The Matriarchy of the Mail: Mexican Women Artists of the 1970's and '80's in a Transnational Network

In the wake of the divisive 1975 International Women’s Year and amid a male-dominated art scene, Magali Lara and other female artists from Mexico, such as, Yani Pecanins and Maris Bustamante, explored the liberating potential of women’s subjective experience. Working with artists’ books, magazines, and conceptual performance, these artists engaged with mail art networks, not only for the distribution of their work, but as an anti-patriarchal act. These artists were all engaged in the international mail art circuit, and were aware of the medium’s revolutionary power to evade man’s abusive obsession with possession and ownership, as the Argentine artist, Edgardo Antonio Vigo argued in 1976. This paper examines how Mexican female artists implemented the circulatory nature of the mail to create work that—through content, medium, and distribution—upset the oppression against women imposed by patriarchal political and artistic spheres. Women’s contributions to mail art in the context of Latin America has largely been excluded from art history. While Mexican artists, Ulises Carrión and Felipe Ehrenberg are some of the most recognized figures, often left out of this pantheon is Martha Hellion, who was central to the international development of artists’ books and mail art through her work with Ehrenberg at Beau Geste Press. In addition to exploring specific works, this paper provides a perspective on mail art that centralizes the role of women, highlighting the way in which the medium was inherently a matriarchal practice.