Sofia Vindas Solano 1, Claudia Cendales Paredes 2, Laura Karp Lugo 3
1Universidad De Costa Rica - San Jose (Costa Rica), 2Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano - Bogotá (Colombia), 3University Of Lorraine - Nancy (France)
Sujet en anglais / Topic in english
The transformation of matter by humans is at the forefront of the aesthetic considerations of human productions. How the material is deemed and accepted as familiar, dignified or not, determines the place given to the object in a history of "noble" (canvas, marble, plaster) or "unoble" (earth, vegetable fibers, bark, fabrics) materials. Likewise, the processes by which materials are handled and transformed by the artists' techniques may lead to the exclusion of matter from canonical narratives.
How do these dynamics manifest themselves from places –not necessarily geographical– that are considered outside the hegemonic discourses and narratives in art and outside the conventional discourses covering different perspectives and temporalities in art? As in other regions, in Latin America, the choice of materials, production strategies, and circulation is, in most instances, determined by their accessibility in local environments, not present or disregarded in other parts of the world, such as barniz de Pasto or mopa-mopa in Colombia, grana cochinilla (Dactylopius coccus) pigment and featherworks in Mexico. Simulation of noble materials in colonial sculpture in Nuevo Reino de Granada or murals that imitate marble such as the National Theatre in Costa Rica. The material's election can also account for the syncretism of traditions, techniques, and materials.
This panel deals with the extent to which the choice of material actively influences what the historiography of the art history of the Western North Atlantic region has disregarded or considered as an art. Although this panel was established to discuss the place of Latin America in the global context and the use of diverse local materials in artistic practices, we open the dialogue to investigations from other latitudes outside the prevailing narratives that address these issues.
From the perspective of material cultural studies, we expect contributions in the methodological-historiographical debate and in the discourses and processes that concern materials regarding their physical properties/qualities, their corporeality, transformation, artists' preferences that should remain central in the debates concerning materials used in artworks. Although from a theoretical perspective, human actors encode matter with meaning, from a methodological standpoint, things in motion illuminate their social and human context, as this panel focuses on trajectories and the circulation of materials in space and time from a transregional perspective.
