Laura Bravo
Doctor in Art History, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2003). Funded by a grant of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, she has been a doctoral researcher at the Tate Britain, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (MACBA). She is Professor in the Art History Program of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, where she has taught undergraduate courses in Art Theory, Western Art, Art Criticism, History of Photography, Art and Gender, and Research in Art History. She has been Coordinator for Faculty Research Initiatives for iINAS, in the Office of the Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, UPRRP (2018), and Summer Visiting Scholar at PLAS (Program of Latin American Studies) in Princeton University (2018). Bravo has been research leader for different funded projects, on Puerto Rican contemporary art and migration (2015-2018), and recently, with "Photography and Illness: The Human Body Between the Medical and the Artistic Gaze" (2020-2022).
Bravo has co-directed and coordinated more than ten national and international conferences and symposia, in institutions such as the Ponce Art Museum, the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Salamanca. She has presented her academic research in more than sixty conferences, congresses and symposia, in Europe, United States and the Caribbean, in institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid); Menéndez Pelayo International University (Huesca), University of Murcia, Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, and the University of Castilla La Mancha (Spain); the University of Amsterdam and the EYE Film Institute; the Kunsthistorisches Institut of Florence; Casa de la Cultura in La Habana, Centro de la Imagen (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), Universidad de Los Andes, CUNY-Brooklyn College, and the University of Warwick, among others; and she has presented at the 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, in the Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (Germany), thanks to a grant from the Getty Foundation.
Laura Bravo is author of Ficciones certificadas: Invención y apariencia en la creación fotográfica (1975-2000) [Certified Fictions: Invention and Appearance in Photography: 1975-2000] (Metáforas del Movimiento Moderno, 2006), and she is coeditor of Counterstreaming: Measuring the Impact of Cultural Remittances, a special issue of Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College (CUNY, 2016) and Geopolitics of the Difference: Discussions on Gender and Migration in Contemporary Visual Culture, a special issue of Art and Identity Politics Journal (Universidad de Murcia, 2018). She is coauthor in nearly twenty books on art history and visual culture, focused on truth and fiction in art, on photography, gender and art, migration and art, and on the myth of the artist, among others. Recently, she has been coauthor in the book Family Album and Artistic Practices. Re-readings on Autobiography, Intimacy and Archive (Universidad Internacional Meléndez Pelayo, 2019), and with the chapter “Un legado escindido por la migración, según el arte puertorriqueño contemporáneo", in the book Con la casa a cuestas. Migración y patrimonio cultural en el mundo hispano (Carrying One’s Home. Migration and Cutural Patrimony in the Hispanic World, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, 2020). She has been the founder and editor of Visión Doble: Journal of Art History, of the UPR Art History Program.
She is coauthor and editor of several long exhibition catalogs, such as Parallel Universes: Photographic Transvergences between Spain and Puerto Rico (University of Salamanca and University of Puerto Rico, 2013), and Lorna Otero: Family Photos (Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, 2014), and coauthor in Isla: Regarding Paradise, Center for the Arts Gallery, Towsond University (2018). Her most recent curatorial project and publication, Ida y Vuelta [Arrivals and Departures]: Migration Experiences in Puerto Rican Contemporary Art (University of Puerto Rico, 2017), has been exhibited in the History, Anthropology and Art Museum at the Río Piedras Campus, from 2017 to 2018; in Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia (2022-23) and in CentroPR, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY (2023). She has also published many exhibition and book reviews, articles in art journals, and essays in exhibition catalogs on contemporary art.
She has curated more than fifteen exhibitions and art projects in museums and art galleries in Puerto Rico and in Spain, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of the Americas (San Juan); the Museum of History, Anthropology, and Art at the University of Puerto Rico; the Art Gallery at the University of Salamanca, and Las Naves Contemporary Art Space in Valencia (Spain), among many other independent spaces.
