U.S. Latinx Art Forum

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U.S. Latinx Art Forum

The U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) is an advocacy organization dedicated to the art and art history of the United States Latinx communities.

LinkTree:https://linktr.ee/USLatinxArtForum Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) emerges partly from the two-part scholarly session “Imagining a U.S. Latina/o Art History,” which was held at the 2015 Annual Conference of the College Art Association in New York. Central among the issues raised at the session was the ongoing marginalization of U.S. Latinx art within art institutions and the fields of “American” and “Latin American” art history. USLAF formed as a concerted effort to advocate for the field of Latinx art, foster equity and growth, and support its practitioners. While USLAF recognizes the importance of resisting categories, we affirm the value of creating a forum to support scholarship, writing, and historical inquiry about U.S. Latinx visual art and culture. We also maintain the importance of creating a network for mentorship and professional development to ensure the continued progress and vitality of Latinx art practitioners within academia, exhibition spaces, and beyond. We invite you to join USLAF as a member and become part of our growing community of Latinx art advocates. To join, please email [email protected] with the following information.

- Position and Institution (or indicate Independent Scholar/Curator/Artist):
- Preferred Mailing Address:
- Email Address:

In lieu of required membership dues, we currently operate on voluntary financial contributions. Beyond supporting USLAF’s continued operation, your voluntary “dues” contributions will help us to expand our offerings and cultivate new resources for our member network. DONATE TO USLAF: https://pages.donately.com/uslatinxartforum/donate

22/09/2026

To celebrate the launch of “Radical Pedagogies,” we are highlighting the authors who contributed to the collection.

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/radical-pedagogies/

A Pedagogy of Hope: Pagán and Pietri in Nitza Tufiño’s “Tenderete”
✍️ Written by Teréz Iacovino

Teréz Iacovino is an artist, curator, and educator, who now serves as director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota. Her practice is continually shaped by the artists she works with, the students she mentors, and her experience as a Latina and first-generation graduate working in academia. She is co-editor of “Vaiven: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora” (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) and a contributor to “Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Art: A Critical Anthology” (Duke University Press, 2025).

📖 Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s 1992 book, “Pedagogy of Hope,” argues for our ontological need of both hope and struggle to make real our desired futures. Drawing from Freire’s text, this essay discusses artist, activist, and educator Nitza Tufiño’s longest running series, “Tenderete” (1974–present) and how this work offers an education in hope through diasporic aesthetics and materials tied to her Mexi-Rican heritage.

Image: Nitza Tufiño, Selections from “Tenderete,” (1974–present). Archival inkjet prints with mixed media, sewn to cotton fabric with thread, dimensions variable. Installation view of “Vaivén: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora” on view at Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, September 9–December 6, 2025. Photograph by Easton Green. Courtesy of the artist and Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis.

21/09/2026

To celebrate the launch of “Radical Pedagogies,” we are highlighting the authors who contributed to the collection.

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/radical-pedagogies/

Between Punchline and Praxis: Chris E. Vargas’s "Consciousness Razing"
✍️ Written by Stamatina Gregory

Stamatina Gregory is a curator and art historian engaging with q***r and radical pasts, presents, and futures. They are Head Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

📖 Stamatina Gregory gives an in-depth reading of artist Chris E. Vargas’s installation of “Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project” (2018) at the New Museum in New York City. Gregory analyzes the threads of collaboration among Vargas, the invited artists, and viewing publics in the work of interrogating history and memory and centering the legacy of Black trans activists (including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major Griffin-Gacy) in the uprisings.

Image: M***A and Chris E. Vargas, "Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project," (2018). Exhibition view. New Museum, New York. Photograph courtesy of Maris Hutchinson and EPW Studio.

18/09/2026

To celebrate the launch of “Radical Pedagogies,” we are highlighting the authors who contributed to the collection.

