Specialization:
Areas of Concentration: Women and Queer Artists; Contemporary Latin American Art; Assemblage Art and the Found Object; Sculpture
Faculty Advisor: Jenni Sorkin
Committee Members: Laurie Monahan, Aleca Le Blanc (History of Art, UC Riverside), and Colin Gardner (Art, UCSB)
Dissertation: "Assembling the Body: South American Assemblage Art, 1960-1996"
M.A. Thesis: "Feminist Practices as Antagonism: Anti-Hegemonic Artistic-political Incursions" (Santa Catarina State University, Florianópolis, Brazil, completed 2014)
Bio:
Letícia Cobra Lima is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art & Architecture department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a doctoral emphasis in Feminist Studies (2020). Her dissertation thematizes the medium of assemblage art with found objects, particularly artworks that interact with or portray the body. The human figure has been a primary motif of modern and contemporary assemblage art at large, but specifically significant in iterations of the medium by women and queer artists in South America from the mid to late twentieth century -- a context in which political violence was often enacted through the body. Artists Farnese de Andrade (b. Brazil, 1926-1996), Feliza Bursztyn (b. Colombia, 1933-1982), and Liliana Maresca (b. Argentina, 1951-1994), explored the dissimulative potential of assemblage art to articulate new possibilities for the body, raising issues of citizenship, the status of the artwork, traditional gender roles, and the ever-present aftereffects of colonization.
Letícia was the recipient of the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2022-2023 Murray Roman Curatorial Fellowship by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum (UCSB), where she currently serves as Graduate Curator of Education. Her transnational scholarship entails constant exchanges with South American institutions. In 2021, she participated in the Curatorial Practices Seminar titled Critical Curating and Decolonial Studies in Visual Arts, promoted by the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and the Getty Foundation. In 2018, she was invited by the Brazilian National Arts Foundation to teach theoretical-practical workshops on feminist approaches to art history, and collaborated with artist Bruno Moreschi on a virtual collective artwork called “Another 33rd São Paulo Biennial” for said exhibition.
She has a master’s degree in Visual Arts from Santa Catarina State University (2014) and bachelor’s degrees in Graphic Design (Federal University of Santa Catarina, 2011) and Visual Arts (Santa Catarina State University, 2015).
Publications:
Leticia Cobra Lima. “Collapsing Autopia: Feliza Bursztyn’s Chatarras .” react/review: a responsive journal for art & architecture 3 (May 2023), 165-171.
Leticia Cobra Lima and Jing Cao. "The Schoolhouse and the Bus." Art Practical 9.1 (2018).
Leticia Cobra Lima and Bruno Moreschi. "Press: Titles ." Another 33rd São Paulo Biennial (2018).
Leticia Cobra Lima. "Arte Feminista enquanto Prática Antagonista ." Revista Valise 4:8 (2014).