Essays on the rise of community-focused art projects and anti-monuments in Mexico since the 1980s.

Mexico has long been lauded and studied for its post-revolutionary public art, but recent artistic practices have raised questions about how public art is created and for whom it is intended. In The New Public Art, Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, together with a number of scholars, artists, and activists, looks at the rise of community-focused art projects, from collective cinema to off-stage dance and theatre, and the creation of anti-monuments that have redefined what public art is and how people have engaged with it across the country since the 1980s.

The New Public Art investigates the reemergence of collective practices in response to privatization, individualism, and alienating violence. Focusing on the intersection of art, politics, and notions of public participation and belonging, contributors argue that a new, non-state-led understanding of "the public" came into being in Mexico between the mid-1980s and the late 2010s. During this period, community-based public art bore witness to the human costs of abuses of state and economic power while proposing alternative forms of artistic creation, activism, and cultural organization.

About the Author

Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra is a senior lecturer in contemporary art at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Touched Bodies: The Performative Turn in Latin American Art.

Reviews
The New Public Art is valuable for giving less-known artists greater (and well deserved) exposure. * CHOICE *
The emphasis on the activist restructuring of public collectivity through art leaves a sense of excitement, provocation, and inspiration that will be attractive to activists, artists, and academics alike. I imagine one of the reasons it was attractive to [Polgovsky Ezcurra] and the contributors to publish this volume in English was to make connections among artists and activists on both sides of the US-Mexico border. For those not particularly interested in the fine arts, the chapters would do very well as a window into thinking about some of the larger trends in recent Mexican politics in scholarship and the classroom alike. * NACLA *



Book Information
ISBN 9781477327623
Author Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint University of Texas Press
Publisher University of Texas Press
Weight(grams) 853g
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 33mm