Dr Katerina Valdivia Bruch
Curator, researcher, dancer
Publications
NEW book publication
Repensar el conceptualismo: vanguardia, activismo y política en el arte latinoamericano (1960s-1980s)
Edited by Katerina Valdivia Bruch
E-book: ISBN 978-3-00-083860-6
PDF: ISBN 978-3-00-083610-7
333 pages, 90 images, Spanish edition
Berlin: Pluriverse Press
This volume is a compilation of critical essays on the development of conceptualism in Latin America between the 1960s and 1980s. In this context, a group of artists committed to social change put into practice alternative forms of political action that involved questioning power structures and promoting solidarity and justice among different communities.
The book offers new perspectives on Latin American conceptualism, with examples from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. It highlights the contributions of local artists and thinkers whose proposals, in dialogue with other Latin American contexts, challenged the paradigms of international art and developed their own categories that reflected the uniqueness of their practices.
Among the topics covered are the emergence of critical positions for examining art from a Latin American perspective, the creation of new terminologies, the recovery of archives, the defence of historical memory, the proposals of third cinema, as well as exchanges with cultural diplomacy programmes and internationalism.
These approaches address Latin American conceptualism not only as an aesthetic movement but primarily as a process of knowledge production that integrates theoretical reflection with artistic practice, actively responding to the political and intellectual debates of its time.
Contribution to the academic journal Illapa Mana Tukukuq
My article with the title ¿Una guerrilla cultural? La escena del arte experimental en Lima durante el gobierno de Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975) has been published in Spanish in the journal Illapa Mana Tukukuq, vol. 22, no. 1, January-June 2025.
Click here to download the article
Abstract: This paper examines how the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-1975) and the experimental art scene in Lima have been presented in exhibitions and international academic and curatorial circuits. It begins with a brief introduction, focusing on the characteristics of this regime and presenting examples of its cultural policies. The paper then reviews the literature produced in the 1970s and 1980s on the experimental art scene, contrasting these earlier accounts with a new historical interpretation that has circulated primarily outside Peru since 2007. Drawing on the notion of "cultural guerrilla", the essay questions the validity of this version of the period’s history. It also illustrates, through specific examples, how curatorial practices are contributing to a rewriting of Peruvian art history in order to integrate it into the international art circuit.
My review on the current Berlin Biennale “passing the fugitive on”
The 13th Berlin Biennale: “I don’t care what you think, I will exhibit it anyway,” by Katerina Valdivia Bruch
Recent Events
ENLAAS's inaugural event: "Mapping Space and Time", 4-6 June 2025
Inaugural event of the European Network on Latin American Art Studies (ENLAAS).
"Mapping Space and Time" was held at Forum Transregionale Studien and Bardo Projektraum.
Speaker at the annual conference of the Association for Art History (AAH)
9-12 April 2025
University of York, UK
Participation as a speaker with the paper "The Peruvian Connection: CAyC, Early Cybernetics, and the Experimental Art Scene in Lima of the 1970s."
Panel: The CAyC Network Revisited: Archives, Methodologies, and Critical Perspective on Argentina’s Centre for Art and Communication.
Co-organiser of the Mad Tea Party: "Settler Art? What’s that?"
2 March 2025
Chto Delat Emergency Room, Berlin
An event by Katerina Valdivia Bruch and Marina Camargo.
Does art belong to someone? Is it attached to a particular geographical space? Can we speak about something such as “settler art” or “settler artists”? If so, who are the settlers? Who would be the ones suffering from these “art settlements”?
Speaker at the annual conference of the College of Art Association (CAA)
12-15 February 2025
Hilton Midtown, New York, USA
Participation as a speaker with the paper "An Inclusive Gesture: Peru’s Participation in the 14th Bienal de São Paulo (1977)."
Panel: Indigenous Art Exhibitions In and Out of the Americas. Are We Learning to Listen?
Research Platform "Rethinking Conceptualism"
Take a look at the resources of the research platform on Latin American Art "Rethinking Conceptualism", a project by Dr Katerina Valdivia Bruch. You can download the texts of our reading sessions and workshops, watch videos with lectures in our Youtube channel, and listen to the audios in our podcast.
