Americanist Dinner Forum: Leticia Alvarado: To Have and To Hoard, Xandra Ibarra’s Object Lessons

How do minoritized artists navigate spaces rife with problematic practices of extraction, rooted in the institutional objectification of individuals in the service of empires and how are engaged audiences called into reflection on their continuing legacies?

In this talk, Professor Alvarado orients us to consider the object lessons proffered in the cultural production of Oakland-based artist Xandra Ibarra. With analytic focus trained on the matter held, hoarded, and placed into circulation by the artist, Alvarado urges us to consider divergent relations to power within rarified spaces of art exhibition, as well as the affective possibilities of resistive engagement unraveled through them.

Prof. Alvarado is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Brown University. Her work has been supported by the Smithsonian, Ford Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. She is the author of Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2018) as well as numerous publications in academic journals, the award-winning museum catalogue Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, and is forthcoming in The Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media. Her current book project, Cut/Hoard/Suture: Aesthetics in Relation, received support by The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

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