Sean Nesselrode Moncada | Nature in the Abstract: Art and Extractivism in Venezuela

Hard-edged abstraction, kinetic illusions, and innovative concrete architecture: twentieth-century Venezuelan modernism is known for as an ambitious project of self-fashioning that had its eyes set firmly upon the future—a stance that from the vantage point of today looks woefully utopian. This lecture considers the role of extractivist politics in the development and tenor of Venezuelan modernism, with particular attention to the institutionalization of petroculture as its ideological foundation. From the celebrated graphic design of Carlos Cruz-Diez and Álvaro Sotillo to the vibratory aesthetics of Jesús Rafael Soto, the underlying metaphor of refinement was not far away in its desire to reshape and transform the physical world. This talk argues that nature was conscripted as the raw material, both literally and imaginatively, for the remaking of the nation, and it concludes by turning to a consideration of a very different strain of Venezuelan modernism that embraced informalist gesture and improvisation as a way of re-materializing place, nature, and matter.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Sean Nesselrode Moncada is Associate Professor of Theory and History of Art and Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the author of Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity in Venezuela (University of California Press, 2023), which received the ALAA–Arvey Foundation Book Award; the Fernando Coronil Prize for Best Book on Venezuela; and the Visual Culture Studies Book Award, Latin American Studies Association. His writings and reviews have appeared in journals including Architectural Theory Review, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, and Caiana: Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte, as well as in the exhibition catalogues Gego: Measuring Infinity (2023) and El Dorado: A Reader (2024). His current book project is titled Maruja Rolando: On-Site and is supported by an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

DISCUSSANT

Gabriela Nouzeilles, PLAS Director; Emory L. Ford Professor of Spanish, Princeton University

This event is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

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