Visual Culture and Gender in Mexico

This open access book begins by setting out a conceptual, political, historical, and personal framework that serves to anchor the Mexican visual culture it goes on to address. To this end, it also provides a brief overview of feminist thinking from the late nineteenth century to the present day, which has nourished these visual artists. The notion of uprootedness runs through the entire work, as does the idea of nomadism and nomadic-critical subjects. Eli Bartra addresses loosely defined traditional, modern and contemporary art, including photography and film, as components of the visuality of this corner of the Global South. The book goes beyond recognised figures such as Frida Kahlo, who have dominated Mexico’s visual culture almost exclusively, though it does not dismiss them. It thus offers a visual mosaic that presents the work of photographers, filmmakers and a few artists whose creativity has no qualms about crossing boundaries; one comes from China, another looks out over the Mediterranean, another is based in Guanajuato, another lives in Querétaro, and there is even a European who walks the desert in northern Mexico, unearthing wounds. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a standard CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective