Profile
Biography
- BA Universidad de las Américas Puebla
- MA and PhD University of Essex
Ana is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art. Her research explores histories of exhibition-making and art institutions, as well as contemporary art from the Global South. Prior to joining the University of York, she was editor of Afterall Journal and research fellow at Afterall Research Centre at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.
In 2017, she was Visiting Scholar in the Art History Department at KU Leuven, Belgium. Ana has taught undergraduate and postgraduate modules on the history of exhibition making, curatorial theory and practice, post-impressionism, avant-garde, and contemporary art at the University of Essex. She was visiting lecturer on the BA and MA in Culture, Criticism and Curation and on the MRes in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins (UAL). Ana has worked in various areas of the cultural sector, including arts education, curating, and art fairs.
Research
Overview
Ana’s research is centred on the emergence and proliferation of Small Visual Arts Organisations (SVAOs) in various parts of the world from the 1990s-present. She approaches the transdisciplinary curatorial strategies developed by these small arts spaces as crucial to understanding the broader arts ecology of our time.
More generally speaking, Ana is interested in the history of display from the cabinet of curiosities to the present, and in historical trajectories of modern and contemporary art in the Global South.
In 2018, with support of the British Council Myanmar and Acción Cultural Española, she had the opportunity to undertake research in Yangon, Myanmar (with Anca Rujoiu) and held a research residency in lugar a dudas in Cali, Colombia.
External activities
Editorial duties
As editor of Afterall Journal, Ana was interested in the articulation of artistic cross-cultural narratives, as well as in decolonial methodologies in editing, writing and knowledge dissemination.
Issues conceived alongside the journal’s editorial team include:
- Issue 43 ‘Kinship, Communitas, Comunidad’ (with Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris and Charles Stankievech)
- Issue 44 ‘Ethno-Aesthetics and Institutions’ (with Charles Esche, Candice Hopkins, Anders Kreuger, David Morris and Charles Stankievech)
- Issue 45 ‘Scenes of Discord: Unlearning History and Healing Wounds’ (with Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris, Wanda Nanibush and Charles Stankievech)
- Issue 46 ‘Reconstruction: Performance and Collective Action’ (with Ute Meta Bauer, Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris, Anca Rujoiu and Charles Stankievech)
- Issue 47 ‘Situated Practices and Conditioned Positions’ (with Ute Meta Bauer, Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris, Anca Rujoiu and Charles Stankievech)
- Issue 48 ‘Looking Back, Looking Forward: 20 Years of Afterall’ (with Ute Meta Bauer, Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris, Anca Rujoiu and Charles Stankievech)
- Issue 49 ‘Modes of Experience, Alternative Economies and Extractivism’ (with Bart de Baere, Ute Meta Bauer, Charles Esche, Adeena Mey, David Morris, and Charles Stankievech)