Sophie Halart EPIDERMAL AESTHETICS: SKIN AND THE FEMININE IN CHILEAN AND ARGENTINE ART (1973- PRESENT) Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art University College London 1 I, Sophie Halart, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Thesis Abstract This thesis examines the motif of skin in both its material and symbolic manifestations in contemporary Latin American art. More specifically, it seeks to trace the presence of an “epidermal aesthetics” in a selection of works by artists active in Chile and Argentina over a period ranging from 1973 to the present. Taking 1973 as its starting point, my temporal frame coincides with the military coup staged by the Chilean armed forces and their implementation of a dictatorial regime that would last until 1989. Meanwhile, a violent military Junta also ruled over Argentina between 1976 and 1983. My contention is that, in their (re-)activation of a patriarchal and hetero-normative discourse, these regimes affirmed their power by resorting to a virile rhetoric that built itself on and against the bodies of women. By claiming a right to define the feminine and by associating it with the image of the Nation (Patria), the Chilean and Argentine Juntas effectively turned the skins of thousands of women into screens upon which they could project their propagandistic discourses. In this thesis, I examine the stakes of this particularly stringent form of political repression for female embodiment. Far from taking women as mere victims of state violence though, I argue that artists also found in the motif of the skin an appropriate topos to articulate practices of resistance which, by extension, led to a redeployment of the artistic field as one inhabited by “epidermal aesthetics”. If skin can constitute a carceral wall locking women inside themselves and a screen for the projection of idealised images of femininity, it also constitutes an interface to reinitiate contact with the other. Moreover, as the ground activating the sense of touch, skin is anathema to the visual hegemony imposed by the military governments’ policies of surveillance, repression and disappearance. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of images Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION: EPIDERMAL AESTHETICS. SKIN AND THE FEMININE IN THE SOUTHERN CONE 1) CUERO VIVO 2) SKIN 3) THE FEMININE 4) TO SEE AND BE SEEN: EMBODIMENT AND THE POLITICS OF TERROR 5) MEDIATING LATIN AMERICAN CONCEPTUALISM PART I: OUTSIDE-IN. THE SKIN OF THINGS: WITNESSING, MAPPING, STITCHING IN CHILEAN ART CHAPTER 1: VISION AND TACTILITY IN ROSER BRU’S PAINTINGS: ACCOUNTING FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE 1) SUSPENDING THE PICTORIAL 2) MUJERES CLAUSURADAS: OUTFLOWS AND CARCERAL SKINS 3) EDELMIRA AZOCAR: PORTRAYING THE DISAPPEARED 4) SPECTRAL SKINS, HAUNTED PAINTING CHAPTER 2: EPIDERMAL CARTOGRAPHIES: SKIN AS MAP IN CHILEAN MIXED MEDIA WORKS 1) SITUATING TERRITORY: ENCLOSING AND POROUS BORDERS 2) ZONES OF NON-DROIT: ABJECT SPACES AND MAD LOVE IN DIAMELA ELTIT AND PAZ ERRÁZURIZ’ EL INFARTO DEL ALMA 3) BLEEDING MAPS: LAS YEGUAS DEL APOCALIPSIS’ LA CONQUISTA DE AMERICA 4) THE AMBIVALENCE OF STITCHING: CATALINA PARRA’S IMBUNCHES 4 PART II: INSIDE-OUT VESSELS, TUNNELS, BAGS: MOTHERHOOD AND PREGNANCY IN ARGENTINE ART CHAPTER 3: PRIVATE MOTHERS, PUBLIC MATTERS: THE EPIDERMAL PERFORMANCE OF MOTHERHOOD. 1) OUTLINES 2) LAS MADRES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF MOTHERHOOD 3) VESSELS: THE EVITA COMPLEX 4) TUNNELS: SYMBOLIC BIRTHS AND GESTATIVE POLITICS 5) STAINING THE RITUAL CHAPTER 4: BAGS, CRUCIBLES, MONSTERS: PREGNANCY AS BECOMING IN ARGENTINE SCULPTURE 1) MÁMA 2) LYDIA GALEGO: CONFINEMENT, WOUNDS AND COCOONS 3) THE ALCHEMIC WOMB OF LILIANA MARESCA 4) NICOLA COSTANTINO: PROBING THE INTERIOR, BECOMING-ANIMAL AND THE DOUBLE 5) SCULPTURAL MIDWIFERY CONCLUSION: STAINING THE CANON – FINAL REMARKS ON SKIN, THE FEMININE AND MATERIALITY BIBLIOGRAPHY VISUAL ANNEX 5 Acknowledgments The completion of this thesis marks the end of a long and arduous endeavour that has seen me go through a number of significant life changes. I started my PhD as a part- time student in my late twenties, living in London, combining a fast-paced job in the contemporary art world with tranquil reading days at the British Library and inspiring seminars and reading groups organised by the History of Art department at UCL. As I handed this thesis, I had become a Chile-based mother of a bi-cultural child. In the interim of these years, I moved country, learnt a new language, got married, became pregnant and lived through the seismic – to me at least! - experiences of birth giving and early child-rearing in a foreign country and culture. While these different moments do constitute the so-called “expected” path for a woman of any age, they have significantly shaped my approach to my own research