Transhistorical Horizons: Contesting the Colonial Past in Contemporary Latin American Art

Abstract

This dissertation titled Transhistorical Horizons: Contesting the Colonial Past in Contemporary Latin American Art, 1990-Present, provides an examination of the 500-year commemoration of the Discovery of America that was celebrated in 1992. To understand the significance of the quincentenary and especially the Universal Exposition of Seville (Expo ‘92), I center my analysis on the counter-commemoration movement. This pertained to the artworks, exhibitions, and social protests that contested the official quincentennial events. To demonstrate that the commemoration transformed contemporary artistic practices, I argue, that the collective power advanced by the counter-commemoration movement to remark on the injudiciousness of the quincentennial provided a new visual language for anti-colonial resistance that would come to see both the past and history as important sites of political and artistic contestation.