Study Group on Art, Culture and Politics in Recent Argentina IIGG

MEETINGS 2026

– “Building networks, expanding them like orchids.” Visuals and memories in transfeminist struggles

Presented by: Nico Cuello, Laura Gutierrez and Ana Longoni
Comments by: Lidia Mateo Leivas and Verónica Perera

Summary:
Across different latitudes and in an interconnected way, 21st-century feminisms set in motion a reconfiguration of the social world that resonates today, even in a present marked by the rise of the electoral and social far right. From a state of global war and the so-called culture war, the far right identifies feminist, trans, and queer activism among its main enemies and attempts to restore its patriarchal power and control. In this space of dispute where nothing can be taken for granted, transfeminist movements are rethinking strategies that protect life, imagining a world that can only be rebuilt by acknowledging unequally distributed vulnerability, articulating modes of visibility and bodily sovereignty, with the horizon of the common and the collective. From these movements, and especially from their encounter with or resonances of the 20th-century memorial and human rights movement, emerges a powerhouse generating narratives, meanings, images, and questions that challenge historicity and broaden the field of visibility of the most recognized and academically studied forms of violence. This aesthetic-political laboratory speaks to us of territories in struggle, disobedient and desiring bodies, fragile and incipient but updated repertoires of a new political language, appropriations or creative drifts, strategies of sensitive intervention in the world that reverberate within longer genealogies, and which we seek to explore in the dossier that we presented and debated on May 29.

Bios:
Ana Longoni is a writer, a researcher at CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council), and a professor at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She holds a PhD in Arts (UBA) and works on the intersections of art and politics in Latin America. Since its founding in 2007, she has been a driving force behind the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Southern Conceptualisms Network). She has curated numerous exhibitions, both individually and collaboratively, most recently "Giro Gráfico, como en el muro la hiedra" (Graphic Turn, Like Ivy on the Wall) (2022), "El futuro detrás" (The Future Behind) (2023), and "Alejandra Fenochio. Ahora" (Alejandra Fenochio. Now) (2025). She served as Director of Public Activities at the Reina Sofía Museum from 2018 to 2021.

Nicolás Cuello holds a degree in Art History from the National University of La Plata. He currently teaches at the National University of the Arts and works as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires.

Laura Gutierrez holds a PhD in Social Sciences (UBA), a Master's degree in Gender and Women's Studies (UGR-UNIBo), and a Bachelor's degree in Social Communication (UNER). She teaches undergraduate courses at the Autonomous University of Entre Ríos, postgraduate courses at various national universities, and is an adjunct researcher at CONICET in INES, UNER. Her research interests include the broad intersections between political theory, sexual disobedience movements, feminisms, and artistic and cultural practices. She is the author of *Images of the Possible: A Discontinuous Genealogy of Lesbian and Feminist Interventions in Argentina* (2022).

Lidia Mateo Leivas works as a researcher and professor in the Department of Art History at UNED (National University of Distance Education). Her work intersects Memory Studies and Visual Culture, combining feminist and ecosocial thought, the politics of the gaze, the study of emotions, and the anthropology of images. In addition to publishing articles in journals such as the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and Memory Studies, she is the author of two monographs: *El reverso de la censura. Cine clandestino durante el la la tardofranquismo y la transición* (Cendeac, 2020) and *Imaginarios de la clandestinidad. Complicidad, memoria y emoción en nueve tramas* (Akal, 2022). She is interested in forging points of convergence between the academic world and everyday life, between theoretical thought and political action.

Verónica Perera teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at the National University of Avellaneda, where she also coordinates the Research Group on Memory, Politics, and Culture. She is a member of the Research Group on Art, Culture, and Politics in Contemporary Argentina, coordinated by Ana Longoni and Cora Gamarnik at the Institute of Graphic Design (IIGG) of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She has worked on Latin American social movements and in recent years has been investigating the social and cultural memories of state and social violence in dialogue with theatrical and audiovisual creations, humanitarian narratives, and feminisms. Her publications appear in books and cultural and academic journals, including Antipode, Latin American Theater Review, Revista de Estudos Feministas, and Clepsidra. She and her nine-year-old daughters are members of the Saavedra Community Theater Group.

*The meeting will be in a hybrid format (in-person/virtual). For those unable to attend in person, here is the Zoom link to connect to the meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82315684734?pwd=iwdIEr8avQBynTIKhdc5UvHrILLRkW.1