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/radical-pedagogies/

Votive Pedagogy: Activating Historical-Spiritual Worlds in Santa Barraza’s “retablos”
✍️ Written by Sonja Elena Gandert

Sonja Elena Gandert is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the cofounders of USLAF. A scholar of modern and contemporary Latinx and Latin American art, her current book project is a study of Chicana/o artists in New Mexico and Texas from the late 1960s to early 1980s.

📖 This essay examines two “retablos,” or votive paintings, created by the Tejana artist Santa Barraza during the early 1990s, a period following a significant move from her home state of Texas to Pennsylvania to pursue a university teaching career. The essay proposes the notion of “votive pedagogy” as an analytic framework, arguing that Barraza’s employment of the intimate, spiritually inflected retablo form to explore the lives and legacies of underrepresented figures of historical import offers a reparative avenue for redressing narratives of violence, colonialism, and historical erasure.

Image: Santa Barraza, "La Malinche," (1991). Oil on metal, 15 × 14 × 2 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist. © Santa Barraza.

17/09/2026

To celebrate the launch of “Radical Pedagogies,” we are highlighting the authors who contributed to the collection.

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/radical-pedagogies/

Learning in Procession: Charo Oquet and the School of Rará
✍️ Written by Luis Graham Castillo

Luis Graham Castillo is a Dominican curator, communicator, and cultural manager whose work challenges official narratives in the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean. He develops programs for independent and interlocal institutions that expand understandings of contemporary visual culture. Based in Santo Domingo, he also teaches at Altos de Chavón.

📖 This essay examines how Dominican artist Charo Oquet transforms Rará/Gagá—an Afro-Caribbean tradition of procession, music, and collective spirituality—into a radical pedagogical practice. Focusing on “Rara: Public Spirituality for Better Days,” it explores how installation, performance, sound, and public participation generate forms of collective learning grounded in movement, ritual, and embodied experience. Through collective action, rhythm, and public spirituality, her work reimagines art as a “school in motion”—a site where historical consciousness, community formation, and political belonging are learned through participation. In doing so, Oquet offers a model of pedagogy rooted in relation, memory, and joy.

Image: Charo Oquet, "Miami Rara," (2018). Processional performance. Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida. Photograph by Javier de Pison.

16/09/2026

To celebrate the launch of “Radical Pedagogies,” we are highlighting the authors who contributed to the collection.

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/radical-pedagogies/

Material Memory: Francheska Alcántara’s Pedagogy of the Archive
✍️ Written by Denisse Brito

Denisse Brito is a museum educator, community engagement professional, and scholar whose work explores multilingual museum practice, community-centered pedagogy, and archival justice. She is the Learning & Engagement Manager at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Her research examines language, memory, and belonging in museums and cultural institutions.

📖 This essay examines Francheska Alcántara’s artistic practice as a counter-archival model of memory transmission grounded in sensation, materiality, and relational encounter through close analyses of “Starry Ocean I” (2021) and “Horizons” (2025). Brito argues that Alcántara’s use of perishable, everyday materials, including paper bags, glycerin soap, herbs, and thread, proposes an alternative infrastructure for cultural memory that refuses the colonial archival imperatives of permanence, legibility, and hierarchical classification.

Image: Francheska Alcántara, "Horizons," (2025). Glycerin, herbs, and flowers, each bar is 4 × 2 × 1 inches.

15/09/2026

The U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) is excited to announce that “Radical Pedagogies,” the eighth collection of essays in conjunction with “X as Intersection: Writing on Latinx Art,” is now live!

“Radical Pedagogies,” edited by Andrea Lepage and Elizabeth Ferrer, brings together the following writers and artists:

Denisse Brito on Francheska Alcántara
Luis Graham Castillo on Charo Oquet
Sonja Elena Gandert on Santa C. Barraza
Stamatina Gregory on Chris E. Vargas
Teréz Iacovino on Nitza Tufiño
Deanna Ledezma on Kathy Vargas
Alex Feliciano Mejía on Lizania Cruz
María Elena Ortiz on Yelaine Rodriguez
Veronica Pesantes Vallejo on Sandy Rodriguez
Megan Voeller on Pepón Osorio

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/radical-pedagogies/

03/09/2026

Playback Now Available for X as Intersection: Transforming Tradition!

