The Political Body Symposium, Panel III - Feminist Exchanges

Connie Butler moderates a discussion with panelists Julia Bryan-Wilson, Isabel Castro, Karen Cordero Reiman, and Mónica Mayer.

Is there a history of feminist art in Latin America? In Latin America, feminism was seen by the left as a bourgeois ideology associated with imperialism. In the United States, Chicanas and Latinas were often excluded from mainstream feminism. Feminist or not, the artists in Radical Women explored female subjectivity and subverted patriarchal ideology and culturally and biologically determined roles of women in society. As Mónica Mayer writes for the Radical Women catalogue, it is necessary to ask: ‘What is feminist art and how and by whom has it been produced?' and ‘What social factors enabled artists in the mid-20th century to approach or reject feminist art in each region in Latin America?' What are the points of exchange and dissidence between Latin American, Latina, and international artistic and political feminisms?

This symposium is convened on the occasion of the exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985. In the symposium, scholars, artists, and curators from around the world convene to consider ideas of radicality, feminism, and the emancipated body.