Södertörn University and the Royal Institute of Art proudly announce a workshop on Art and Memory in Latin America with Tania Rivera, Oscar Svanelid, and Tania Espinoza.
Welcome to the workshop Art and Memory in Latin America, which examines art and aesthetic practices in relation to individual and collective memory in the wake of trauma.
The workshop consists of two sessions. The first will be held on May 20 at the Royal Institute of Art, and the second on May 22 at Södertörn University. To register for the first session (May 20), please send an email, by May 15, to asa.andersson@kkh.se, and to register for the second session (May 22) please send an email to fanny.soderback@sh.se.
Tuesday May 20, 13.00–17.00, Royal Institute of Art
(Lyssningsrummet, Slupskjulsvägen 30 (seaside), Skeppsholmen)
The Reversal of Anthropophagy: Lygia Clark’s Feminist Fable-Making (Tania Rivera)
Tania Rivera reflects on the presence of gendered elements in the fable-making propositions of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, whose work is one of the most vigorous examples of Brazilian artistic reflection on the Other. Especially in her works from the 1970s and 80s, body and language are combined such that the Other is displaced from a position of power, both in Clark’s writings and in her “therapeutical” experience.
Between Flames and Knives: Opposing the Destruction of Memory (Oscar Svanelid)
Oscar Svanelid discusses recent events in Brazil that have harmed and destroyed its cultural heritage, including the devastating fire at the Museu Nacional (2018) and the neo-fascist Planalto Riots (2023). The challenge of resisting destruction is illustrated by the restoration of Emiliano di Cavalcanti’s modernist painting and the exhibition of the Santa Luzia Meteorite at the 34th São Paulo Biennial, where it served as a symbol of a new universalism.
Thursday May 22, 13.00–17.00, Södertörn University
(MA 796, Flemingsberg)
Remembering, Sharing, and Working-Through: Political Strategies of Dealing with Trauma (Tania Rivera)
Radically breaking any essential link between the moment of perception itself and the moment in which we would remember it, Freud viewed the psyche as a kind of shredding machine defined by the fragmenting, combining, and recombining of minimal elements. In his view, there is no memory without narrative, nor is there an account completely independent of the one to whom it is addressed. Tania Rivera explores the political consequences of this understanding of memory, especially with regard to the collective processing of trauma.
Conversation in the Off-time: “Funes the Memorious” and the Trauma of War (Tania Espinoza)
Reading Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “Funes the Memorious” together with institutional psychotherapy’s postwar elaborations of trauma, Tania Espinoza asks whether the story can offer a Europe in crisis the vision of a “cure” from the Latin American margin.
Tania Rivera is a psychoanalyst and essayist who works in a multidisciplinary field, moving between psychoanalysis, philosophy, artistic and literary theory as well as practice, aiming to collect and unfold proposals for delineating the subject in culture at a micropolitical level and trying to contribute to gender discussions and the decolonization of thought. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and is a professor at the Department of Art at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil.
Oscar Svanelid is a postdoctoral researcher in art history at Södertörn University and the University of Oslo. He earned his PhD from Södertörn University with a thesis titled Att forma tillvaron (Shaping Lives), which explores how modern Brazilian artists have incorporated art into areas such as missionary work, critical pedagogy, and therapy.
Tania Espinoza writes about literature, philosophy and psychoanalysis. She holds a PhD in French from the University of Cambridge and is a postdoctoral researcher in Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen. Her current project “Technics and the Maternal” explores maternal care as a form of techne, attempting to place French philosophy of technics and Anglo-American philosophy and psychoanalytic thinking about motherhood in a relationship of transference.
The workshop is organized by Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Fanny Söderbäck, with support from the Memory Studies Research Platform, the Center for Baltic and East European Studies, and the Department of Philosophy at Södertörn University; the Seminar in Feminist Continental Philosophy in Stockholm; and the Royal Institute of Art.
All lectures and discussions will be held in English.