Zanele Muholi is a queer, Black, nonbinary South African photographer who produces work depicting the lived emotional experiences of Black queer South Africans, specifically highlighting individuals who have lived through corrective sexual abuse. While corrective abuse against queer and Black people has been documented throughout the art historical canon, many depictions acknowledge only the physical pain, completely omitting the emotional toll this abuse causes. Acknowledgement of the range of emotion of queer and Black individuals in the art world is unfortunately extremely limited, especially when considering depiction of victimized forms; however, Zanele Muholi creates artwork that counters this inadequacy. Through the medium of black and white photography, captured with a “loving” lens, Muholi subverts the concept of corrective sexual abuse by emphasizing the true emotional impact it has through a focus on facial expression and body language, humanizing their subjects to decolonize and reclaim the long-exploited image of the black body from historical degradation under apartheid; they simultaneously challenge accepted gender presentation by depicting queer South Africans who fall outside of the accepted gender binary, making unavoidable the humanity of those who have endured this kind of abuse. Muholi’s work is intended for a wide audience; they want to provide an avenue for queer Black individuals to see themselves in the art world, however; they also want their work to be experienced by those who may be unaware of their communities’ struggles to humanize them to the world. By examining a selection of Muholi’s works alongside historical and contemporary examples of Black pain, and investigating responses to the artist, this paper proves that Muholi’s work questions how Black pain is depicted in media and pushes the boundaries of accepted gender presentation and sexual orientation in the museum space, ultimately creating a fuller picture of the queer Black lived experience.

In times of conflict, art becomes a beacon of resistance and hope. During the military dictatorships in Latin America from 1960s and 1980s, defiance was fundamental in working against such oppressive regimes. First emerging as a way to communicate between artistic centers as a conceptual art practice and later transforming into a form of resistance as it bypassed censorship, mail art operated as a covert artform that spread ideas and pushback both internally and externally. This research explores how the medium of mail art, specifically in Argentina and Chile, was employed by artists to disseminate messages and oppose dictatorship. Mail art has existed more peripherally in the art historical scholarship and my paper resolves how intrinsically tied to resistance this medium is, specifically as it provides anonymity to artists, counters widespread censorship, and later serves as a testament to atrocities that occurred. Thus, looking at Argentine artists such as León Ferrari and Edgardo-Antonio Vigo, alongside the Chilean Arpillera movement, my paper situates what might be defined under the rubric of 'mail art' and moreover, the 'success' of the medium during repressive regimes. Such characteristics I consider are mail art's effective communication, its establishment within the larger scholarly field, and artistic engagement in political oppressive political arenas, to demonstrate a variety of cause and effects upon which mail art relies.

Recorded as horrific and savage by European colonizers in Brazil, ceremonial cannibalism was practiced by Indigenous groups, such as the Tupinambá, as way to pay respect and empathize with their enemies. The idea of cannibalism would later resurface in Oswald de Andrade’s Cannibalist Manifesto (1928) and was compared to the act of consumption as a symbolic and ritualistic act important to the establishment of a unique Brazilian identity. Throughout the twentieth century, the concept of antropofagia [cannibalism] has been interrogated more fully by artists and art historians in Brazil to understand a cultural syncretism. For example, contemporary artist Adriana Varejão’s Proposal for a Catechesis, Part I Diptych: Death and Dismemberment (1993) illustrates two powerful scenes connected to the colonial history of Brazil: the Catholic rite of transubstantiation and the engagement of Indigenous ritualistic consumption. Thus, this paper analyzes how Varejão’s comparisons between Catholicism and Indigenous religions demonstrate that cannibalism can be further troubled as it continues to be utilized as a stand-in for Brazilian culture. Her work demonstrates that beyond cannibalism’s reclamation and revitalization, a deeper reflection surrounding Christian religious rites might be examined.

Huincha sin fin (endless band) is an artwork which poses the question “where are they” in reference to missing persons during Chile’s Pinochet dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s; understanding where the work itself is illuminates the concerns of an artist living in a politically tumultuous era of Chile’s history and provides important context for Latin American conceptualism. Using political, feminist, and archival frameworks to analyze not only this work but the artist Luz Donoso herself, this paper will reveal art as action and provide a deeper understanding of the socio-political backdrop. This artwork is rarely expanded upon in the analysis of Chilean art or Latin American conceptualism, even though it acts as an ideal example of art during this time. Analyzing Huincha sin fin in greater detail exposes its exemplary nature and offers an important alternative viewpoint of a time when art, thought, and people were being silenced.

The Ardashrinama, known as the Book of Ardashir in English, is a 14th century Judeo-Persian epic poem which combines the life of the Sassanid emperor Ardashir with the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible, equating Ardashir with the biblical Persian king Achashverosh. This paper focuses on an illuminated version of this poem, which was created between the years 1650 and 1680, during or immediately after a period of intensified persecution of Jews under Shah Abbas II, marked by forced conversions to Islam and expulsions from metropolitan areas. The illuminations of the Ardashirnama are similar stylistically to well-known Islamic Safavid miniature paintings of the time, but they reflect rabbinic commentary on the book of Esther alongside Islamic mystical ideas, showcasing a partial assimilation of Persian Jewish art, literature and culture into the wider Islamic Persian community while maintaining a distinctly Jewish identity.

Bernini's David (1623) attempted and—in some capacities—succeeded in breaking the barrier between the viewer and the art. David's narrative is only completed through audience participation and then furthered through dialog with the other works displayed in the same space. Bernini's motivation for creating is key to understanding his incessant cultivation of technical skill and his drive to push the boundaries of possibility in Baroque sculpture. The work functions both alone and as a key sculpture in the oeuvre of Bernini. Framing the work with analysis from Wittkower, Wallace, and Lavin, I dissect what made David different from Bernini's earlier sculpture and how David became the precursor for his later work.