Art and Human Rights workshop

Speakers and Abstracts

Dr Miriam Estrada-Castillo

ABSTRACT
Art and Human Rights: Fundamental Links

Positive and progressive ideas and ideals, in order to discover effective ways and means for achieving a just society, are the most precious treasures of humanity. These are both reflections and products of the different stages of society’s development.
Art and Human Rights — an active combination of hard work, dreams and hopes, seeking to transform into truth the utopia for the new millenium — social justice for all. Artists and human rights activists refuse to accept the reality of the world and are always trying to seek the truth. The aim of this presentation is to analyse how for a number of Latin Americna artists and human rights activistis, the cost of their ideals and idea has been their lives. BIOGRAPHY
Dr Miriam Estrada-Castillo was born in Ecuador, South America and is an International Expert on Human Rights issues. In her capacity as Chief of Field for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Geneva, Switzerland), Dr Estrada has accomplished important work on the dissemination and diffusion of the Human Rights and Culture of Peace Principles throughout the Latin American Region. She is the Founding Director of the First Human Rights Distance Learning Education Course which she introduced in 243 higher education institutions in Latin America. Dr Estrada has also achieved the signing of the Official Global Pact for Human Rights, by Merco-Sur and Andean's Commerce Chambers, as proposed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Mr Kofi Annan.

BIOGRAPHY
A lawyer, journalist, educator and human rights activist, Dr Estrada’s positions have included: Vice Minister of Social Welfare of Ecuador; Member and the Vice-president (1996-1999) of the Monitoring Committee of the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of All Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); Special Adviser on Human Rights to the Andean Parliament, to the Presidency of the Supreme Court and to the Presidency of the National Congress of Ecuador; President of the Ecuadorian Juvenile Court of Ecuador; author of the Ecuadorian Legislation of Minors; and Regional Adviser on Human Rights and Culture of Peace for UNESCO.

She has written and published 14 books on human rights, family law, women's and children's human rights and political and social issues.

Dr Jill Bennett

ABSTRACT
Tenebrae After September 11: Doris Salcedo and the Global Politics of Trauma

In the week of September 11, 2001, an exhibition by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo opened in London, featuring two large-scale lead and stainless steel installations — Tenebrae, Noviembre 7, 1985, and Noviembre 6. These titles refer to the dates on which the Colombian High Court was taken by the M-19 guerrilla movement, and subsequently stormed by the army. For Salcedo, however, the work was intended not to represent specific events, but rather to evoke a sense of living through the traumatic event of inhabiting a world that is shaped by political violence. This paper considers how Salcedo's work, which develops from a deep and longstanding engagement with the effects of political violence in one country, can be understood as an interventionist practice, illuminating the lived effects of conflict and terrorism in a variety of transnational contexts.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr Jill Bennett is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory and acting Associate Dean (Research) at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. She is also founder of the College's Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics. Her forthcoming book Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art, deals with art and global conflict, focussing on work from Australia, Colombia, South Africa and Northern Ireland. Her essays have appeared in journals such as Signs and Art History and she has recently edited (with Rosanne Kennedy) World Memory: Personal Trajectories in Global Time (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2002). She has curated a number of exhibitions including Telling Tales, an exhibition of Australian art related to trauma (Sydney, 1998; Graz, 1999) and African Market (Sydney, 2002).

Penelope Richardson

ABSTRACT
Revolutionary Binaries —Push and Pull Between High and Low Art in Latin America

With a focus on human rights and art, this paper will seek to explore the relationship of art to human rights concerns through an overview of art practice in Latin America from the 1950's to the present. Broadly looking at both high art and popular art it will trace some of the historical influences on various movements, as well as outline some regional and national differences in art practice that have been generated in relation to specific cultural or political events in various Latin American countries.

BIOGRAPHY
Penelope Richardson is a practicing Visual Artist and writes on Contemporary Art with a special interest in Latin American art. She recently completed her Master of Fine Arts (by Research) at RMIT University, Melbourne, and lectures at Victoria University in Art History and Contemporary Art Theory.

Since her postgraduate study in Latin American art history at the University of Los Andes, Colombia (1992-1994) she has been promoting cross-cultural exchange between Australia and Latin America though her writing ("Stories from Home", Arena Magazine, 1999; Varieties of Havana, Third Text 2001 & "When Reason Sleeps: the Legacy of Violence and the Artists of Medellín", JILAS Journal 2002), and curating exhibitions; hi/lo exotico (Centro Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá & Stop 22 Gallery, Melbourne, 1998); and ~South~{Sur} (Canberra Contemporary Art Space, A.C.T., 2002).

