UC San Diego

Contemporary community-based practices in Latin America have a unique lineage and history with dialogically-driven methodologies that were promoted by the Liberation Theology movement within the Catholic Church and the radical pedagogical work of Paolo Freire. That lineage has not been adequately investigated due to the predominance of a post-structuralist-bound post-colonial theory that fails to take these native cultural and social movements into account. As a result, many of the art practices in question have been operating outside of the purview of the art systems and primarily investigated by the social sciences, and not art history or art theory. This dissertation investigates the role of the researcher and curator in supporting these practices and includes three case studies to further the investigation.