The 2022 Terra Lectures in American Art centre on Latinx art, with an emphasis on Chicanx (Mexican American) artists, and the theme of migration – of people, ideas, and artworks, from the seventeenth century to today. Art and activism converge as these lectures move across disciplinary, chronological, and geographical borders. We consider new approaches to “American” art, its borders, and contact zones. By posing strategic questions, these four talks demonstrate avenues of inquiry to decolonise art history.
Lecture 3 “Art against Necropolitics” presented by Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black
Beginning in the 1990s, feminist activists and visual artists joined forces to protest feminicide (feminicidio), the targeted murders of women and girls, along the US-Mexico border. Mexican American (Chicana) artist Judithe Hernández produced her moving Juárez series in response. This talk focuses on Hernández’s work, analyzing her use of rhetorics of memorialization, including pictorial echoes of Catholic saints and deliberate invocations of indigeneity, to honor these victims of violence. While situated within the specific locale of the US-Mexico border, Hernández’s images are also in dialogue with anti-feminicide activism around the globe. Can art contest the power of necropolitics?
Lecture open to all to attend. Directions to Worcester College here. The event will also be live streamed for those unable to attend in person.
Judithe Hernández, The Weight of Silence, pastel mixed media on paper, 2008 (courtesy of the artist)