Bravo has co-directed and coordinated more than ten national and international conferences and symposia, in institutions such as the Ponce Art Museum, the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Salamanca. She has presented her academic research in more than sixty conferences, congresses and symposia, in Europe, United States and the Caribbean, in institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid); Menéndez Pelayo International University (Huesca), University of Murcia, Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, and the University of Castilla La Mancha (Spain); the University of Amsterdam and the EYE Film Institute; the Kunsthistorisches Institut of Florence; Casa de la Cultura in La Habana, Centro de la Imagen (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), Universidad de Los Andes, CUNY-Brooklyn College, and the University of Warwick, among others; and she has presented at the 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, in the Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (Germany), thanks to a grant from the Getty Foundation.
Laura Bravo is author of Ficciones certificadas: Invención y apariencia en la creación fotográfica (1975-2000) [Certified Fictions: Invention and Appearance in Photography: 1975-2000] (Metáforas del Movimiento Moderno, 2006), and she is coeditor of Counterstreaming: Measuring the Impact of Cultural Remittances, a special issue of Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College (CUNY, 2016) and Geopolitics of the Difference: Discussions on Gender and Migration in Contemporary Visual Culture, a special issue of Art and Identity Politics Journal (Universidad de Murcia, 2018). She is coauthor in nearly twenty books on art history and visual culture, focused on truth and fiction in art, on photography, gender and art, migration and art, and on the myth of the artist, among others. Recently, she has been coauthor in the book Family Album and Artistic Practices. Re-readings on Autobiography, Intimacy and Archive (Universidad Internacional Meléndez Pelayo, 2019), and with the chapter “Un legado escindido por la migración, según el arte puertorriqueño contemporáneo", in the book Con la casa a cuestas. Migración y patrimonio cultural en el mundo hispano (Carrying One’s Home. Migration and Cutural Patrimony in the Hispanic World, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, 2020). She has been the founder and editor of Visión Doble: Journal of Art History, of the UPR Art History Program.
She is coauthor and editor of several long exhibition catalogs, such as Parallel Universes: Photographic Transvergences between Spain and Puerto Rico (University of Salamanca and University of Puerto Rico, 2013), and Lorna Otero: Family Photos (Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, 2014), and coauthor in Isla: Regarding Paradise, Center for the Arts Gallery, Towsond University (2018). Her most recent curatorial project and publication, Ida y Vuelta [Arrivals and Departures]: Migration Experiences in Puerto Rican Contemporary Art (University of Puerto Rico, 2017), has been exhibited in the History, Anthropology and Art Museum at the Río Piedras Campus, from 2017 to 2018; in Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia (2022-23) and in CentroPR, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY (2023). She has also published many exhibition and book reviews, articles in art journals, and essays in exhibition catalogs on contemporary art.
She has curated more than fifteen exhibitions and art projects in museums and art galleries in Puerto Rico and in Spain, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of the Americas (San Juan); the Museum of History, Anthropology, and Art at the University of Puerto Rico; the Art Gallery at the University of Salamanca, and Las Naves Contemporary Art Space in Valencia (Spain), among many other independent spaces.
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Books by Laura Bravo
Featuring artists Abdiel Segarra Ríos, Adál Maldonado, Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, Anaida Hernández, Antonio Martorell, Brenda Cruz, Carlos Ruiz Valarino, Edra Soto, John Betancourt, José Ortiz Pagán, Máximo Colón, Marta Mabel Pérez, Mónica Félix, Nayda Collazo Llorens, Norma Vila Rivero, Osvaldo Budet Meléndez, Pedro Vélez, Quintín Rivera Toro, Víctor Vázquez.
Curated by Laura Bravo, PhD., with Assistant Curator Donald Escudero.
This publication was part of a research project , with Dr. Laura Bravo as principal investigator, financed by the Institutional Research Fund (FIPI,
by its Spanish abbreviation) of the Office of the Dean for Graduate Studies and Research (DEGI) of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.
