CLAVIS Permanent Seminar in Latin American Art: Diane Lima

Basing her discussion on the performativity of a photograph by artist Paulo Nazareth, which bears the phrase “blacks in the pool,” Lima invites us to consider the multiplicity of meaning that the term “pool” offers in regards to regimes of visibility, practices of refusal, institutional violence, and production of value. Proposing a reading that considers the implications of global racial capital in the financialized system of art, Lima draws upon examples of curatorial projects to provide an overview of how these debates are a throughline within contemporary Brazilian art, and are intrinsic to curatorial work and education.

Event will be in Portuguese with simultaneous translation to English.

Diane Lima lives between Salvador and São Paulo, Brazil. Her projects gained notoriety for broadening debates around artistic and curatorial practices from a decolonial perspective within Brazil. She holds a Master’s degree in communication and semiotics from Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC–SP). An independent curator and writer, she is part of the curatorial team for the 35th São Paulo Biennial that will take place in 2023. Lima is part of the curatorial committee for the collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP). In 2022, she curated Vuadora, a mid-career retrospective of artist Paulo Nazareth at Pivô in São Paulo and Antônio Obá: Path at The Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. She was one of the curators of 3rd Frestas Trienal de Artes do SESC São Paulo titled O rio é uma serpente [The River is a Snake] in 2021. Between 2016 and 2017 she was the curator of the program Absent Dialogues at Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, and in 2018 and 2019 of the Valongo International Image Festival in Santos, São Paulo. She created the radical education program AfroTranscendence and the residency program PlusAfroT at Villa Waldberta, Munich in 2015. She has presented her work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and New York University, and her texts have been published in The Brooklyn Rail and Foam, amongst others. She was included in Afronta!, a docu-series highlighting Afro-Brazilian creatives on Netflix. Her forthcoming book will be published later this year by Fósforo. She was awarded a Ford Foundation Global Fellowship in 2021.

Presented in conjunction with Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil. Co-organized by the Center for Latin American Visual Studies (CLAVIS) and the Visual Arts Center, with support from Archiving Black América, Art Galleries at Black Studies, CLAVIS, Humanities Institute through the Viola S. Hoffman and George W. Hoffman Lectureship in Liberal Arts and Fine Arts, LLILAS Benson Brazil Center, and Texas Global.