Disoriented

Gender Territories in Contemporary Art

Méndez Baiges, María Teresa (ed.)
Cuevas del Barrio, Javier (ed.)
Cortés Zulueta, Concepción (ed.)

'Desnortar', or disoriented, means to lose the north or the sense of direction, to disorient. In Disoriented a collective book from a gender perspective, we consciously seek to lose both the geographical north and the north of the contemporary art canon. We aim to rethink and disrupt, from feminist, LGTBQ+ and postcolonial approaches, the coordinates that have articulated the discourses on the art history and art system along the 20th and 21st centuries. Coordinates that define how these artistic practices and systems of modernity and the contemporary are understood, the cardinal directions and main conceptual issues, or which artists are relevant or expendable according to the narratives of avant-garde and contemporary art history. It is crucial to reinterpret and disorientate, to disnorth and thereby shatter these references to overcome the gaps that prevent the emergence of alternative knowledges. To address questions or artists often perceived as peripheral to a grand historical narrative, we propose an intersection of modern and contemporary art history, gender, feminist, queer and postcolonial approaches, and transnational interrelations. This intersectionality allows us to actively lose the north of the canon and to direct our gaze towards subjects outside the usual centres of legitimation. Mostly, we attend to women artists, to peripheral geographical centres, to subaltern collectives, or to practices or materials regularly considered of little artistic interest. All of the above critiques how conventional discourses have excluded some collectives or certain artistic proposals, and the resistances that have emerged against them.