“Diasporic Objects and the Art of Moving”
Tuesday October 29th, 2024 at 4:45 PM
Goldwin Smith Hall G24
Abstract
In this talk, I explore the ways in which art engages with diasporic objects: objects that travel with those who have been forced to leave their home behind because home, in the words of Somali British poet Warsan Shire, “won’t let them stay.” Focusing on the cultural production that has recently emerged to capture and shed light on the reality of the more than eight million Venezuelans who have left the country since 2017, I analyze an art installation (Crisálida, by Pepe López), a film (Home, by Paloma López), and a poetic/artistic text (Inventory for After the War, by Raquel Rivas Rojas) where objects acquire a vibrancy that complicates fictions of belonging, hijacks nostalgic narratives, and opens critical ways of remembering that do not depend on a for-granted continuity of the same.
Biography
Irina R. Troconis is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Romance Studies Department at Cornell University. Her research explores the relationship between memory, politics, and cultural production in the context of contemporary Latin America, with a specific focus on Venezuela. She is the co-editor of the digital volume Deborah Castillo: Radical Disobedience (HemiPress, 2019) and the co-organizer of the conversation series “Re-thinking Venezuela.” Her work has appeared in Latin American Research Review, Latin American Literary Review, Comparative Literature Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, among others. Her first book, The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution (Duke UP, 2025) explores through the lens of spectrality the memory narratives and practices developed around the figure of Hugo Chávez in the decade following his death. Her second book project focuses on the relationship between identity, materiality, and the gaze in poetic and artistic works emerging from and about the Venezuelan diaspora.
