and politics.

Essays address the emergence of site-specific practices such as Gego’s Reticulárea and neo-avant-garde manifestations such as the Fashion Show Poetry Event conceived by E. Costa, J. Perrault, and H. Wiener; Marta Minujin’s happenings; Michael Snow’s photographs; David Siqueiros’ monographic show; and the notion of landscape in the Western Hemisphere, among other significant topics. A Principality of Its Own explores the achievements, frictions, and experiments that modeled the institution from the Cold War to the present.

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Back blurb for Lyle Rexer’s The Critical Eye (Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography)

The Critical Eye provides a comprehensive approach to the critical understanding of photography through an in-depth discussion of fifteen photographs and their contexts – historical, generic, biographical and aesthetic. Lyle Rexer argues that by concentrating on just a few carefully chosen works it is possible to understand the history, development and contemporary situation of photography. 

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Blurb for William Golding’s
The Lord of the Flies for Lima Book Fair

[In Spanish]