Marginaler i rörelse: Materialitet och agens i skärningspunkten mellan transnationell feminism, globalisering och kulturell hybriditet

Abstract

This thesis explores how three contemporary Mexican women artists, Teresa Margolles, Julieta Aranda, and Minerva Cuevas navigate and critically engage with the global art world through a postcolonial and transnational feminist lenses. The study investigates how their artistic practices address issues of gender, identity, power and violence by examining six artworks by their aesthetic and material strategies, revealing how these artists challenge dominant Western narratives. Drawing on theoretical frameworks by Marsha Meskimmon, Ania Loomba, and Homi K. Bhabha, among others. The thesis discusses concepts of cultural hybridity, the “third space” and gender to analyze the complex intersections between the local and the global spaces in contemporary art. The study highlights both convergences and divergences in the artists’ approaches, emphasizing how their work resists essentialist representations and instead creates nuanced critiques of postcolonial and neoliberal structures. The research contributes to the discourse on decolonizing art history by examining how contemporary artists from the Global South articulate alternative epistemologies that challenge dominant art historical frameworks.