Interview with Terry Smith

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Artistic autonomy in non-autonomous contexts: reframing collective agency and insurgence from Caribbean artist-managed spaces

This article engages the debates on collective agency, autonomy, institutional practices and socially engaged art by comparatively analyzing the activity of two Caribbean artist-managed spaces which emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century: BetaLocal in Puerto Rico and L’Artocarpe in Guadeloupe. Based on fieldwork research and interviews with artists and art audiences, the examination of both projects will be driven by three main objectives: the first has to do with assessing in which ways both initiatives are shaped by their emergence in territories still attached to political and economic bonds. Secondly, I attempt to measure how both collective artistic organizations can approach the material conditions of cultural (re)production and autonomy, confronting the restrictions of Puerto Rican and Guadeloupean cultural and economic policies. Finally, I intend to locate my case study within a global panorama of socially engaged and collaborative artistic practice. From this perspective, I assert that collaborative practices emerging in still dependent contexts constitute a privileged viewpoint in order to examine issues of collective agency, empowerment and alternative futures.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Curating and Cultural Difference in the Iberian Context. From Difference to Self-Reflexivity (and Back Again?)

This article analyzes how curatorial practices deal with coloniality and, in a broader sense, with the legacies of colonialism and imperialism in our postcolonial present. To do so, it approaches the curatorial landscape of the Iberian territories in a moment of a radical geopolitical transformation, marked by the inclusion of Portugal and Spain in the European Union, the critical responses to the commemoration of their imperial past, and the rethinking of their postcolonial, post-dictatorial identity. Frequently framed from the point of view of exceptionalism, in a separated way, this article argues that Iberian postcoloniality can be better understood when approached from a comparative perspective.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Culturas caribeñas en la era de la personalización estética. Explorando las fronteras de la literalidad visual

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The Boda Moment. Positioning Socially-Engaged Art in Contemporary Uganda

This article examines two socially engaged Ugandan art projects: the Disability Art Project Uganda (DAPU), and Lilian Nabulime’s AIDS sculpture. By analyzing both initiatives, I attempt to characterize a new moment in the relations between artistic practice and social intervention in the Ugandan context. I argue that projects such as DAPU and Nabulime’s are confronting the current Ugandan situation of economic and political transformation, marked by the weight of the informal and the challenge of a nation-based cultural sphere. Finally, I point out some similarities with other African socially-engaged art initiatives.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

On Wanting Images and Shared Responsibilities. Belkis Ramírez’s “De la Misma Madera”

This article will borrow W.J.T. Mitchell ́s iconological analysis in order to examine the work of Dominican artist Belkis Ramírez, whose installations show an interest in challenging the role of the spectator and in propelling her/him to act critically. I will focus here on the installation “De la misma madera”, an artwork awarded the first prize in the 1994 edition of the Dominican Biennial of that year and one of the most recognized installations of contemporary Dominican art. I argue that installations such as De la misma madera exemplify the interest of contemporary Caribbean artists in troubling the position of the spectator as well as in generating a pedagogy of images that can be approached only through experience. By those means, Ramírez challenges a direct adscription of her work to the task of illustrating any specific issue. In this article I explore how this ambivalence generates a concern on expressive freedom and emotive emancipation that transcends passive contemplation and representation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Institutionalism, Public Sphere, and Artistic Agency: A Conversation on 32° East Ugandan Art Trust

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The institution of institutionalism: difference, universalism and the legacies of Institutional Critique

This text analyses the relationship between institutionalism, context and cultural criticism. Its main objective is to identify how universalism has permeated the different waves of Institutional Critique, conditioning the subversive potential conferred to creative practices and locating radical, alternative institutionalism within the narrow geo-cultural landscape of mainstream biennials. Taking as point of departure Cildo Meireles’s participatory public intervention in documenta 11, I consider how representational concerns are privileged vis-à-vis visual practices related to coloniality and difference. From that position, the article argues that only by challenging the assumed universality of the debates on cultural institutionalism will we be able to stress the relevance of critique in addressing cultural policies and non-representational practices. This implies confronting the troublesome relationship between Institutional Critique and modernity from a ‘geographically-informed’ position capable of recognising institutionalism as a heterogeneous body of practices that are being globally transformed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Activism against Nostalgia and Self-Defeatism

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Conceptual Materialism: Installation Art and the Dismantling of Caribbean Historicism

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