In this video, we will begin exploring the outstanding artistic proposal of Carmen Mondragon, later known as Nahui Olin. To navigate it, we suggest answering the following questions as you watch it:
How should an artist’s work be approached or studied if her practice does not fit any of the pre-existing categories that would help define it?
What do you think is the difference between a model and a performer? Between photography and performance, registry and art?
What do you think is the difference between focusing on the artist’s actions instead of the resulting record? How do you think it changes the analysis if we focus on one or the other?
Why do you think Marina Abramovic highlight the fact that performance art is not theatrical?
What did Marcel Duchamp’s action do for art history? What is the significance of removing the value or attention of the object or the resulting record and instead giving it to the artist’s actions?
Why do you think the 20th century changed so much how we understand art and the artistic actions that were defined as such?
How do you think the division of knowledge in disciplines and categories affected worldwide art practices?
Why do you think Carmen rebelled against that compartmentalisation?
Which ones were the revolutionary concepts she manifested in her diaries when she was ten years old? Why did she feel oppressed by existence’s grasp?
What were the categories in which her practice was circumscribed, and what are the benefits and detriments of having those categories?