In this text, Venezuelan curator and researcher Carmen Hernández (b. 1963), who was born in Chile, discusses the work, Anto: 163 cm a la medida de mi cuerpo, ni un milímetro más, ni un milímetro menos [Anto: 163 cm, to the Scale of My Body, Not One Millimeter More, Not One Millimeter Less] by Antonieta Sosa (b. 1940), featured in the international group show, Desde el cuerpo: alegorías de lo femenino, curated by Hernández and held at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas from January to March 1998. That show set out to study Sosa’s visual discourse alongside the production of other Latin American women artists working on gender issues. No catalogue was published at the time of the event; indeed, not until 2007?almost ten years later?was a book published that featured this essay.
This was not the first time that Sosa (b. 1940)—a Conceptual artist with an extensive career whose work on corporal expression has made an important contribution to contemporary art from Venezuela—had shown Anto: 163 cm a la medida de mi cuerpo, ni un milímetro más, ni un milímetro menos: it also had been exhibited in 1991 and 1995. This time, however, Hernández placed it in the context of a strain of feminist art that, on the basis of the body, constructs a new language and an autonomous identity for women.
Here, the curator examines the artist’s critical-discursive position in the context of a discussion of what she calls the discourses of “subalternity” found in culture and society.
For another essay by Hernández on this exhibition, see “Mailén García: Los múltiples rostros de la violencia” (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1155394).