topic, feeding it with personal resonances, guiding my readings, and allowing me to make unexpected connections between theory and personal life. For this reason among many others, my first expression of gratitude goes out to my husband Alfonso Donoso and our son Gaspard who have enriched my life and my thoughts in ways I did not think possible. As a young woman immersed in feminist theory, I have always valued and, at times fiercely, fought to protect my time and my independence, both intellectual and physical. However, with Alfonso and Gaspard by my side, I have also learnt about the re-territorializing qualities of love, not as an appropriative gesture but, as Suely Rolnik puts it, as the possibility of a “new smoothness” and the invention of “new constellations of universe” (Rolnik 2008, 417). This new constellation has made us into a family, fraying our own path, weaving out of the patchwork of our different experiences, different backgrounds, different languages, a collective skin, both self-contained and strongly set upon remaining open to the experiences offered by the world. I would, secondly, like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr Briony Fer, who has proved a veritable role model during these years of thinking and writing. Dr. Fer has inspired me in her ability to combine intellectual rigour with a poetic sensitivity that was much required in the approach to my own research material. She has, moreover, exerted inexhaustible amounts of patience and encouragement, shielding me from the pressures of university requirements, even when the writing of the thesis dragged on. Every conversation with her left me more confident in my own work and its critical 6 possibilities. Besides the unshakable support of Dr. Fer, I am also indebted to the staff and graduate student community of UCL’s department of History of Art. While I did not get to spend all my PhD years in London, every single visit offered the possibility of attending inspiring seminars and discussions that had a real impact on my own training as art historian. I am especially thankful to Dr. Mechthild Fend who provided valuable comments and advice in preparation for my upgrade examination, and to Dr. Stephanie Schwartz and the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art who provided financial and logistic support to my organisation of the conference “Sabotage: (Self-) Destructive Practices in Latin American Contemporary Art” that took place at the university in April 2013. This conference was co-organised with Dr. Mara Polgovosky Ezcurra, my friend, most valued intellectual interlocutor and co-editor of our book Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America (I.B. Tauris, 2016). The many hours that we spent exchanging, either in person, by email and on Skype, have represented an endless source of inspiration to my own work. Mara has also often been the first reader of my work, generously providing insightful and subtle comments that proved crucial to the completion of this thesis. In Chile, I would like to thank the attentive staff of the Centro de Documentación Centro Cultural Palacio Moneda who helped me navigate its rich archives. To the Centre’s co-ordinator Soledad García in particular, a most heartfelt thanks for offering me the opportunity to publish some preliminary results of my research in Spanish as part of her editorial projects. I am also very grateful to the artist Roser Bru for taking the time to meet, show me her works and answer all of my questions. In Argentina, I would like to thank the artist Lydia Galego who was also very generous with her time when we met to discuss her work. My 2013 research trip to Argentina also proved very productive thanks the Fundación Espigas in Buenos Aires and, particularly, to Nancy Rojas and the team of the Museo Castagnino + Macro in Rosario who opened their archives to me when I was looking for material on Nicola Costantino and Liliana Maresca. I am also very thankful to UCL and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for endowing me with a Research Studentship that allowed me to dedicate myself full-time to my research. 7 Last but not least, I have a special thought for my loyal border collie Islay who accompanied my work during so many nights, fighting off slumber to stay by my side, a silent yet warm, comforting presence. 8 PART I: OUTSIDE IN THE SKIN OF THINGS WITNESSING, MAPPING, STITCHING IN CHILEAN ART 9 INTRODUCTION EPIDERMAL AESTHETICS: SKIN AND THE FEMININE IN THE SOUTHERN CONE “To deny, cut, tear, transgress in order to progress. To enwrap, unfold, unfurl, unroll, curl up, interleave, in order to exist and coexist. To give, indefinitely, to our human finitude, a form that is never definitive.” (Anzieu, Beckett in Segal 2009, 289). 1) CUERO VIVO Cuero Vivo [Live Skin] (2009) (Figure 0.1) is a seven-minutes long take of a dark expanse of water.