CAA 2025 – Feminist Distinguished Awards + Enchantments, Transmissions and Infections: A Poetics of Knowledge by Latin American Women Artists

In February, I attended the 113th CAA conference in New York.

As part of my work as a member of the Committee on Women in the Arts (CWA) at the College of Art Association Conference, I was happy to celebrate the achievements of Mónica Mayer and Karen Cordero Reiman, who were recipients of this year’s Distinguished Feminist Award for artist and scholar categories, respectively. This was the first time a Mexican artist and Mexican-based scholar received this prize.

Congratulations, Mónica and Karen!

With Claudia Pederson, I co-chaired the panel ENCHANTMENTS, TRANSMISSIONS, INFECTIONS: A Poetics of Knowledge by Latin American Women Artists also at CAA featuring presentations by Mariela Yeregui, Pat Badani and Analays Álvarez Hernández and a discussion with Maria Fernández.

Mariela Yeregui discussed the co-creation practices of Ana Laura Cantera and Electrobiota collective (Gabriela Munguía and Guadalupe Chávez ) through Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui concept of Chi’xi.

Pat Badani shared the latest iteration of her project, “The Bichi Project,” which delves into the impact of climate change on biodiversity in food chains. Badani presented advances in two animation projects, Bichicuchitu and Bichicu-Chow, created with 3D modelling software based on photographs of sculptures made from biomaterials (food waste, mould and fungi).

Lastly, Analays Álvarez Hernández discussed the recent artworks created by Alexandra Gellis using plants through a multispecies framework and featured in the exhibition “On Americanity” curated by Álvarez Hernández and Colette Laliberté. Álvarez proposes a critical ethics that invites us to consider how technology is a disruption for plants as a way to counter the romanticism embedded in the multispecies and human-non-human frameworks.

María Fernández posed critical questions that invited us to reflect on the resonances in the works discussed as they all used technology to mediate human and non-human relations. Fernández invited us to think of the interconnections with the work of other artists like Anna Dumitru or Spela Petric to start crafting the histories of these practices, pointing to the ways these works pose “affirmative speculations”.