Paper short abstract:

Current trends in feminist, contemporary and Latin American art history do not account for the position of Mexican women artists working in the 1970s. Through an examination of three exhibitions where these artists are included, I venture a nuanced critique of this historic and concurrent inconsistency.

Paper long abstract:

"No men in uniform, no children, no dogs, no women" read the signs posted outside cantinas at Mexico's most prestigious art school, the Academy of San Carlos, in 1975. Although seemingly living during a dawning age of feminist activism, Mexican women found themselves last on the list as women artists. Historically these artists perilously negotiated between an active local feminist movement that dismissed their art as bourgeois, and an art world that rejected their feminist politics as irrelevant - a problem that remains present to this day. Current trends in feminist, contemporary and Latin American exhibitions and art historical scholarship do not account for the unique position of these women artists. Why does not only the international art world, but also the international feminist arts movement, continue to ignore these histories?

Through an examination of three separate retrospective exhibitions where some of these artists are included, I will venture a nuanced critique of this historic and concurrent inconsistency. When included, what identities are being ascribed to these artists? What effect do the mis/non/re/presentations perpetuated by these recent exhibitions have on collective future knowledge of their histories? What does this speak to regarding the decolonization of "marginal" histories of Latin America in general? This project is not merely an unearthing of these artists and their socio-political and cultural environment, but an examination of the complex problematics involved in negotiating ghettoisation/assimilation and the developing of a transnational feminist discourse.