“Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces” –showing at Columbia University's Wallach Gallery until March 15th, is the first US retrospective of the Chilean artist. Remembered as one of the most influential feminist artists from Latin America, Rosenfeld’s artistic practice began in the early 1960’s, initially working with painting and prints, before transitioning to video-based and performance work in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in 1973. Censorship, state violence, and female oppression are central themes in Rosenfeld’s work, and were in conversation with the brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship. Indeed, Rosenfeld explored artistic intervention as a means of political resistance.
The retrospective is organized into eight sections that follow loosely chronological and mostly thematic structures. Co-curators Julia Bryan-Wilson and Natalia Brizuela explore Rosenfeld's career via her early works on paper, videos, screen-prints, interventions like A thousand crosses on the pavement (1979-80), An American Wound (1982), No+ (as a member of the group CADA); and her decades long collaboration with Palestinian-Chilean poet Diamela Eltit. The sections bleed into one another, and the viewer's circulation in the gallery is somewhat unguided. However, rather than make for a confusing experience, this curatorial strategy reflects how politically and thematically unified Rosenfeld's body of work was. Indeed, her work was consistently committed to social justice, equality, and liberation of the oppressed. It would have therefore been arbitrary to divide her work along strict thematic, or medium-based lines.
In the wake of Columbia University's fierce repression of student protests in 2024, and its compliance with Trump’s efforts to undermine academic freedom, the Wallach’s exhibit is a rebuttal to the institution it is house in. "Disobedient Spaces" illustrates how the militant potentials of artistic intervention can be effectively harnessed, and the show's timeliness serves as an act of resistance in and of itself.
Ksenija Carleton
I really appreciate how you took a moment to put this exhibit in conversation with recent events at Columbia. I love your final sentence, although one tiny edit I have would be to simplify the first half a bit. Perhaps you could write: “ In the wake of Columbia’s fierce repression of student protests and compliance with Trump’s efforts to overhaul academic freedom, the Wallach’s exhibit…” Basically, I think the first comma you used could be gotten rid of. Overall, I think this is a super strong review, although I did have one point of confusion – when you say, “where the circulation also feels unspecified,” what did you mean by that? Perhaps this could’ve been flushed out more or worded differently. Otherwise, great job on this!
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