To accompany the first episode of this podcast series — produced in partnership with the Chilean art foundation Il Posto — we’ve put together a reading list drawing on more than two decades of Afterall‘s engagement with contemporary art from across Latin America. Organised by country, it traces threads discussed in the conversation between Editorial Research Fellow Rada Georgieva and Managing Editor Dr Adeena Mey: from an early essay on the Cuban collective Los Carpinteros, published in Afterall 9 in 2004, through the journal’s ongoing exploration of conceptualism, collectivity and institutional histories across the region. These essays don’t attempt a comprehensive survey — as the podcast discusses, Afterall has never worked from a fixed regional framework — but together they offer a sense of the range of artists, thinkers and debates the journal has platformed over the years, and the ground this new collaboration with Il Posto continues to build on.
General
Miguel A. López, ‘How do We Know What Latin American Conceptualism Looks Like?’, Afterall 23, 2010.
Cuba
Jorge Reynoso Pohlenz, ‘Los Carpinteros: Utopian Model Makers’, Afterall 9, 2004.
Marilyn Zeitlin, ‘Los Carpinteros Updated’, Afterall 9, 2004.
W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘How to Make Art with a Jackhammer: A Conversation with Tania Bruguera’, Afterall 42, 2016.
John Byrne, ‘Social Autonomy and the Use of Value Art’, Afterall 42, 2016.
Venezuela
Michèle Faguet, ‘El sueño de la razón produce monstruos: On the Work of Javier Téllez’, Afterall 18, 2008.
Michèle Faguet, ‘Acting Naturally: The Face and the Mask’, Afterall 18, 2008.
Chile
María Berríos, ‘Undocumented Rumours and Disappearing Acts from Chile’, Afterall 21, 2009.
Ana María Risco, ‘Disarmed and Equipped: Strategies, Politics and Poetics of the Image in Eugenio Dittborn’s Airmail Paintings’, Afterall 29, 2012.
Julieta González, ‘Beyond Technology: Juan Downey’s Whole Earth’, Afterall 37, 2014.
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha & Helena Vilalta, ‘Yanomami, Let’s Talk’, Afterall 37, 2014.
María Berríos, ‘Struggle as Culture: The Museum of Solidarity, 1971–1973’, Afterall 44, 2017.
Rada Georgieva, ‘Shoring up the Republic: Gonzalo Díaz’s Infrastructural Aesthetics’, Afterall 59–60, 2026.
Antonio Echeverría, ‘A Monument within Another Monument: A Conversation with Gonzalo Díaz on Unidos en la Gloria y en la Muerte (1997)’, Afterall 59–60, 2026.
Renato Bermúdez Dini, ‘Can Infrastructures Imagine? The Artistic and Political Interventions of Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA) and Grupo Escombros’, Afterall 59–60, 2026.
Bolivia
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, ‘Amo la montaña/I Love the Mountain’, Afterall 44, 2017.
Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz & Pablo Lafuente, ‘To the Last Consequences: Mujeres Creando in Conversation with Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz and Pablo Lafuente’, Afterall 46, 2018.
Elvira Espejo Ayca, ‘Yanak Uywaña: The Mutual Nurturing of the Arts’, Afterall 55/56, 2024.
Argentina
Ana Longoni, ‘Around the Tree: Notes on Gülsün Karamustafa’s Jail Experience and Its Resonances with Argentinian Cultural Production’, Afterall 47, 2019.
Vania Montgomery, ‘Amalia Pica. Happy Bliss: In the Rain, under the Clouds’, Afterall 59–60, 2026.
Renato Bermúdez Dini, ‘Can Infrastructures Imagine? The Artistic and Political Interventions of Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA) and Grupo Escombros’, Afterall 59–60, 2026.
Colombia
Lisa Blackmore, ‘When the Walls Become Rivers: Carolina Caycedo’s “Serpent River Book”’, Afterall 49, 2020.
Mexico
Francis McKee, ‘Minerva Cuevas: Anarchy in the Hive’, Afterall 27, 2011.
Jean Fisher, ‘Minerva Cuevas and the Art of Para-sitic Intervention’, Afterall 27, 2011.
Irmgard Emmelhainz, ‘Chronicle of a Visit to the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, or: Cultural Solidarity in the Globalised Neoliberal Age’, Afterall 43, 2017.
Pablo Lafuente & Michelle Sommer, ‘“History Is Made by the People”: Fragments on the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico’, Afterall 43, 2017.
Natalia de la Rosa, ‘Taller de Gráfica Popular: Collectivity, Popular Prints and Transient Muralism’, Afterall 52, 2021.
Brazil
Isobel Whitelegg, ‘The Bienal de São Paulo: Unseen/Undone (1969–1981)’, Afterall 22, 2009.
Inti Guerrero, ‘Flávio de Carvalho: From an Anthropophagic Master Plan to a Tropical Modern Design’, Afterall 24, 2010.
Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, ‘Tropicamp: Some Notes on Hélio Oiticica’s 1971 Text’, Afterall 28, 2011.
Paloma Checa-Gismero, ‘Realism in the Work of Maria Thereza Alves’, Afterall 44, 2017.
Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, ‘Wake in Guangzhou: Steps for an Ecological Aesthetic’, Afterall 44, 2017.
Macarena Gómez-Barris, ‘The Occupied Forest’, Afterall 49, 2020.
Thomas J. Lax, ‘Searching for Iemanjá’, Afterall 52, 2021.
Bruno Pinheiro, ‘Thinking Blackness in Pan-American Artistic Networks: The Case of the Bienal de São Paulo’, Afterall 53, 2022.
Edward Gómez, ‘Arthur Bispo do Rosário, an Emblematic Art Brut/Outsider Creator’, Afterall 54, 2023.
Marlon Miguel, ‘Representing the World, Weathering Its End: Arthur Bispo do Rosário’s Ecology of the Ship’, Afterall 54, 2023.
Filipa Ramos, ‘Homem com H: On Jonathas de Andrade’s Museu do Homem do Nordeste’, Afterall 55/56, 2024.
Lorraine Leu, ‘Settlement: Rosana Paulino and Black Women’s Insubordinate Geohistories’, Afterall 55/56, 2024.
Jareh Das, ‘Rosana Paulino: Art as Memory-Work’, Afterall 55/56, 2024.
Nav Haq, ‘Hunger for Resistance: Interview with Jonathas de Andrade’, Afterall 55/56, 2024.
Charles Stankievech, ‘Breathe with Me, a Breath of Life: Material Mysticism in Clarice Lispector and Lygia Clark’, Afterall 55/56, 2024.