Posted Date: January 14, 2021

Episode Description: What does performance and protest look like in a time of pandemic? How do we study live performance at a moment when keeping our distance is the safest way to keep safe? When do we as researchers stop observing and put our bodies on the line in solidarity with protest movements? In this episode, Irenae Aigbedion (LAC) and Camila Gutiérrez (LAC) interview Dr. Elizabeth Gray (Penn State) on her current and future work on art and activism in Latin America. We focus on her book project, The Poetics of Intervention: Art and Activism in Contemporary Latin America, visiting Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina through Dr. Gray’s stories and reflections on the transformative art and publishing practices that have emerged in these countries. Our conversation shifts to an exploration of the beginnings of her second project, an analysis of Mapuche activism and the battle for land rights in Chile. Together, we open up a larger discussion of social movements—in particular student led movements—that have fundamentally reshaped the country.

Guest Biography 

Elizabeth Gray is a Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State’s Humanities Institute. She earned her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Brown University. She is currently working on a book manuscript, The Poetics of Intervention: Art and Activism in Contemporary Latin America, which explores literature, performance, and protest in spaces of present-day crisis. By centering on the experiences and artistic practices of excluded communities, the project amplifies innovative models for responding to urgent social and ecological issues.

She previously worked as a public school teacher in the United States, Brazil, and Chile, and facilitates community-based workshops in arts and social justice. She is also a poet, performer, and literary translator.

Projects in Progress

First Project

In Elizabeth’s own words, “The Poetics of Intervention: Art and Politics in Contemporary Latin America, examines the relationship between art and activism in spaces of present-day crisis. Through the comparative analyses of literature, performance art, and protest, I trace a panorama of communal poetic resistance across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Centered on artistic production from the last two decades, I argue that recent Latin American art and activism is marked by a turn to autonomous forms of publication and experimental poetics. Individual chapters look at publishing collectives in Argentina and Brazil, poetry and performance art opposing drug war violence in Mexico, and the figure of the student in Chilean literature and protest. The study is comprised of on-site research conducted in each country, interviews with artists and writers, and close readings of literature alongside more ephemeral practices of performance art and protest.”

Second Project

Elizabeth remarks, “I am also working on a second project on Mapuche art and environmental activism which is in early stages. I have presented work at a few conferences, and am including below an abstract from a conference paper “Being Liqid: Mapuche Cultural Production and Environmental Activism”

The recent works of Mapuche artists such as Sebastián Calfuqueo, Daniela Catrileo, and Francisco Vargas Huaiquimilla propose feminist, interdisciplinary responses to political and land violence through their poetry and performance interventions. Catrileo’s Río Herido / Wounded River (2016) and Vargas’ La edad de los árboles / The Age of the Trees (2017) explore modes of writing the body as a site of dissent within the realm of the text and through performance. Calfuqueo’s queer, feminist artworks reimagine relationships to the environment as non-binary, bringing water and the human body into a shared fluid state that defies colonial systems. Centered on site-specific perform ances, their works evoke tradition while calling attention to the devastation of rivers and native plant life. The artists reclaim the Mapuche body and ancestral lands from state violence and exploitation, namely the multinational forestry and hydroelectric industries which threaten the lives of indigenous people and ecologies in Chile Through a comparative analysis across literary and performance works, this paper considers indigenous, queer, and feminist approaches to environmental art and activism.”

Check out the links and titles Elizabeth mentioned in our discussion!

To virtually walk along La Alameda (Avenida Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins) in Santiago, Chile and to experience some of the protest art that covered the city walls and facades–from Plaza Dignidad to Palacio de la Moneda (the official residence of the government)–check out The City as Text.

Below is a recording of a powerful protest organized by the feminist collective, Las Tesis, in Santiago on November 25, 2019, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.  Their anthem, “Un violador en tu camino” (“A Rapist in Your Path”), is based on the words of feminist anthropologist Rita Segado. Like Elizabeth mentioned, the anthem and dance became a viral sensation, bringing together similar feminist movements around the world!

Recommended Resources

For reading, Elizabeth recommends Antígona González (Sara Uribe. Translated by John Pleucker. Les Figues Press, (2016).), a rewriting of Antigone that addresses the war on drugs, the missing and disappeared families, and a number of other salient contemporary social issues. She also recommends doing research on the Latin American Cartoneras, a truly fascinating publication movement! (LAC recommends starting with Cartonera Publishing, a project concentrating on cartonera projects in Mexico and Brazil.)

Artists To Check Out:

• Fernanda Laguna (and her penname Dalia Rosetti)
• Sebastián Calfuqueo