Penelope Richardson has had numerous individual exhibitions including Passenger (Akademie Loccum, Germany 1999); Deeper than Skin Deep (First Site Gallery, RMIT University Melbourne, 1998); Patios Urbanos (British Council, Bogotá 1994); Viajando (Centro Colombo-Americano, Bogotá, 1994). In her own art practice she interrogates intercultural perceptions and stereotypes in relation to Australia’s historical and geographical positioning — Living in Translation (Chisholm Institute Gallery, 2002); Under World (Westspace Gallery, Melbourne 2000); and Tom Yum, Dick & Harry (RMIT Faculty Gallery, Melbourne 2000).

Silvia Zelez

ABSTRACT
The maternal and the political: the mother as victim and as saviour in Colombian representations of violence.

Colombia's long history of violence has produced a parallel history of representations of this violence. Traditional painters, photojournalists, contemporary artists — anyone engaging with the visual — tries to make sense of the violence. This paper focuses on the maternal as subject and object for the representation of violence as the mother becomes both victim and saviour. It will look at examples from various mediums from the start of La Violencia in 1948 to the present. It will broadly outline the historical and political context of these representations and suggest a particular reading based on cultural constructions of motherhood. This paper will also ask how contemporary feminism and art theoretical models can contribute to this analysis.

BIOGRAPHY
Silvia Velez is a Colombian artist living and working in Canberra. Her work deals with issues of politics, violence and representation and has been recently exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography (re-mediated memories, curated by Alasdair Foster), the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, the Centre for Contemporary Photography (Perfect Strangers, curated by Blair French) and the Canberra Contemporary Art Space (Stitched Up, curated by Lisa Byrne). She is currently preparing work for a major exhibition in 2003 at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the National University of Colombia and will also be included in a group show at the Monash University Museum of Art in 2003. Silvia has lectured in the Art Theory and Photomedia Workshops at the Canberra School of Art and is now doing her PhD at the Canberra School of Art and the Centre for Cross Cultural Research at the ANU.

Llilian Llanes

details available shortly, contact christine.clark@anu.edu.au for more information

Dr Brígida Pastor

ABSTRACT
Dissident Voices in Cuban Cinema?: 'The Wolf, the Wood and the New Man'

This paper aims to explore the issues which faced Cuba's minority groups during the worst years of anti-gay repression in the 1970s. I will use the portrayal of homosexuality in the Cuban film Fresa y Chocolate (1993) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío to examine the position of this group in the social and political context of the post-revolutionary period and will argue how the theme of homosexuality is used as an analogy for the unjust treatment of any marginal individual in culture and of the detrimental effect this can have on the whole society. The film is an evident protest against oppressive norms, not only through the voices of the characters, but also indirectly through situations and images that express the misfortunes, concerns and frustrated desires of the characters. Although much of the homophobia in the film may appear to be attributed to political repression, special consideration will be given to how gays had to contend with the traditional cultural values of a macho society in revolutionary Cuba. All and all, the film proposes a revision of the values that predominated in Cuban life at that time and attempts to reaffirm a national identity that could include all favours, options and interpretations of human existence.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr Brígida Pastor is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies and Arts Faculty Adviser of Studies at the University of Glasgow (Scotland). Previously she held a Lectureship at the University of Surrey, London. Dr Pastor lectures on Latin American Literature and Culture, Spanish and Cuban cinema, and Hispanic Women's Writing.

Dr Pastor is the author of many articles on Gómez de Avellaneda and nineteenth-century Cuban culture and gender issues, Spanish Peninsular literature, published in Romance Quarterly, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Journal of the Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies, Lenguaje y Textos, Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, etc. and in collections of essays. She has also published various articles on Cuban and Spanish film.

She has two books forthcoming in 2002 on Nineteenth-century Cuban Writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Dr Pastor is currently working on a project on Cuban and Spanish cinema, which focuses on th evolving representation of female and male roles in Cuban and Spanish cinema from 1950s to the 1990s. Its central concern is the relationship between cinematic discourse and the social, cultural, and historical representation of gender.

Enquiries

Leena Messina, Programs Manager, Humanities Research Centre, ANU
Email: Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au