Visual Studies· 2026Q1
Haunting the archives: forced migration and Afro-Latinx resistance
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Contemporary artists Liliana Angulo Cortés and Karina Aguilera Skvirsky create counter-archives using visual and performative practices to narrate Afro-Latinx histories of forced migration and resistance, challenging colonial and patriarchal silences.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Artists Liliana Angulo Cortés and Karina Aguilera Skvirsky address Afro-Latinx histories of forced migration and resistance through art.
- Angulo Cortés' work focuses on Afro-Colombian hair design traditions encoding ancestral survival stories.
- Aguilera Skvirsky's film retraces an Afro-Ecuadorian migration, revealing absent histories.
- Both artists create 'counter-archives' using speculative narrative, oral tradition, and performance.
- Their practices challenge colonial and patriarchal silences, highlighting Afro-Latinx survivance and resilience.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This article examines how contemporary artists Liliana Angulo Cortés and Karina Aguilera Skvirsky narrate Afro-Latinx histories of forced migration and resistance through visual and performative practices. Angulo Cortés’ ¡Quieto Pelo! documents Afro-Colombian hair design traditions that encode ancestral stories of survival and escape, while Aguilera Skvirsky’s film The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios retraces her great-grandmother’s migration across the Andes, bringing Afro-Ecuadorian histories often absent from the archival record into view. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation and Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,’ the article argues that both artists create counter-archives that repair the silences of colonial and patriarchal histories. Through speculative narrative, oral tradition, and embodied performance, Angulo Cortés and Aguilera Skvirsky transform gaps in the historical record into spaces of Afro-Latinx survivance, illuminating the enduring creativity and resilience of women who have shaped collective histories of resistance across the Americas.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Visual Studies, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Cultural Studies
Cultural StudiesSocial Sciences