Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra
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Overview
Overview
Extended absence from the college
On maternity leave until December 2023.
Biography
I am an art historian and cultural theorist with expertise in Latin American Art. I joined the History of Art Department at Birkbeck in 2018, as part of the department’s interest in expanding its global focus. Previously, I held a Junior Research Fellowship at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and taught at the departments of History of Art, Spanish, and the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. I completed my PhD, entitled “Touched Bodies: Corporeal Ethics in Latin American Art at the Onset of the Media Age” in the same institution.
I run the film production company Tecolote Films and have worked as director, scriptwriter and editor for documentary films. My film Malintzin 17 premiered at the Tiger Competition of International Film Festival Rotterdam and received the Best Documentary Award at the Morelia Film Festival. I have also curated a number of research-led exhibitions, including Reality Machines: An Art Exhibition on Post-Truth (CRASSH, Cambridge, 2018) and Infancias (Casa del Tiempo, Mexico City, 2023).
Highlights
My book Touched Bodies: The Performative Turn in Latin American Art (Rutgers University Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 Book Prize of the Association for the Study of the Art of the Present (ASAP).
Out in September: The New Public Art https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477327623/the-new-public-art/ Available for pre-order. Discount code: UTXM25
I was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for the project "The New Life: A Cultural History of Cybernetics in Latin America" (2020-2024).
I received the Art Journal Award for the best article published in 2018 (‘Beyond Evil: Politics, Ethics, and Religion in Leon Ferrari’s Illustrated Nunca Más’).
Qualifications
- BA, El Colegio de Mexico & Harvard University
- MPhil in History, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
- PhD, Latin American Cultural Studies, University of Cambridge
Web profiles
Professional activities
I am a member of the editorial board of the Oxford Art Journal.
Professional memberships
Association for Art History (AAH)
Association for the Study of the Art of the Present (ASAP)
International Council of Museums (ICOM), UK
Honours and awards
- Leverhulme Research Fellowship , Leverhulme Trust, November 2020
- Research Library Grant , Getty Institute , November 2020
- Art Journal Award , College Art Association , November 2019
- Book Publishing Grant, Jumex Foundation, November 2018
- Book Publishing Grant, Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo (PAC), November 2018
- Newton Mobility Grant , British Academy , November 2016
ORCID
0000-0002-1484-6790 -
Research
Research
Research interests
- Art and politics in Latin America, public art, the politics of aesthetics
- Performance art, dance, video art, experimental film, and artists’ books
- Feminist, ecological, post/decolonial and post/more-than-human art and theory
- Mexican Intellectual History
- The cultural history and visual culture of art-science projects in twentieth-century Latin America (specifically cybernetics and systems art)
Research overview
My research focuses on contemporary Latin American Art and Intellectual History, with a particular emphasis on the politics of aesthetics and on the study of liveness, presence, corporeality, and agency in artistic practice —including live, performance, and ecological art, together with dance and the moving image.
My publications include the monograph Touched Bodies: The Performative Turn in Latin American Art (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), the forthcoming essay collection Marcos Kurtycz: Corporeality Unbound (Fauna-Jumex, 2023), and the edited volumes The New Public Art: Collectivity and Activism in Mexico Since the 1980s (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2023), Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America (NY-London: I.B. Tauris, 2016, edited with Sophie Halart), and Eugenio Polgovsky: Poetics of the Real/La poética de lo real (Mexico City: Ambulante-Tecolote Films, 2020).
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of specialism.
Doctoral alumni since 2013-14
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PATRICIA BONCHRISTIANO
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PATRICIA BONCHRISTIANO
Teaching
My teaching is centred on non-Western art histories. It fosters a critical awareness of questions related to gender, colonial legacies, ecology, cultural transference, and migration. I welcome proposals for PhD research on these topics and on a range of issues related to modern and contemporary art of Latin America.
Teaching modules
- Research Exercise (ARVC282S7)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2022) Mutable bodies: abstraction and modern dance in 1960s Argentina. Oxford Art Journal 45 (1), pp. 83-104. ISSN 0142-6540.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2018) Beyond evil: politics, ethics and religion in León Ferrari’s Illustrated Nunca más. Art Journal 77 (3), pp. 20-47. ISSN 0004-3249.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2017) Wake in Guangzhou: steps for an ecological aesthetics. Afterall 44, pp. 65-74. ISSN 1465-4253.
Book
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara, ed. (2023) The new public art: collectivity and activism in Mexico since the 1980s. Austin, U.S.: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9781477327623.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara, ed. (2020) Eugenio Polgovsky: poetics of the real. Mexico City, Mexico: Ambulante Ediciones-Tecolote Films. ISBN 9786079619930.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2019) Touched bodies: the performative turn in Latin American art. New Jersey, U.S.: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9781978802025.
Book Section
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2023) Art and cybernetics: a new ontology for art. In: Fox, J. and Simoniti, V. (eds.) Art and Knowledge after 1900. Interactions between Modern Art and Thought. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. pp. 154-177. ISBN 9781526164261.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2023) Introduction. Agoraphilia: notes on the possibility of the public. In: Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (ed.) The New Public Art: Collectivity and Activism in Mexico since the 1980s. Austin, U.S.: University of Texas Press. pp. 1-30. ISBN 9781477327623.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2020) The flight of seeds. In: Gandy, M. and Jasper, S. (eds.) The Botanical City. Berlin, Germany: JOVIS. pp. 122-130. ISBN 9783868595192.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2020) Beyond empiricism: Rolando García’s Theory of Complex Systems and the epistemological consequences of a non-linear universe. In: Page, J. and del Pilar Blanco, M. (eds.) Latin America at the Vanguard: Science and its Imaginaries. Gainesville, U.S.: University Press of Florida. ISBN 9781683401483.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2019) After darkness: sense-expansion and the aesthetics of New Media. In: Segre, E. (ed.) Mexico Noir: Rethinking the Dark in Contemporary Writing and Visual Culture. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. ISBN 9783034322430.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2017) El resto es ruido: El Padre mío entre el sonido y la furia. In: Carreño Bolivar, R. (ed.) La rueda mágica: Ensayos de música y literatura. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado. pp. 294-308. ISBN 9789563571073.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2016) Introduction. In: Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara and Halart, S. (eds.) Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America. London, UK: I.B. Tauris. pp. 1-10. ISBN 9781784532253.
- Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara (2016) Shaman, thespian, saboteur: Marcos Kurtycz and the ritual poetics of institutional profanation. In: Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara and Halart, S. (eds.) Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America. London, UK: I.B. Tauris. pp. 35-57. ISBN 9781784532253.
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Business and community
Business and community
I have media training.
Media
I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:
- Latin American History and Culture