The Being/Becoming Object: Strategies in Unfolding, Disrupting, and Becoming in Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art

This thesis pulls from the legacy of the Latin American avant-garde and the interpretive system of ideological conceptualism, as described by Mari Carmen Ramírez, to conceive of new ways of understanding and valuing art made by Latin American and Latinx women artists in the late 20th and early 21st century. In an attempt to divert from the stronghold of US-based identity politics discourse, this project seeks to move beyond an interpretive practice based on representation towards one rooted in action. In this thesis I introduce my conceptualization of the being/becoming object, a dynamic artwork or artistic action that is grounded in the process of creating in order to generate new and different meanings through phenomenological processes, which have the potential to effect social change. Informed by the theoretical writings of Brazilian critic Ferreira Gullar, artist Lygia Clark, Peruvian critic Juan Acha, and both US and Latin American scholars of queer theory, I analyze and interpret three distinct works—Madre por un día (1987) by Mexican group Polvo de Gallina Negra, the Plush Pony series (1992) by Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar, and Trinidad/Joy Station (2018-ongoing) by Salvadoran and Los Angeles based artist Beatriz Cortez—through the lens of the being/becoming object to identify the ways that they function or can function to disrupt and dismantle oppressive socio-political discourses and systems