Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra (Queens’ College, Cambridge, UK)

PhD in Latin American Cultural Studies. Junior Research Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on twentieth century Latin American art and visual culture, exploring synchronic developments in heterogeneous local contexts and questioning dated discussions about originality, influence, and autonomy. A strong interest in aesthetic theory has led her to situate her work in dialogue with, among others, Jacques Rancière, Emmanuel Levinas, and Judith Butler. However, she also engages with less canonical thinkers in areas ranging from activism and networked communities to decoloniality. Polgovsky has published on Benjamin and Brecht, the Latin American neo-avant-garde, video art, performance, relational aesthetics, and the role of religion and the sacred in contemporary art. She has also competed a book project on “sabotage,” a notion etymologically associated with the production of noise.