The Art of Feliza Bursztyn: Confronting Cultural Hegemony

Abstract

This article analyzes the sculpture of Colombian artist Feliza Bursztyn (1933–1982) through the lens of decolonial theory. Bursztyn has entered the canon of Colombian art history as a key modern artist, but to place emphasis primarily on her formal innovations as they contributed to the development of modern, autonomous art in Colombia is to risk minimizing the ways in which her work challenged cultural hegemony and European-American discourses of modernity. Her art can be interpreted as problematizing the assumption that “development” is the answer to “underdevelopment,” that modernity can be universally beneficial. In their confrontations with dominant power structures in Colombia that sought to control class and gender relations and morality, Bursztyn’s work exposed modernity’s dark side, coloniality.