Book Launch: ‘Touched Bodies: The Performative Turn in Latin American Art’

What is the role of pleasure and pain in the politics of art? In Touched Bodies Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra approaches this question as she examines the flourishing of live and intermedial performance in Latin America during times of authoritarianism and its significance during transitions to democracy.  The book attests to a performative turn in Latin American art during the 1980s that, changed the ways in which we perceive art and understand its role in society.

Based on original documents and innovative readings, her book brings politics and ethics to the discussion of artistic developments during the “long 1980s”. She describes the rise of performance art in the context of feminism, HIV-activism, and human right movements, taking a close look at the work of Diamela Eltit and Raúl Zurita from Chile, León Ferrari and Liliana Maresca from Argentina, and Marcos Kurtycz, the No Grupo art collective, and Proceso Pentágono from Mexico.

Please join us for an event to mark the UK launch of Touched Bodies with Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, the writer Carlos Fonseca, and a performance by the dancer and artist Margarita Zafrilla in collaboration with Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra.

“An astute and moving book, Touched Bodies gives account of the transition from an aesthetics of representation to an aesthetics of embodiment and bodily vulnerability in Latin American art of the 1980s. A contribution to aesthetic theory as much as to the history of art, Touched Bodies extends our understanding of performance-based art in relationship to practices of vulnerability, dissensus, and cross-temporal performativity.”
Rebecca Schneider, author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment

Touched Bodies is available on Unbound and will be onsale at a specially discounted price at the launch.