Decolonizing Science in Latin American Art

An assembly of a new corpus of art-science projects by Latin American artists.

Projects that bring the sciences into art are increasingly being exhibited in galleries and museums across the world. In a surge of publications on the subject, few have focused on regions beyond the Global North. This book assembles a new corpus of art-science projects by Latin American artists, ranging from big-budget collaborations with NASA and MIT to homegrown experiments in artists’ kitchens. Page shows how these artworks also “decolonize” science by resisting the exploitation of the natural world that has attended the creation of knowledge in western contexts. Instead, the artists featured in this volume emphasize the subjectivity and intelligence of other species, staging new forms of collaboration and co-creativity beyond the human. Establishing critical dialogues between Western science and indigenous thought, this book interrogates how artistic practices may communicate, extend, supplement, and challenge scientific ideas.  

Author Biography

Joanna Page is Reader in Latin American Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge. Her most recent books are Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America (co-authored with Edward King) and Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (co-edited with María del Pilar Blanco).