Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas
Foreword by Sheila Bergman. Introduction by Robb Hernández, Tyler Stallings. Text by Kency Cornejo, Robb Hernández, Joanna Szupinska-Myers, Itala Schmelz, Alfredo Suppia, Sherryl Vint.
Mundos Alternos looks at science fiction in the Americas through a transcultural perspective, grounded in an understanding of “Latinidad” expressed through shared hemispheric experiences in language, culture and visual expression.
If a Latin American science fiction is said to exist, the texts in this volume interrogate where that Latin America, and its science-fiction imagination, might be located. In addition to focusing on specific regions in North, Central and South America, the book’s essays cross time and space, illuminating Soviet influence in Cuba, the impact of American pop culture in Mexico and the cross-pollination of European avant-garde aesthetics in Brazil. Mundos Alternos will be an indispensable resource for contemporary art curators working on Latin America, science-fiction scholars interested in visual interpretations of the genre and readers interested in science fiction, art, Latin America and the diaspora.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña's "Robo-Proletarian Warriors" (2012) is reproduced from 'Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas.'
Claudio Dicochea's 2010 painting, (of Supreme Governance and Chief Saddle Blazing, it turned into a Martian), is reproduced from Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, published to accompany the traveling exhibition on view at the Queens Museum through August 18. Important and refreshing for a variety of reasons, including the subject—the intersection of art and science fiction—and the list of artists—Chicano, Latino and Latin American artists from across the Americas—this book does an excellent job of critiquing the known-knowns while inciting the reader to imagine new realities, both utopian and dystopian. "Dicochea draws on eighteenth-century colonial casta (caste) painting in his work," Rudi Kraeher writes. "Casta paintings depict mixed-race families and functioned as visual taxonomies of racial hierarchy. Departing from historical casta paintings, Dicochea creates his own postmodern portraits of mestiza families. Through a technique of re-appropriation and visual sampling, Dicochea creates unique, hybridic characters. A key element of this collage-like process is what Dicochea calls the 're-racing' of his figures: darkening or lightening the skin tone of the people he portrays." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 10 in. / 160 pgs / 125 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $34.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $48.95 GBP £30.00 ISBN: 9780982304686 PUBLISHER: UCR ARTSblock AVAILABLE: 10/24/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas
Published by UCR ARTSblock. Foreword by Sheila Bergman. Introduction by Robb Hernández, Tyler Stallings. Text by Kency Cornejo, Robb Hernández, Joanna Szupinska-Myers, Itala Schmelz, Alfredo Suppia, Sherryl Vint.
Mundos Alternos looks at science fiction in the Americas through a transcultural perspective, grounded in an understanding of “Latinidad” expressed through shared hemispheric experiences in language, culture and visual expression.
If a Latin American science fiction is said to exist, the texts in this volume interrogate where that Latin America, and its science-fiction imagination, might be located. In addition to focusing on specific regions in North, Central and South America, the book’s essays cross time and space, illuminating Soviet influence in Cuba, the impact of American pop culture in Mexico and the cross-pollination of European avant-garde aesthetics in Brazil. Mundos Alternos will be an indispensable resource for contemporary art curators working on Latin America, science-fiction scholars interested in visual interpretations of the genre and readers interested in science fiction, art, Latin America and the diaspora.
