Dialogues

Abstract

Curated by Yelaine Rodriguez and edited by Tatiana Flores, this Dialogues stages a series of conversations around Afro-Latinx art through interventions by Afro-Latina cultural producers. Black Latinxs often feel excluded both from the framework of latinidad as well as from the designation “African American.” The essays address blackness in a US Latinx context, through discussion of curatorial approaches, biographical reflections, art historical inquiry, artistic projects, and museum-based activism. Recent conversations around Latinxs and Black Lives Matter reveal that in the popular imaginary, Latinx presupposes a Brown identity. In their contributions to “Afro-Latinx Art and Activism,” the authors argue for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of Latinx that does not reproduce the racial attitudes of the Lusophone and Hispanophone countries of Latin America, nor the black-white binary of the United States. They look forward to a time when the terms Afro or Black might cease to be necessary qualifiers of Latinx.