FOR A DECOLONIAL FEMINISM IN LATIN AMERICAN CONCEPTUALIST PRACTICES: Mujeres Públicas and Mujeres Creando Collectives

Coletivos Mujeres Públicas e Mujeres Creando

Abstract

Abstract: This article articulates reflections on the coloniality of gender, Latin American conceptualist practices, and social violence through the works of two feminist art collectives: Estampita (2004), by the Argentine collective Mujeres Públicas, and La Virgen Barbie (2010), by the Bolivian collective Mujeres Creando. We investigate how these collectives activate, in public space, counter-discourses against hegemonic power structures derived from Western impositions in these contexts. Drawing on Joan Scott’s (2019) formulations on gender and the contributions of decolonial feminism by María Lugones (2014) and Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso (2020), we examine how these works mobilize conceptualist strategies to challenge patriarchal, racial, colonial, and capitalist structures. The collectives studied broaden the scope of artistic practices by merging activism and art, proposing a production marked by the conflicts of social orders and denouncing, in public space, the alliances between coloniality, religious morality, capitalism, and the control of bodies. In doing so, these works expand the field of Latin American feminist and decolonial art by asserting practices of anticapitalist and anticolonial resistance.

Keywords: Gender; Coloniality; Conceptualisms; Mujeres Creando; Mujeres Públicas.