Lecturer, Contemporary Art Theory and History 

I am a Chilean-Australian theorist and historian of contemporary art and visual culture. My research and writing praxis are committed to developing counter-histories/memories/archives and institutions in alignment with decolonial aesthesis and border subjects. I am particularly invested in methodologies drawn from decolonial and Marxist-feminist theories as well as the practice and discourse of institutional critique. 

I am currently undertaking three inter-related research projects:

• a monograph on the political economy of transnational networks forged by Chilean conceptual artists in the 70s and 80s (2017-)
• a moving conceptual vocabulary of the aesthetics, politics, histories and potentialities of the Global Souths via a project I lead entitled Future Souths (2017-) in collaboration with Walter Mignolo, Dylan Miner, Zoe Butt, Ruth Simbao, Rachel O'Reilly, Carla Macchiavello and many others. see: futuresouths.org

• a series of essays on the political economy of social practice in the context of intensified border politics and migration of subjects from the global south into the north, see publication list. 

My book Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art (Radical Aesthetics Radical Art series, Bloomsbury Philosophy, 2016) analyses the protracted 'refugee crisis' from the 1990s to the present era in countries such as Australia, Cuba, the US and the UK and the role of contemporary art in manifesting 'counter-memories' of not only diminishing histories but also neglected futures which prioritise locating a critical, post-identity (non-citizen/nation-based) form of inter-subjectivity and thinking.

Recent publications appear in Memory Studies, Third Text, Afterall and Contemporaneity. I have written numerous catalogue essays for Australian artists in the areas of performance art, video art, photography and installation (see Publications), and curated several exhibitions including Feminist Actions (2006 Next Wave Festival), Girls on the Floor (2007, Loop), Without Money There is No Love (2008, Guildford Lane Gallery, Melbourne). 

From 2018-2020, I will be Research Fellow at Rhodes University, South Africa (Arts of Global South research cluster, led by Prof Ruth Simbao); in 2015 I was Visiting Fellow in the Social Practice Queens program, City University New York (CUNY), and in 2010 I was art historian and theorist in residence at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, researching the work of the Berlin based artist Dierk Schmidt in collaboration with the Stadel Museum. 

Awards include: the Arts Victoria Presentation Grant (2006); the Australian Postgraduate Award (2008-12); the Siemens Art Program Award (with Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2010); the Australia Council for the Arts New Work - Early Career Award (2013); the Bundanon Trust Writer’s Residency (2015); the UNSW Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2015-18); PLuS Alliance Research Fellowship (2019-2020).