Book Series Women and Gender in the Arts, vol. 3

Disoriented

Gender Territories in Contemporary Art

María Teresa Méndez Baiges, Javier Cuevas del Barrio, Concepción Cortés Zulueta (eds)

  • Pages: approx. 425 p.
  • Size:178 x 254 mm
  • Illustrations:66 col.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2025


Pre-order*
  • € 115,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-61314-7
  • Hardback
  • Forthcoming (Jul/25)

Forthcoming
  • € 115,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE


The book traces a broad mosaic on the condition of modern and postmodern art through feminist, postcolonialist and queer debates that currently cross the discipline of art history and visual studies.

BIO

Maite Méndez Baiges is Full Professor in the Department of Art History at the Umniversity of Málaga. Javier Cuevas is Associate Professor and Concepción Cortés Zulueta is Postdoctoral Fellow in the same Department. They are researchers specializing in contemporary art and gender, and are part of the research project Desnortadas. Territorios del género en la creación artística contemporánea .

Summary

'Desnortar', or disoriented, means to lose the north or the sense of direction, to disorient. In Disoriented a collective book from a gender perspective, we consciously seek to lose both the geographical north and the north of the contemporary art canon. We aim to rethink and disrupt, from feminist, LGTBQ+ and postcolonial approaches, the coordinates that have articulated the discourses on the art history and art system along the 20th and 21st centuries. Coordinates that define how these artistic practices and systems of modernity and the contemporary are understood, the cardinal directions and main conceptual issues, or which artists are relevant or expendable according to the narratives of avant-garde and contemporary art history. It is crucial to reinterpret and disorientate, to disnorth and thereby shatter these references to overcome the gaps that prevent the emergence of alternative knowledges. To address questions or artists often perceived as peripheral to a grand historical narrative, we propose an intersection of modern and contemporary art history, gender, feminist, queer and postcolonial approaches, and transnational interrelations. This intersectionality allows us to actively lose the north of the canon and to direct our gaze towards subjects outside the usual centres of legitimation. Mostly, we attend to women artists, to peripheral geographical centres, to subaltern collectives, or to practices or materials regularly considered of little artistic interest.  All of the above critiques how conventional discourses have excluded some collectives or certain artistic proposals, and the resistances that have emerged against them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Opening Bodies: Towards A History of The Female Hyper-nude, Maite Méndez Baiges
The Indian Performing Artists’ Voices, Gestures and Combats: The Case of Bangalore Nagaratnamma, Chandralekha and Mallika Sarabhai, Tiziana Leucci
The Most Excellent People in the World and the Most Docile. Representations of Coloniality in Publicity and News Features on Women's Fashion, Elo Vega
Disoriented Desire. Ethnopornography and the Homoerotic of Orientalism in the Paintings of Gabriel Morcillo, Javier Cuevas del Barrio
The Art of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in Contemporary Afro-descendant Creation, Carla Hayes Mayoral
The History of a Safety Pin Necklace: Transnational Colonisation Misrepresented, Inmaculada Hurtado
Disorienting the Purchase. Postmodernist Objects for Sale in Flea Market, a Project by Ana Pissarra in Collaboration with Lara Portela, Vanessa Badiagliacca
The (Mis)representation of Women in Modernist Practices in Portugal, Mariana Pinto dos Santos
Some Notes on Gender and Art in Contemporary Argentinian Art, Georgina G. Gluzman
Narrated Architecture. La Posa, a Building by Juan Muñoz in Peru, Cintia Gutiérrez Reyes
Instrumentalising Southern Territories: Touristic Practices and Neo-colonial Dynamics in Costa del Sol, Héctor Vázquez de la Rosa
Social, Decolonial and Transnational Museology. Reflections from the Global South, and some Current Brazilian Cases, Ariadna Ruiz Gómez
Losing the North of Nightingales and their Songs, Concepción Cortés Zulueta
Some Dovecotes and Pigeon Bodies in Contemporary Art Practices, Andrés Richarte
Tetrachromatism: The Supervision of Concetta Antico, Ana Gerena