"N[eg]ation" by Alan Pelaez Lopez

flyer for negation

Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez is an AfroIndigenous (Coastal Zapotec) poet, installation and adornment artist from Oaxaca, México. Their work attends to the quotidian realities of undocumented migrants in the United States, the Black condition in Latin America, and the intimate kinship units that trans and nonbinary people build in the face of violence.

Atlanta-based arts writer Ra Malika Imhotep writes that, “In “N[eg]ation” writer, cultural critic, and visual artist Alan Pelaez Lopez symbolically and discursively interrupts the violent process of nation-making through a series of objects that call attention to silenced histories and gesture towards alternative futures where Indigenous, Black, and Asian Latinxs live safely. Enlarged reproductions of a series of ‘memes’ initially circulated online via Instagram and Twitter invite viewers to engage a transmediated practice of critique. Taking negation as a method, these large tapestries reconnect the artist’s digital practice to its material urgency. Here, “Latinidad is Cancelled” becomes more than a provocation, it is an assertion shored up by the aesthetics of state-craft that are perverted by the artist’s labor in hand painting the white pigment onto red cotton. The interactive graveyard installation invites viewers to memorialize their demands and anxieties for a post-Latinidad future alongside the tombs of anti-black atrocities that have been erased from popular histories of Latin America.”
 
During the opening on Wednesday, Feb 8 at 7pm, Alán will join in conversation with music historian and cultural critic Katelina “Gata” Eccleston, beloved host of the podcast Perreo 101, the first bilingual podcast storytelling the intersectional herstory, analysis and musicology of reggaeton, as well as members of Harvard’s Latinx Studies Working Group. Catering will be provided by Las Palmas. This event is generously supported by the Elson Family Arts Initiative Fund and the Open Gate Foundation. 
 
workshop poster
 
On Tuesday, Feb 14 at 9:45am in the Smith Center Arts Wing, Alán will lead an undergraduate workshop titled "Building Alternative Worlds." As a collective, we will discuss the work of Kichwa-Kañari writer, Sonia Guiñansaca, and Korean-American writer, Franny Choi, poets who are committed to thinking of disaster, possibility, and alternative worlds. Through a guided conversation about failure, community,  hope, and hopelessness, participants will be guided through a process of developing speculative prose or poetry pieces that address the end of one world and the beginning of a new one.
 
This is in conjunction with the undergraduate seminar "Latinx, 1492 to 2022" and is made possible with support from the Elson Family Arts Fund and the History & Literature program. Any interested students are welcomed to attend.
 
Please contact thomasconners@fas with any questions.