Abstract:
This is the first academic study of the artist Pilar Acevedo (born in Mexico and raised in Chicago), and more specifically of her Fragmentos exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago (2013–2014). It proposes that Acevedo’s art tackles the challenge of bearing witness to the physical and psychological effects of child abuse in ways that help us to move beyond existing concerns within trauma theory and examines why art which uses shocking images is not effective either as art or as a call to action. This article identifies the strategies Acevedo employs to encourage the viewer to participate actively in the construction of meaning whilst avoiding turning trauma into a spectacle that makes us turn away or feeds our voyeuristic fascination with pain. The techniques foregrounded include: firstly, the use of fragmented dolls as signifiers that draw on, but also depart from, the work of Hans Bellmer and Cindy Sherman and the traditions of surrealism and abject art; secondly, a multimedia and intermedia approach that opens up new ways of seeing and experiencing art whereby the viewer is invited to piece together the fragmented narratives in a way that reflects the disruption of memory by trauma, and the work of psychoanalysis.

Multimedia Women and Digital Cultural Studies

Working with Dr Jane Lavery (University of Southampton) I have been studying the growing number of Spanish American women writers and artists who are working across different media and who are embracing the opportunities as well as the challenges of digital culture.

Our understanding of ‘multimedia’, which incorporates both intermedia and transmedia practices, is alert to the political significance of such strategies and so, for us and, it seems to us, for our Spanish American authors and artists, multimedia is a political choice.
The first output from this project was an article on the multimedia work of Guatemalan performance artist Regina Jose Galindo published in Bulletin of Latin American Research (2012). Our most recent work examines the work of Chilean Eli Neira.

I have a (forthcoming) article on the work of Pilar Acevedo entitled ‘Bearing Witness to Child Abuse and Trauma in Pilar Acevedo’s Multimedia ‘Fragmentos’ Exhibition’.

We are now working with a group of other academics to try to map the extent and significance of this trend for Spanish American women writers and artists to work across different media.

The University of Southampton is delighted to host the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) for its annual conference on 22-23 March 2018 at the University’s Winchester campus.
The SLAS was founded in 1964 and is one of the leading Latin American studies organizations in the world. Annual conferences regularly gather scholars and students from the UK and abroad.

The theme of the 2018 SLAS Conference is: Latin American Studies Around the World


The Multimedia Works of Contemporary Spanish American
Women Writers and Artists

This exhibit consists of a short 5-10 minute video that we will show on a loop and a series of panels showcasing the work of contemporary Spanish American women artists and writers who no longer seem to feel bound by the traditional boundaries of genre, gender or nation. The transgressive thrust which defines their work has led these women to seek out new forms of expression which, we believe, require the new critical approaches and concepts we aim to develop as part of our project and in dialogue with the women themselves. The exciting generation of multimedia practitioners whose work will be on show produce works which straddle, are between or cross over diverse genres/forms. Whilst many of these women consider themselves primarily as writers or artists (poets, singers, performance artists, visual artists etc), they refuse to be confined by these labels of expertise or genre and share an interest in using diverse multimedia forms which they perceive as enriching their artistic and literary practices.

The roundtable which will accompany the exhibit will include a discussion of the project and its findings to dates, led by Dr Sarah Bowskill and Dr Jane Lavery, as well a live (online) performance by Lucia Grossberger Morales called ‘Love Notes to the Planet’.
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​The roundtable will be preceded by a tour of the exhibit. Please join us at La Rotunda during the coffee break.