Decolonising Art History through Latinx Art: Counter-storytelling Chicanx Art and Conceptualism
Terra Lectures in American Art
Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black
University of Oxford, England
2022
The 2022 Terra Lectures in American Art centers 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.
Despite the alignment of much Chicanx art with conceptualism and neo-conceptualism, US artists of Mexican American descent have been systematically excluded from mainstream histories of these art movements.
This essay focuses on recent work by artist Linda Vallejo (b. 1951) to deepen understanding of her conceptual artistic practice, an important but overlooked aspect of Chicana/o/x artmaking. New pieces created in 2020-2021, during the global Covid-19 pandemic, demonstrate two conceptual strategies central to her work: stacking and morphing (Vallejo 2021b). Using these ideas to understand her recent art highlights its conceptual development.
Digitized ephemera from exhibitions, publications, and special projects, hundreds of art images with details, and a video library.