ISBN 978-0-692-84310-9
Books chapters by Laura Bravo
Abstract: Migration flows generate a decisive cultural enrichment and economic growth in those countries where migrants enter. However, this fact shows a deep contrast with the interruption of the contribution they aspire to make in their places of origin. In a similar way, the grief cau- sed by the impact of their absence –either in them or in their intimate and social circle– can end in a cultural estrangement, as they move away from manifestations of culture and other events they wish to experiment in person. With irony or with a feeling of anguish, some Puerto Rican artists use their work to represent the cultural, econo- mic and emotional toll taken on people ́s decision to migrate from the island over the last ten years. Using a recurring iconography, with elements such as air transportation, personal documents, maps and other geographic references, their artworks transcend local matters and they invite to reflect on the universality of their experiences.
Los textos incluidos en este libro parten de investigaciones en torno a creaciones artísticas contemporáneas que desbordan los límites formales y conceptuales del álbum de familia y que, desde un punto de vista crítico y poético, subvierten sus narrativas dominantes para construir así nuevos relatos. De igual modo, esta publicación analiza la nueva significación social y los usos actuales del álbum de familia como eje vertebrador de nuestra identidad —tanto individual como colectiva— y como paso de lo privado a lo público.
Álbum de familia y prácticas artísticas. Relecturas sobre autobiografía, intimidad y archivo está vertebrado por tres secciones. En la primera se aborda la temática del álbum, la biografía y la autorrepresentación. En concreto, se analiza cómo muchos de los relatos construidos a partir del álbum de familia se convierten ahora en un elemento estético del que se han apropiado algunos creadores contemporáneos, tanto para representarse a sí mismos como para narrar su propia versión del mundo.
Esta publicación tiene como coeditores a Pedro Vicente y José Gómez Isla.
Special Issues Editor by Laura Bravo
Número completo en el enlace: https://revistas.um.es/reapi/issue/view/16801
The present issue of Art and Identity Policies is conceived as a continuity of volume 17, dedicated to critically rethinking the persistence in the contemporary world of colonial imaginaries, using as conceptual devices the categories of frontier, nation, gender, migration and diaspora. In this volume 18, the emphasis is placed on the ways in which certain practices of visual culture discuss gender perspectives and migratory processes framed in stories of historical differentiation. Thus, the geopolitics of difference become the analytical axis that allowed us to combine the heterogeneity of investigative approaches that make up this editorial proposal. By focusing on this premise of reading, we intend to privilege, not only the decentralized trajectories of subalternized regions (Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America) by the imperatives of colonial logic, but the knots and tensions that emerge in the writings of / and about the subjects of the difference. This involves locating the act of thinking and speaking in chronotopes crossed by complex power relations and in historically situated situations.
Issue on the link: https://revistas.um.es/reapi/issue/view/16801
Papers by Laura Bravo
Resumen: Tomando como eje la representación de personas que encarnaban enfermedades con-génitas visibles, examinamos los intereses particulares que estas imágenes han suscitado desde el siglo XVI, desde la Medicina y la Historia del Arte. Mediante diferentes tipos de medios visuales –tratados médicos, pintura y cine–, estudiamos los valores que revelan según los contextos en los que se crearon y publicaron. Como enfoque metodológico, planteamos un análisis transdisciplinar, centrándonos en personas a las que la medicina contemporánea habría asignado diagnósticos de origen genético-cromosómico. ¿Quiénes y en qué contextos se encargaron estas representaciones? ¿A qué función estaban destina-das? ¿Qué intereses tienen quienes las crean? ¿Qué papel tienen las personas representa-das? Los grabados en tratados médicos en los siglos XVI y XVII muestran representaciones para la comprensión científica del cuerpo expuesto, tipifican el sujeto y no se otorga relevancia personal. En la pintura y el cine, a pesar de sus notables diferencias, se subraya la identidad personal en un contexto social particular, expresada con profundidad psico-lógica y sensibilidad. Es el cruce de miradas entre el arte y la medicina donde se puede apreciar cómo se van expandiendo las fronteras inteligibles del cuerpo.
