Miramontes Olivas, Adriana
(2022)
Los Neoliberarchivos: Contemporary Art at the Mexico-U.S. Border.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
This dissertation re-claims the Mexico – U.S. border, specifically the Ciudad Juárez – El Paso area as the locus of a creative drive where artists confront contemporary necropolitics and the criminalization of victims, discrimination due to gender, class, age, and race, and a culture of impunity and corruption. In their demands for social justice, Teresa Margolles, Enrique Ježik, and Adriana Cristina Corral, create what I term the “neoliberarchivos.” Framed as neoliberal archives, their artworks investigate and archive an environment where violence is hypervisible, normalized, and ongoing. Through their unequivocal representation of violence, as exercised in their neoliberarchivos, these artists defy apathy and a regulated amnesia as promoted by an elite invested in the economic growth of the region at the expense of bodies. In installation, performance, and video art, Margolles, Ježik, and Corral engage with a language of counter-archival practices and with art historical discourses that allow their neoliberarchivos to circulate within a neoliberal regime and a global art apparatus.
Informed by memory and archival studies, political theory, and philosophy, and in conversation with contemporary art, art history, and border studies, the neoliberarchivos capture the complexity of life as it is experienced in Ciudad Juárez – El Paso. Through interviews, archival research, direct-object study, and recurring visits to the border, I drew on my experience as a fronteriza. While focusing on artistic endeavors that began in the 1990s and continue to this day, the neoliberarchivos trace the artists’ trajectories and, most importantly, encapsulate, the consequences of an economic regime in which different forms of violence act as a means and an end to wealth accumulation, political power, and the control and corporatization of the environment. To warn against this ideology, the artists in this study unapologetically confront viewers with its consequences and advise against the continuation of such practices. This dissertation aims to contribute to art historical discourse as well as to the search for justice that motivates the artists and my own research practices.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
13 August 2022 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
30 March 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
11 November 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
19 July 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
285 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > History of Art and Architecture |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Ciudad Juarez, El Paso, contemporary art, art of the border, neoliberarchivos, archive of feelings, melancholic archive, cyclical border encounters, feminicidios, feminicide, masculinicidios, juvenicidios, política de negación, Teresa Margolles, Enrique Jezik, Adriana Corral, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer |
| Date Deposited: |
11 Nov 2024 18:50 |
| Last Modified: |
11 Nov 2024 20:46 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43334 |
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