Crossing borders and new creativities. Border thinking in the artistic production of Teresa Margolles and Guillermo Gómez- Peña

Abstract

In a new scenario of theoretical and critical productions of contemporary art, redefined by global flows and the mobility of genres, disciplines and methodologies, there is a need to create new tools for interpreting artistic practices. Theorists from various disciplinary fields such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Édouard Glissant, Fernando Ortiz, Walter Mignolo, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Gerardo Mosquera among others have created a resistance narrative to deconstruct the modernist strategies of sameness that traditional social sciences have imagined as solid and immovable (nation, class, political-ideological ascription). Art theories immersed in post-structuralism - with frequent incursions into postmodernism and post-colonialism - are indebted to these conceptual positions and reveal their interest in resisting the ethnocentric and universalist project of Modernity. Mexican artists Teresa Margolles and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, generating an identity and cultural mobility in this post-national, post-historical and post-colonial scenario, are significant case studies to understand the paradigm shift that dominates much of the current artistic production, especially in border contexts.