Abstract: By taking as its axis the representation of people who embodied visible congenital condi-tions, we examine the particular interests that these images have raised since the sixteenth century, from Medicine and Art History. By studying different types of visual mediums –medical treatises, painting and cinema–, we characterize the values that they reveal ac-cording to the contexts in which they were created and published. As a methodological approach, we offer a transdisciplinary analysis, focusing on people to whom contempo-rary medicine would have assigned diagnoses of genetic-chromosomal origin. Who and in which contexts were these representations commissioned? What function were they intended for? What are their creators interested in? What roles are played by the subjects? Engravings in medical treaties during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries depict rep-resentations for scientific understanding of showcased bodies, typifying subjects without personal relevance. In contrast, painting and cinema, despite their notable differences, underscore personal identity that is expressed in a particular social context, with psycho-logical depth and sensibility. It is the gaze between art and medicine that allows for better understanding of how the intelligible boundaries of the body are expanded.
Featuring artists Abdiel Segarra Ríos, Adál Maldonado, Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, Anaida Hernández, Antonio Martorell, Brenda Cruz, Carlos Ruiz Valarino, Edra Soto, John Betancourt, José Ortiz Pagán, Máximo Colón, Marta Mabel Pérez, Mónica Félix, Nayda Collazo Llorens, Norma Vila Rivero, Osvaldo Budet Meléndez, Pedro Vélez, Quintín Rivera Toro, Víctor Vázquez.
Curated by Laura Bravo, PhD., with Assistant Curator Donald Escudero.
This publication was part of a research project , with Dr. Laura Bravo as principal investigator, financed by the Institutional Research Fund (FIPI,
by its Spanish abbreviation) of the Office of the Dean for Graduate Studies and Research (DEGI) of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.
ISBN 978-0-692-84310-9
Abstract: Migration flows generate a decisive cultural enrichment and economic growth in those countries where migrants enter. However, this fact shows a deep contrast with the interruption of the contribution they aspire to make in their places of origin. In a similar way, the grief cau- sed by the impact of their absence –either in them or in their intimate and social circle– can end in a cultural estrangement, as they move away from manifestations of culture and other events they wish to experiment in person. With irony or with a feeling of anguish, some Puerto Rican artists use their work to represent the cultural, econo- mic and emotional toll taken on people ́s decision to migrate from the island over the last ten years. Using a recurring iconography, with elements such as air transportation, personal documents, maps and other geographic references, their artworks transcend local matters and they invite to reflect on the universality of their experiences.
Los textos incluidos en este libro parten de investigaciones en torno a creaciones artísticas contemporáneas que desbordan los límites formales y conceptuales del álbum de familia y que, desde un punto de vista crítico y poético, subvierten sus narrativas dominantes para construir así nuevos relatos. De igual modo, esta publicación analiza la nueva significación social y los usos actuales del álbum de familia como eje vertebrador de nuestra identidad —tanto individual como colectiva— y como paso de lo privado a lo público.
Álbum de familia y prácticas artísticas. Relecturas sobre autobiografía, intimidad y archivo está vertebrado por tres secciones. En la primera se aborda la temática del álbum, la biografía y la autorrepresentación. En concreto, se analiza cómo muchos de los relatos construidos a partir del álbum de familia se convierten ahora en un elemento estético del que se han apropiado algunos creadores contemporáneos, tanto para representarse a sí mismos como para narrar su propia versión del mundo.
Esta publicación tiene como coeditores a Pedro Vicente y José Gómez Isla.
Número completo en el enlace: https://revistas.um.es/reapi/issue/view/16801
The present issue of Art and Identity Policies is conceived as a continuity of volume 17, dedicated to critically rethinking the persistence in the contemporary world of colonial imaginaries, using as conceptual devices the categories of frontier, nation, gender, migration and diaspora. In this volume 18, the emphasis is placed on the ways in which certain practices of visual culture discuss gender perspectives and migratory processes framed in stories of historical differentiation. Thus, the geopolitics of difference become the analytical axis that allowed us to combine the heterogeneity of investigative approaches that make up this editorial proposal. By focusing on this premise of reading, we intend to privilege, not only the decentralized trajectories of subalternized regions (Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America) by the imperatives of colonial logic, but the knots and tensions that emerge in the writings of / and about the subjects of the difference. This involves locating the act of thinking and speaking in chronotopes crossed by complex power relations and in historically situated situations.
