Sculpting the Invisible
Poetics of Absence in Contemporary Latin American Artists
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2238-2046.2025.59348Keywords:
collapse of representations, limit experiences, poetics of absence, violence, traumaAbstract
This paper explores how contemporary Latin American artists Voluspa Jarpa, Doris Salcedo, Alfredo Jaar, and Alice Miceli use poetics of absence, such as silence, opacity, and fragmentation, to represent limit-experiences and symbolically resist historical violence. It examines how these artistic practices subvert hegemonic regimes of visibility and representation, proposing alternative modes of memory inscription. The research adopts a qualitative and critical approach, with formal and conceptual analysis of the artworks in dialogue with theories of art and memory. The results indicate that these practices function as counter-archives, challenging dominant narratives. It concludes that such poetics reconfigure ways of remembering, despite limitations such as the risk of aestheticization and institutional reception.
Downloads
References
ADORNO, Theodor W. Prismen: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955.
AGAMBEN, Giorgio. O que resta de Auschwitz: o arquivo e a testemunha. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008.
BARBOSA, Ramsés Albertoni. Estrategias de visibilización o los sentidos de las borraduras: os dispositivos da Histeria e da História na po(ética) de Voluspa Jarpa. 2024. Tese (Doutorado) – Programa de Pós-graduação em Artes, Cultura e Linguagens, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, 2024.
BAUDRILLARD, Jean. Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Galilée, 1981.
BENNETT, Jill. Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
BISHOP, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. New York: Verso, 2012.
BROWN, Kate. Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future. New York: W. W. Norton, 2020.
BUTLER, Judith. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: New Left Books, 2010.
DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. Images malgré tout. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2003.
DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. Quando as imagens tocam o real. PÓS: Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Artes da EBA/UFMG, Belo Horizonte, v. 2, n. 4, p. 204-219, nov. 2012.
ESCOBAR, Ticio. Aura latente. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2021.
FOSTER, Hal. The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
FOUCAULT, Michel. L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.
GIUNTA, Andrea. Contra el canon. El arte contemporáneo en un mundo sin centro. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2020.
HARAWAY, Donna. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, v. 14, n. 3, p. 575-599, 1988.
HIRSCH, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
LONGONI, Ana. Del Di Tella a Tucumán Arde: vanguardias artísticas y política en el ‘68 argentino. Buenos Aires: El Cielo por Asalto, 2010.
MAMDANI, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
MARTÍN-BARBERO, Jesús. Dos meios às mediações: comunicação, cultura e hegemonia. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ, 2009.
MBEMBE, Achille. Crítica da razão negra. Lisboa: Antígona Editores Refractários, 2014.
McINTYRE, Lee. Post-Truth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018.
NANCY, Jean-Luc. La communauté désoeuvrée. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 2004.
NIXON, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.
PETRYNA, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
QUIJANO, Anibal. Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies, v. 21, n. 2-3, p. 22-32, 2007.
RANCIÈRE, Jacques. Le partage du sensible : esthétique et politique. Paris: La Fabrique, 2000.
RICHARD, Nelly. Fracturas de la memoria: arte y pensamiento crítico. Buenos Aíres: Siglo XXI, 2007.
ROLNIK, Suely. Arquivo para uma obra-acontecimento. 2011. Disponível em: https://desarquivo.org/sites/default/files/rolnik_suely_arquivo_para_uma_obra.pdf. Acesso em: 23 abr. 2025.
SARLO, Beatriz. Tiempo pasado: cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2012.
STERN, Steve. Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973-1988. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
VIRILIO, Paul. La machine de vision. Paris: Galilee, 1988.
WILLS, María Emma. Feminismo y democracia: más allá de las viejas fronteras. Análisis político, n. 37, p. 18-36, maio 1999.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Ramsés Albertoni Barbosa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License that permits sharing of the work with acknowledgement of authorship and initial publication in this journal;
- Authors are permitted to enter into additional contracts separately, for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g., the Creative Commons Attribution License).
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their home page) at any point before or during the editorial process, as this may generate productive changes as well as increase the impact and citation of the published work.
- It is the responsibility of the authors to obtain written permission to use in their articles materials protected by copyright law. Revista PÓS is not responsible for copyright breaches made by its contributors.
| 
