CARLA ACEVEDO-YATES

Carla Acevedo-Yates is a curator, researcher, and art critic. She earned an M.A. in Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Art at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College where she was awarded with the Ramapo Curatorial Prize. Previously she earned a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Cultures from Barnard College, Columbia University where she received a Clara Schifrin Memorial Spanish Prize in Poetry. A recipient of a 2015 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, she is currently working on an article that examines the queer semiotics in Zilia Sánchez’s work. She is assistant curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization, Lieven de Cauter, Ruben de Roo & Karel Vanhaesebrouck (eds.), Rotterdam, NL: NAi Publishers, 2011.

I have always been intrigued with the mechanisms that drive political and activist art. Can art really have an impact on society? Is going political a way to justify a seemingly meaningless practice? But most importantly, how do these practices extend to other disciplines such as social work, documentary film and advocacy? Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization gathers a selection of 31 essays by a group of critics and writers that address the ways these practices have surfaced in the past decades, influenced by globalization, terrorism and migration. The essays range from theoretical approaches (considerations on post-fordism, subversion and activism) to specific case studies (writings on works by Steven Cohen, Renzo Martens and Christoph Schlingensief); issues and projects worth considering and exploring given the rising popularity and commodification of political art.

Bob Nickas. Theft is Vision. Zürich: JRP|Ringier & Les Presses du Réel, 2007.

Referencing the rising popularity of appropriation art during the 1980s, Theft is Vision is Bob Nickas’ ingenious take on art production over the last few decades. Nickas’ collected essays and interviews, for the most part published in Artforum, is a must read for anyone interested in learning more about art produced during the 1980s and 90s. Far from being overly theoretical, Nickas’ writing style is straightforward; his technique, to interweave the social, cultural and political climate surrounding artistic practice. An avid Punk fan, Nickas’ writings on Jamie Reid, Art Chantry and The Fall are crucial to understanding post-punk aesthetics. While texts on Laurie Parsons, Steven Parrino and Cady Noland shed light on neglected practices.

Jac Leirner in Conversation with Adele Nelson, Conversations series, Fundación Cisneros|Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, 2011.

It’s interesting to read an in-depth conversation with an artist that really gets to the core of their practice and the choices that lead to their relevance in art history. Entertaining and informative, Jac Leirner in Conversation with Adele Nelson describes Leirner’s personal background, process and work. Born to a family of collectors, Brazilian-born Leirner was one of the first contemporary artists from Latin America whose work was acquired by the MoMA. Her work, the result of an obsessive collection of consumer objects, closely tied with international travel and smoking (of all things) is exciting and provocative. Hopefully this Conversation series will contribute to eradicate once and for all the categorizations and misapprehensions associated with art produced in Latin America, and persuade scholars from Europe and North America to acknowledge the importance of these practices within the history of art, not as a peripheral phenomenon but as one that is essential to understand modern and contemporary art trends.