Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces

Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces is the companion publication to the first US retrospective of Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld (b. 1943, Santiago; d. 2020, Santiago). It features a conversation between curators Natalia Brizuela and Julia Bryan-Wilson, newly translated archival materials, and original essays that contextualize Rosenfeld's solo practice as well as her collaborations with Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA). Together, these texts elaborate how the artist was a crucial node in a Latin American network that merged activism with poetry. In her wide-ranging work, Rosenfeld celebrated the imagination as the antidote to systems of control, be they patriarchal, dictatorial, capitalistic, or colonial. Framed through the lens of care, feminist friendship, and solidarity across difference, the exhibition highlights her tactile and conceptual strategies. The show also emphasizes an unprecedented range of materialities used by Rosenfeld—including rarely seen intaglio prints, collages from everyday materials, book covers, and serigraphs with thread. Disobedient Spaces foregrounds her creative and political partnerships, illuminating Rosenfeld's many alliances with fellow artists and activists. This book explores how Lotty Rosenfeld circumvented attempts to police thought, behaviors, and language through the ambiguities inherent in art before, during, and after the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.