Doctora Alexis Salas (she/ella) specializes in global contemporary art, with a focus on Latin American and Latino/a/e/x art and visual culture. Dra. Salas is an Endowed Assistant Professor of Arts of the Americas at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville. Dr. Salas’s scholarly agenda is to forward the intellectual and creative projects of artists, particularly queer/trans artists and artists of color, in the Americas. Methodologically, Dr. Salas uses an interdisciplinary social justice perspective to critique global and local configurations of power. Dr. Salas has written on and researched topics ranging from queer fertility, climate justice, cannibalism as a political act, plagiarism as majority world artistic power play, activism embodied in artistic media as well as sovereignty and autonomy.

Dr. Salas has three book projects in progress. The first, Disparity at Play: The Artists and Projects of Temístocles 44 (Mexico City, 1991-2003), considers the experimental art practices of five Mexico City-based artists from 1987-2003, a period characterized by drastic political and cultural shifts in the Mexican state. Her second, ¡Dále Gas! [Give it Gas!]: Art and Oil in the Petrochemical Americas, examines how crude oil has shaped relationships between artistic practices, political histories, artistic patronage and collecting. Her third, ‘Con colores resistimos’: Queer Latinx Art and Activism, highlights and uncovers queer Latinx art and activism in relation to political movements such as the US Civil Rights movement, the international AIDS crisis, marriage equality, and Undocuqueer.

Dra. Salas is especially interested in working with students on prorjects pertaining to: 

• Latin American and Latinx art and visual culture, 
• contemporary queer and trans art and artists, 
• neoliberalism and the art market, globalization, art 
•  climate justice 
• critical theory, decolonial critique

Professor Alexis Salas offers the following courses on American Art in the Winter Term 2024/25: 

• Latinx Art (BA course)

Wednesdays 2 p.m. – 4 p.m., Kennedy Institute (Lansstr. 7-9, 14195 Berlin) room 319; course number 32101-W24, first session on November 6, 2024.

This introductory course in contemporary art focuses upon Latinx art produced between 1960 and 2024, with an emphasis on art from the 1990s to the present. Readings, primary source documents, lectures, and museum visits include sociological accounts, meetings with artists and artists and theorists, and historical overviews. The course explores bodies of work by artists who experimented with materials and contextual relationships, and considers how avant-garde art confronts institutions (galleries, museums and cultural centers) and functions as protest. Using a number of theoretical frameworks (biopolitics, politics of difference, rasquachismo, relational aesthetics, repudiation of respectability politics, Third World-ism/Majority World-ism) in order to discuss political realities (migration, globalization, diaspora, crisis, and violence) we engage the works of artist collectives and artists. This is a course in active learning with communities who live and thrive in the present. As we work with contemporary art and mostly living artists, we will critically engage with methodologies in oral histories, reflect on our own relationship to these communities, Our historical scope encompasses various Civil Rights movements in order to critically scrutinize the boundaries of contemporary "American" through critical race studies. Case studies include art of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, environmental racism, Afro-American punk queers, and indigenous photographers from throughout the Americas. How do Latinx artists allow us to understand the contemporary art world as a space of critique of both institutions and the art historical canon? How does Latinx art, like contemporary art on the whole, both participate in and stand apart from the world in which and for which it was made? 

Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, and zedat email address before lecture time starts.

• Queer Trans Feminist Art of the Americas (MA course)

Wednesdays noon – 2 p.m., Kennedy Institute (Lansstr. 7-9, 14195 Berlin) room 319; course number 32112-W24, first session on November 6, 2024.

This seminar examines queer, trans, and feminist art practices of the Americas (North + Central + South America + the Caribbean) which challenge heteronormative, cis, settler colonialist, Western, and patriarchal frameworks of bodies, histories, and, ideas. Transnational and transgenerational love letters and critiques help us consider the tensions at work between allies in the destabilized discourses of gender, sexuality, and body. We survey the state of research by reviewing exhibitions, reading and meeting with theorists and practitioners, and taking inventory of archives and resources. Using tools from queer theory, Latin American and Latinx studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, critical race studies, as well as media and visual culture studies; we discuss works of performance art, craft, conceptual practices, fashion, public actions, music videos, and fine art. We culminate with the presentation of a research-based project. 

Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, and zedat email address before lecture time starts.