Transforming Tradition, on December 10, 2025, brought Barbara Carrasco, Marie Romero Cash, and Kathy Vargas together for a focused dialogue on art, history, and contemporary practice.

In case you missed the online program, or want to rewatch it, you can find the recording here: https://youtu.be/qh5A0_BtKuk?si=TXAXaMVN61viUi9a

For those who were able to join us on Zoom, thank you so much for attending!

This program was organized in partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of X as Intersection.

X as Intersection is a five-part public program series featuring conversations with fellows from the fifth cohort of the Latinx Artist Fellowship, an initiative of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum.

Learn more here: https://uslaf.org/x-as-intersection/

09/07/2026

☀️Celebrating our New Mexico Latinx Artist Fellows, hanging with friends old and new, and living out our mission:

“The US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) is dedicated to art by US inhabitants of Latinx descent and their communities. We intentionally use the “x” in Latinx to create an expansive and convivial space that fosters relationships within and beyond hemispheric American art. Hanging out in this space generates new exhibitions, scholarship, programs and collaborations that advance the field into a dynamic future.”

18/06/2026

Playback Now Available for X as Intersection: Lines of Descent!

Lines of Descent brought Santa Barraza, Marcus X. Chormicle, and Shizu Saldamando in conversation to explore how they examine questions of lineage within their creative practices.

In case you missed the live program, or want to rewatch it, you can find the recording here: https://youtu.be/cut-MNkLSpA

For those who were able to join us at the National Museum of Mexican Art or virtually, thank you so much for attending!

This program was organized in partnership with the National Museum of Mexican Art as part of X as Intersection.

X as Intersection is a five-part public program series featuring conversations with fellows from the fifth cohort of the Latinx Artist Fellowship, an initiative of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum.

Learn more here: https://uslaf.org/x-as-intersection/

Photography by Manuel Velasco.

11/06/2026

To celebrate the launch of “Sacred Futurities,” we are highlighting the authors who contributed essays to the collection.

To view the full collection and access downloadable PDFs visit: https://uslaf.org/collection/sacred-futurities/

New Choreographies with/in the Land: On Spider Woman’s Embrace
✍️ Written by Xavier Robles Armas

Xavier Robles Armas is a multidisciplinary artist, scholar and curator with a focus on itinerant performance practices, public space, photography, and how migration shapes architecture and subject-hood in the U.S. He is currently the Events and Arts Manager at The Latinx Project, where he curated Tinkuy: Converging Ecologies (2023), co-curated Escenas (2025) and RicanVisions (2025). A recent Independent Curators International Curatorial Seminar graduate and NALAC Leadership Institute Fellow (2024), Xavier has also been part of the inaugural cohort of Latinx curators in the A&L Berg Foundation’s Early Stage Arts Professionals program. Independently he has collaborated on curatorial projects with EnFoco Inc., Pregones/PRTT, ProArts Oakland and Heaven Gallery Chicago. He has held fellowships at the Queens Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Xavier is pursuing an MA in Performance Studies at NYU, holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Architectural Studies from Hampshire College. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, Xavier lives in Queens, New York—by way of Santa Ana, California.

📖 In this essay, Robles Armas focuses on a close visual reading of one of the images in Koyoltzintli’s photographic "MEDA" series titled “Spider Woman Embrace” (2019). In the image, Robles Armas argues that Koyoltzintli creates a space for knowledge exchange that stretches across time, constituting a vital act of transfer between the living forms that come into contact with one another. Robles Armas asks, how might Koyoltzintli’s practice help viewers retrieve their own ancestral wisdom?

Image: Koyoltzintli Mirandarivadeneira, “Spider Woman Embrace,” (2019). Archival pigment print from a large format paper negative, 24 × 30 inches. Edition of 7 plus 2 artist’s proofs. Series: MEDA.

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