Isobel Whitelegg
Research Fellow
Train - Reseach Centre for Transnational Art Identity and Nation
University of the Arts London
I am a Research Fellow and core member of the TrAIN Research Centre at the University of the Arts London. Before joining the Meeting Margins project, I had developed a research interest in the presence and critical reception of Latin American artists in England, focusing particularly on experimental spaces and practices in the sixties and seventies.
Amongst other case studies, the history of London's Signals gallery - its exhibitions, publications, networks, and decisive role in the Anglophone reception and historiography of Latin American art - has become a particular focus (see - "Signals Echoes Traces" in Guy Brett & Luciano Figueiredo, "Oiticica in London" (Tate Publishers, 2007) and "Londres al habla: Signals, el boletín de Signals London, 1964-1966" in Andrea Giunta, "Metropolis de papel, revistas y redes internacionales en la modernidad artística latinoamericana" (Biblos Press, forthcoming, 2009) ). This interest stemmed from my PhD research on the work of Mira Schendel, who was the last artist to exhibit at Signals when it closed in 1966.
In the context of Meeting Margins, I am interested in looking at cases when the ideals of transnational movement and knowledge break down, and in considering the distance and difference between localized sites of action and dominant sites of reception. To date, this has involved investigating the local persistence of the Bienal de São Paulo under international boycott, a subject developed via this project and explored in the recent article "The Bienal de São Paulo Unseen/Undone, 1969/81" (Afterall #22, Autumn 2009).
As well as developing aspects of my research as part of Meeting Margins, I am a member of Conceptualismos Del Sur, an international research network that involves artists and writers from across Latin America engaged in retrieving artistic practice that took place under conditions of political repression. At TrAIN I teach on the centre's cross-disciplinary theory and practice MA, supervise practice-led PhD projects, convene the TrAIN Open public platform and am a co-curator for our annual residency and exhibition competition in collaboration with Gasworks London.
I've also recently curated two exhibitions in collaboration with artists from Brazil: "Indirections", Nicolás Robbio (Nicosia, Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art, 2008-09) and "This Same World Over", Cinthia Marcelle (London, Foyerspace, Camberwell College of Arts, 2009). Having acted as curatorial advisor to the University of Essex's collection of modern and contemporary Latin American art while a PhD student in the Department of Art History & Theory (2001-2005), I continue to be a member of its committee, as well as sitting on curatorial committees for the Brazilian Embassy in London and for the CCW (Camberwell Chelsea Wimbledon) exhibition spaces at the University of the Arts London.
Read more about Isobel Whitelegg and TrAIN at www.transnational.org.uk
