ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Online program 

October 21-November 4, 2023

Co-presented with Sur Gallery and VIVO Media Arts Centre

Women & Video Art: Political Praxes of Memory

This online program of video art from Brazilian and Chilean video pioneers Sonia Andrade, Letícia Parente, C.A.D.A., Gloria Camiruaga, Tatiana Gaviola, and Lotty Rosenfeld, reveals overlapping thematic tropes with the exhibition at Sur Gallery entitled Diaspora Dialogues: Archiving the Familiar. A concern for women’s bodies as subjects of repression and resistance; a critique of state violence and oppression; and, a concern for developing semiotic feminist languages through video art is evidenced in these historic works.

Video as a viable tool for art production became accessible in Latin America at different times depending on the country of origin. The first generation of video artists from Brazil and Chile in the 70s and 80s demonstrates the adoption of video as a form with radical political potential. Significantly, the confluence of video technology and feminism in the 1970s was critical in shaping the artistic responses to the historical moment these video pioneers lived through. The artists presented in Women & Video Art: Political Praxes of Memory developed semiotic and conceptual languages to critique patriarchal dictatorships while also using this moving image technology as a form of documenting the social and political oppression within their nation states. Because video was a new technology in 1970s-80s Latin America, the radical imaginations and political critiques of these artists managed to go under the radar of repressive censorship laws. The advent of the portapak, or portable video camera recorder, allowed for an embodied medium that could be used in both public and private realms. Women & Video Art: Political Praxes of Memory makes visible the important contributions of Latin American women video pioneers in developing media languages that underscored feminist liberation in a time of extreme repression.

Co-curated by Sarah Shamash & Tamara Toledo