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Beyond their function as repositories for documents and records, archives are sites of knowledge production, intervention, and narrative transformation. For Latinx artists and art historians, as well as scholars and professionals specializing in Latinx art, the power and potential of the archive is made visible not only in its histories of exclusion and colonial conquest, but also in its orientation toward the future. In its attention to speculation as a mode of engagement and imagining historical possibility, this panel draws upon historian Saidiya Hartman’s conceptualization of “critical fabulation” as a means of “straining against the limits of the archive.”

How have contemporary Latinx artists worked toward decolonizing the archive? Given the problematic rhetoric of archival recovery and discovery, how do Latinx artists and scholars recuperate and reclaim these terms? How have histories and personal experiences of migration and diaspora affected the availability of public and private Latinx archival materials, and what strategies have artists, scholars, and curators deployed in the physical absence of these archives? How are community-built and artist-run archives addressing issues of public accessibility and the inclusion of previously untold Latinx histories and narratives? How have Latinx artists engaged with the materiality of the archive? Seeking an interdisciplinary dialogue, this panel invites submissions of academic papers and performative presentations from scholars, creative practitioners, and archive, library, and museum professionals. Papers and presentations on born-digital Latinx art archives and developments in the digital humanities are also encouraged.