Liliana Porter: Dissections of Decorated Depictions

Multifaceted, varied, and expansive are adjectives that describe Liliana Porter’s (b. 1941) vast oeuvre. However, these designations only hint at the complexities within the artist’s decades long practice. Redolent of her body of work, Porter’s biography exhibits a global connection spanning three countries. Born in Argentina, the artist studied in Mexico, and works primarily in New York. Her art, encompassing a variety of mediums, cannot be boxed into a single artistic movement. Utilizing specific strategies of display that disrupt the gallery space, Porter unsettles and pushes back against simplistic, myopic, or biographical centered interpretations of her artwork. Any model for critical dialogue must start first with her unique display practice.

Porter experiments with how art can function to create multi-layered relationships, complicating traditions of art history. I argue that the interactions, juxtapositions, and antagonisms between object, viewer, and space are necessary to generate a comprehensive analysis. In this paper, I focus on a specific installation titled Tejedora (2017). This work consists of a one-inch female figurine that weaves an enormous pink cloth adorned with rosettes. The figure shoulders an outsized, herculean labor focused task. She engages in stereotypical female “craft,” but Porter upends expectations by reframing the work within a museum space. This prompts questions surrounding female labor and the distinction between “high” and “low” art. Also, by directly injecting the diminutive female figurine into “real” exhibition space, Porter confronts the viewer, demanding interaction. By studying Porter’s innovative display stratagem, a new reading on Latin American feminist art history emerges.