Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (LALVC) is proud and humbled to announce that Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa was awarded the Association for Latin American Art (ALAA) 2019 Annual Article Award for her piece “Metamorphic and Sensuous Brown Bodies: Queer Latina/x Visual and Performance Cultures in San Francisco Strip Clubs, 1960s-1970s.” Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s article was published in Volume 1, Issue 2 of LALVC on May 3, 2019 (DOI: 10.1525/lavc.2019.120005). We invite you to read the article for free for a limited time.
Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s groundbreaking scholarship excavates the Latinx archive and collective historical memory to document and analyze queer Latinx visual and performative culture in San Francisco’s strip club industry during the 1960s. Otálvaro-Hormillosa configures a new Latinx cultural archive by gathering ethnographic and documentary evidence from and about Roxanne Lorraine Alegria, Vicki Starr, and Lola Raquel, three Latina performers who worked as exotic dancers in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s methodology expands on Marcia Ochoa’s concept of “spectacular femininities,” draws on “queer gesture” as conceived of by Juana María Rodríguez, and critiques contemporary gentrification as a mode of historical erasure. As a San Francisco-based performance artist, writer, and self-described psychogeographer, Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s ongoing work addresses issues of cultural memory, the politics of space, and the places where race, gender, and sexuality intersect across disciplines.
This is the second year that ALAA has awarded the Annual Article Award for a distinguished scholarly article on any aspect of Latin American or Latinx art, architecture, or visual culture created in any period from Pre-Columbian to the present day. Articles must be published in peer reviewed journals, edited volumes, or exhibition catalogues during the previous year for annual consideration. ALAA President Michele Greet announced the award during the annual ALAA business meeting on Thursday, February 13th on behalf of the article award committee: Carolyn Dean (University of California, Santa Cruz), Angelica Afanador (Arizona State University), and Harper Montgomery (Hunter College, City University of New York). The committee praised Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s work for its profound assessment of queer Latinx visual culture, its innovative analytical interdisciplinarity, and its courageous effort to counter previous attempts to silence a critical piece of San Francisco’s visual and cultural history. Otálvaro-Hormillosa receives a $500 honorarium generously funded by Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of the History of Art at New York University, as well as recognition in the ALAA and College Art Association (CAA) newsletters.
The Association for Latin American Art, an affiliate of CAA, sponsors the ALAA Annual Article Award, as well as awards for monographs, exhibition catalogues, and dissertations. For more information about ALAA, to find out about upcoming events, or to become a member, visit their website at: https://associationlatinamericanart.org/.
LALVC welcomes submissions of scholarly articles focused on Latin American and Latinx studies in the modern era. Please see our submissions guidelines for more information.