Vita
Liliana Gómez is Professor of Art and Society at the University of Kassel with a secondary membership at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and the documenta Institute. Since June 2023 she has been Director of CELA (Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos) at the University of Kassel and on the Board of Directors of CALAS Centro Regional Andes (Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies). Since 2024 she is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.
Liliana Gómez studied philosophy and architecture in Berlin and Paris. She completed her PhD at the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on modernism in Latin America and habilitated at the University of Zurich with a study on the theory and history of photographic archives. She has been a guest lecturer and researcher at Columbia University, Harvard University, NYU, Universidad del Rosario Bogotá and the Orient Institute Beirut, among others. From 2017-2021, she was an SNSF professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich and has since headed the SNSF research project “Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South” (Swiss National Science Foundation).
Main research areas
Contemporary literary, cultural and media theory
Theory and history of modernity in a global context
Theory and history of the archive
Literature, art and human rights
Visual cultures and photography
Aesthetics and postcolonial studies
Ecologies of the fluid
Ecofeminism
Projects
2022 – 2024: Peace and Conflict Culture Network (with Prof. Paul Lowe, University of the Arts London, Arts and Humanities Research Council)
2017 – 2023: Head of the SNSF research project “Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South: Post-conflict in Literature, Art, and Emergent Archives” (Universität Zürich, 2017-2021, from August 2021 Universität Kassel, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds)
2021: Museum Talk Series „Extractive Zones“, Museum der Kulturen Basel, in cooperation with the University of Zurich, the University of Kassel and the documenta Institut
Academic conferences and workshops
September 2023: DAAD International Summer School “Histories of Resistance”, Universität Kassel, Universidad del Rosario Bogotá
März 2023: Workshop “Contested (In)visibilities and Memorial Cultures: Towards a Critical Reading of Cultural Heritage and Conflict”, Orient-Institut Beirut, Peace and Conflict Culture Network
Dezember 2022: Symposium “Ethics of Display” (Online), Peace and Conflict Culture Network
September 2022: DAAD International Summer School “Extractivism and Its Discontents: Cultural and Artistic Counter-Movements”, Universität Kassel, Mas Arte Mas Acción, documenta fifteen, CAPAZ
Juli 2022: Konferenz „Why remember? Peace, Conflict and Culture Conference”, Sarajevo, History Museum of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Peace and Conflict Culture Network
Juli 2022: Workshop “eco-operations“, mit Prof. Dr. Fabienne Liptay, Universität Zürich und Zentrum Künste und Kulturtheorie (ZKK)
2020/2021: Online-Workshop und Blog “Arts & Conflict: Contesting the Unavailability of Cultural Heritage”, Universität Zürich, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Lateinamerika-Zentrum Zürich, Zentrum Künste und Kulturtheorie Zürich (ZKK)
Exhibitions / Curatorial work
07 - 10 I 2021: Extractive Zones, Museum der Kulturen Basel, in cooperation with University of Zurich, University of Kassel and documenta Institute
08 - 09 I 2019: Contested Landscapes, Emergent Archives, Orient Institute Beirut, in cooperation with Forum Transregionale Studien, American University Beirut and Transregional Academy
Publications (Selection)
I. Monographs
Gómez, Liliana (2023): Archive Matter. A Camera in the Laboratory of the Modern. Zürich: diaphanes/Think Art.
Gómez, Liliana (2014): Lo urbano. Teorías culturales y políticas de la ciudad en América Latina. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana.
II. Editorships
Gómez, Liliana; Brust, Alexander (Ed.) Arts and Extractivism in the Global Present. New York, Routhledge. (im Erscheinen)
Gómez, Liliana; Liptay, Fabienne (Ed.) (2024): Eco-operations. Zürich, diaphanes/Think Art.
Gómez, Liliana (Ed.) (2021): Performing Human Rights. Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practices in the Global South. Zürich, diaphanes/Think Art.
Gómez, Liliana; Blackmore, Lisa (Ed.) (2020): Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art. New York, Routledge.
Gómez, Liliana; Exner, Isabel (Ed.) (2019): Dossier: Estéticas sucias y cultura-basura. Repensar desechos, residuos y contaminación en las formaciones culturales de América Latina: Iberoamericana, Bd. 19, Nr. 72.
Gómez, Liliana (Ed.) (2015): Dossier: History through Photography. 26 (2).
III. Articles
Gómez, Liliana (2025): El cuerpo de uno como cuerpo del mundo’: estéticas radicales en las artes latinoamericanas,. In: Müller, Gesine, und Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado (Ed.): World Exhaustion in Latin American Literatures and Cultures. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter (Open Access). p. 193-209.
Gómez, Liliana (2024): Folding Landscapes and Critical Ecologies. Aesthetic Reconfigurations of the Agrarian Past in Jumana Manna’s Artistic Work”. In: Gómez, Liliana und Fabienne Liptay (Ed.): Eco-operations. Zürich: diaphanes/Think Art. p. 23-51.
Gómez, Liliana (2024): 'Alchemie der Seele': Extraktivismus und künstlerische Gegenaneignungen”. In: Mersmann, Birgit; Ohls, Hauke (Ed.): Kritik des Neo-Extraktivismus in der Gegenwartskunst. meson press (Open Access). p. 159-170.
Gómez, Liliana (2023): The Archives of Operation Condor. Dissonant Narratives in the Artworks of Paz Encina and Voluspa Jarpa. In: Sasse, Sylvia; Kraznahorkai, Kata (Ed.): Artists & Agents. Performance Art and Secret Services. Leipzig: Spector Books. p. 586-599.
Gómez, Liliana (2022): Leakages, Undercurrents, and the Fluid: Liquid Ecologies and Weaving Water in Latin American Arts. In: Finke, Marcel; Nakas, Kassandra (Ed.): Fluidity: Materials in Motion. Berlin: Reimer. p. 237-254.
Gómez, Liliana (2021): Beyond the Courtroom: On Dust, Haunting, and the Archive. In: Gómez, Liliana (Ed.): Performing Human Rights. Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practicesin the Global South. Zürich: diaphanes/Think Art. p. 101-138.
Gómez, Liliana (2020): Acts of Remaining: Liquid Ecologies and Memory Work in Contemporary Art Interventions. In: Gómez, Liliana; Blackmore, Lisa: (Ed.): Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art. New York: Routledge. p. 35-53.
Gómez, Liliana; Blackmore, Lisa (2020): Beyond the Blue. Notes on the Liquid Turn. In: Gómez, Liliana; Blackmore, Lisa (Ed.): Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art. New York: Routledge. p. 1-10.