Issue on the link: https://revistas.um.es/reapi/issue/view/16801
Resumen: Tomando como eje la representación de personas que encarnaban enfermedades con-génitas visibles, examinamos los intereses particulares que estas imágenes han suscitado desde el siglo XVI, desde la Medicina y la Historia del Arte. Mediante diferentes tipos de medios visuales –tratados médicos, pintura y cine–, estudiamos los valores que revelan según los contextos en los que se crearon y publicaron. Como enfoque metodológico, planteamos un análisis transdisciplinar, centrándonos en personas a las que la medicina contemporánea habría asignado diagnósticos de origen genético-cromosómico. ¿Quiénes y en qué contextos se encargaron estas representaciones? ¿A qué función estaban destina-das? ¿Qué intereses tienen quienes las crean? ¿Qué papel tienen las personas representa-das? Los grabados en tratados médicos en los siglos XVI y XVII muestran representaciones para la comprensión científica del cuerpo expuesto, tipifican el sujeto y no se otorga relevancia personal. En la pintura y el cine, a pesar de sus notables diferencias, se subraya la identidad personal en un contexto social particular, expresada con profundidad psico-lógica y sensibilidad. Es el cruce de miradas entre el arte y la medicina donde se puede apreciar cómo se van expandiendo las fronteras inteligibles del cuerpo.
Abstract: By taking as its axis the representation of people who embodied visible congenital condi-tions, we examine the particular interests that these images have raised since the sixteenth century, from Medicine and Art History. By studying different types of visual mediums –medical treatises, painting and cinema–, we characterize the values that they reveal ac-cording to the contexts in which they were created and published. As a methodological approach, we offer a transdisciplinary analysis, focusing on people to whom contempo-rary medicine would have assigned diagnoses of genetic-chromosomal origin. Who and in which contexts were these representations commissioned? What function were they intended for? What are their creators interested in? What roles are played by the subjects? Engravings in medical treaties during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries depict rep-resentations for scientific understanding of showcased bodies, typifying subjects without personal relevance. In contrast, painting and cinema, despite their notable differences, underscore personal identity that is expressed in a particular social context, with psycho-logical depth and sensibility. It is the gaze between art and medicine that allows for better understanding of how the intelligible boundaries of the body are expanded.
Abstract: "From Silence to Discourse: Thinking with Images" is an invitation to reflect on five different images, made by different artists, in their particular times, geographical contexts and cultural backgrounds. Each of these images are analyzed from diverse points of view, revealing the perspectives of different academic disciplines, and the interest in generating a discourse that reveals the circumstances in which they were created, disseminated and they are received nowadays.
Abstract: Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century) is the vast photographic project that August Sander developed, not without dramatic obstacles, over four decades. The photograph that ends this extraordinary archive is that of the death mask of his eldest son, Erich. The decision of this German photographer opens a series of different questions that provokes a reflection on the author's gaze and his relationship with the subject, the historical content and the political weight of the image, its composition, its documentary and indexical value, its questionable objectivity, and its place in the context of coetaneous photography and its symbolic function in the artist's work.
humanidades.uprrp.edu/visiondoble
Through an iconographic analysis comparing some key issues of this 17th century religious genre and González Torres’ installations, it is possible to draw a visual parallel between the characteristic elements of vanitas and this artist´s repertory of objects, which are a metaphor in absentia of the human body and flesh. Thus, these artistic objects (which include bulbs, candies, cheap wall clocks, photographs of an empty bed on billboards and large offset prints on paper) keep an ordinary and everyday appearance in the emptiness of the exhibition galleries or even on the streets. However, when the exhibition visitors are invited to take pieces of some of these installations, the artworks exhaust themselves, creating a heartbreaking metaphor: the relentless advancement of time, the deterioration of flesh, the dramatic loss of life and the pain caused by the absence of things we appreciate and people we love.
Abstract: Some peculiar monuments on Puerto Rican landscape are dilapidated remains of abandoned projects. Through her camera, Myritza Castillo portrays the vestiges of a power eager for profit in different territories, showing how their delusions became colossal rubble, over time, and as a consequence of carelessness.